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[Beyond]

Oh yeah. I suffocated  Though it was the first time.

Dude, TeknoAXE makes LOOOOTS of music

Hit me up if you'd want me to compose music

[Pinqu!]

Prototype release 3

It's been 2 weeks since the release of the last prototype. Lots of smaller changes have been made. Added a new weapon and also a new enemy. Hopefully I'll be able to release the next prototype as fast as this one, two weeks sounds like a decent interval between releases.

Fixed
- Rocketparts are no longer destroyed by explosions.
- The Plasmablaster wasn't working correctly when playing with a gamepad.

Changes
- Weapons consume more power.
- Also the handgun (equipment when starting a game) now also uses power
- In the previous prototypes recoil only worked while the player wasn't moving. Heavier weapons like the grenade launcher and the shotgun now also cause recoil while moving.
- The small exploding enemies who live in groups, are now a little bit bigger and the color changed to red.

Added
- When entering a room a radar scans the level for rocketparts. If there is a rocketpart in the level, a little icon will be shown in the right-bottom of the screen.
- New weapon: shotgun (shoots 5 particles in one blast)
- New enemy: bouncer (after charging, speeds up and tries to slam into you)

Download here: https://pinqu.itch.io/mooon

[Pinqu!]

This week I added a new theme which is kind of a twilight zone. Currently it has 2 new all black&white (familiar looking) enemies. This was kind of a challenge, but I think it turned out pretty well. Their attack methods still need some work though.

[Pinqu!]

Protoype 4

This release has lots of smaller changes in effort to create a better balance in gameplay. One of the bigger changes is that weapons use a lot more power, but your power also recharges a lot faster. For the next update I'll be working on how the weapon-slots works. Let's just say I was planning for 3 slots. One for smaller weapons, one for bigger weapons like a machinegun and one for heavy weapons. So if you pickup for example a machinegun or shotgun it will always be in the second slot and the grenade launcher will always be in the third. At the moment this system is in place but it's not clear to the player how it works. So in the next update I'll try to fix this

Fixed
- The length of a run displayed at the game-over statistics screen was sometimes not right.

Changes
- Level size has been decreased and enemy density has increased.
- Air molecules are less likely to appear when you still have plenty of air left.
- Damage caused by enemies and/or their bullets has increased.
- Weapons consume a lot more power, but power also recharges faster.
- Weapon crates are more likely to be found.

Added
- A simple tutorial has been added to the introduction scene.
- New weapon: revolver (shoots one bullet, that is faster and causes more damage then the regular handgun).
- Superweapons: super revolver, super machinegun, super shotgun & the super grenade launcher. Superweapons can be recognized by their red color. They have faster reload times and are more precise. For the moment their bullets are the same as their normal counterparts, but in future releases they are likely to cause more damage.
- A new background theme: Twilight zone.
- 2 enemies for the new twilight theme.

Download here: https://pinqu.itch.io/mooon

[-Ross]

Interesting game! I tried a few runs. I was surprised there was no gravity, since it's in side view and you have a jetpack. But that's not a criticism, it just took me a bit to realize that, mechanically, it's a top-down shooter. Overall it's pretty nice! Pretty good "feel", decent enemy variety, standard input bindings, no camera issues or anything like that, even a wrapping menu; so professional! Haha :D Here are a whole bunch of nitpicks I had with it, feel free to ignore.

The movement is the worst part for me. I like weird movement mechanics, but this isn't a fun challenge for me, it's just annoying. Though the game was a lot better when I realized you didn't get hurt by banging into the walls. I got pretty used to the movement by the end, but it didn't make the game more fun for me. It's hard to move just a little bit, and with the strong recoil and knockback, so easy to get bouncing around out of control.

Music and Effects volume options would be nice. The sounds seemed OK but the music was kind of lound and obnoxious. I wouldn't mind it if I could turn the volume down though.

The weapon slots business wasn't clear. There should be some indication of which slot a weapon goes into. I would also make it so when you pick up a weapon you drop your old one, so you can switch back if you want. That would make it a lot nicer all around, and then you could figure things out on your own without losing weapons permanently. It's kinda bad that you can downgrade your weapon.

I would make the health pickups much more visible, especially since they disappear after a while. It's fairly easy to miss them.

You don't mention the shield in the tutorial!

I would enable the HUD, shooting, and map controls in the tutorial (you can already use your shield). It's hard to understand mechanics when you can't try them out.

A lot of times I pushed myself back through a portal with my weapon recoil, often multiple times in a row since there were enemies right on the other side. Not sure how to fix this. Maybe just disable the portal for a little bit after you go through it.

Maybe personal preference, I would make most of the weapons more accurate, but especially the revolver. It's a pretty poopy weapon to have in the beginning when you're still figuring out everything works.

The difficulty curve could use some work (hard to tweak just right, I know). At least I would make it a bit easier in the first level or two. Your weapon is weak and there are enemies pretty close to the starting portal. It's actually easier later when you have better weapons.

The game hung up on me once. No idea what caused it unfortunately, it just randomly froze in the middle of a level. The music kept playing. I alt-tabbed out and closed the game from the taskbar, still music playing. I had to go into the task manager and kill the game process and tomproto15.exe. It's a bit annoying that it dumps all its content in my AppData folder, but whatevs . . .

All those gripes said, it's off to a good start. The base gameplay of blowing away monsters is fun. The enemy behaviors have enough variety to keep things interesting. The black enemies with white outlines are cool, kind of creepy-looking. Keep it up!

[Pinqu!]

Hey -Ross, thank you for taking the time to send me your feedback

About the movement. I tried to make it a little floaty, Cause that's how imagined how it would be to be in space. But I am constantly tweaking and making small changes to this. I'll probably tone down the recoil a bit for the next prototype.   

I hope I get the weapon slots mechanism fixed in the next release. Still playing around with this. Dropping the current weapon when picking up a new one, is already done as we speak.

Music/fx volume control will definitely be added at some point.

Difficulty curve is also something that is constantly changing all the time, with new enemies and weapons being added. But I get your point. I'll look into this.

Bouncing back in the portal is indeed a problem. It high on the to-fix list.

The shield is a temporary thing for the moment. It will not be basic equipment in future releases. It will be available though as a optional upgrade during the game. This also applies for the possibility to increase weapon accuracy.

Sorry you encountered a crash. It's been a while since I encountered this myself, so I thought is was fixed. Did this perhaps happen while you used the shield? Not sure what to think about the appdata folder. Is this something I can fix or is it something that is default for Gamemaker (maybe somebody here knows)? On my computer it just makes a folder and it only stores a .ini file inside.

[Pinqu!]

Preparing for the next prototype release. Added black outlines to the player and the enemies. Made a new enemy and changed a lot of effects (for example: bullet/lasers etc now have a glowing effect around them). Also I was able to fix a lot of the problems mentioned in the previous post.

[Pinqu!]

Protoype 5 is out now

Download here: https://pinqu.itch.io/mooon

Changeblog

Fixed
- The bouncer enemy had some collision issues.

Changes
- The radius of the searchlight is smaller when you are inside a twilight themed level.
- If you pickup a weapon and the weapons slot it belongs to is already in use, the HUD will show you what weapon will be dropped.
- A weapons that is switched for another weapon is dropped and can be pickup again as long as you stay in the same level.
- The player and enemy sprites now have black outline (except for the enemies in the twilight themed levels)

Added
- A new enemy which shoots a burst of 10 bullets with it's 3 eyes.
- Music and sfx volume controls.

Some thoughts on resolution.
Up until now I have been using 960x540 as the base resolution for MoOoN. But I figured it might be a good idea to lower the resolution to 640x360. The upside: it seems to works really well for the gameplay, you are much closer to the enemies and thus the action is more intense. The downside: the graphics are way more pixelated. This might be a turn of to some, but it also brings out the details in design.
I have uploaded a modified prototype which uses the lower resolution here: -deleted-
It would be awesome if some of you could give both prototypes a try and let me know what you think

[Pinqu!]

Protoype 6

Glad I got this out. As said before in my previous post I was thinking about lowering the resolution. Thus creating a more intense gameplay. This has now been implemented in this release and I am looking forward to the response it will get.

Download here: https://pinqu.itch.io/mooon

Changeblog

Changes
- The game now runs on a lower resolution,  however weapons and other rotating objects look less pixelated when the game is running full screen.
- Made some changes to the HUD, to better suit the new resolution and to prepare for future additions.

Added
- New weapon: Chainsaw
- New weapon: Lasergun
- New weapon: Laserrifle

[joey4track]

This is great! Reminds me of a lesser known roguelite called Shoot First

[absolute8]

Isn't the air gauge just a relabeled HP gauge?

I'm not getting the urgent fear of suffocation I'd get from a game such as Mr Driller.

I WANT that urgent fear! I crave it!

[joey4track]

Isn't the air gauge just a relabeled HP gauge?

I'm not getting the urgent fear of suffocation I'd get from a game such as Mr Driller.

I WANT that urgent fear! I crave it!

What if the screen pulsed to black every few secs when you are low on air?

[absolute8]

My only issue with that solution is that it is an effect rather than an experience altering mechanic. I would make it so only certain enemies drop oxygen pellets.

Getting oxygen randomly from every enemy you kill is much too generous for a rogue-like.  Having it randomly dispensed from every enemy takes something essential away from the player. I think the oxygen should come from a clearly defined source that is randomly placed for increasing risk to the player's safety.

Meanwhile, I'd replace the hp style oxygen gauge with a visually damaged space helmet.

Every time you get hit, the helmet starts to crack. That way you have a separate urgency for oxygen verses the worry of plowing through enemies and dying anyway.

[Pinqu!]

I like your ideas and to be honest I think you are right, the game is way to easy at this point. I can play though 20 levels/rooms without ever being really challenged. The initial reason why I decided to let the enemies drop air is to give the player a reason to fight them, instead of just flying past them. I should really look at this, cause is a weak point in the design of the game.

Some time ago I made these dead guys that I haven't used yet. But they could be used as an excellent source for air.


ps.
Made a montage video of some random gameplay from the latest prototype:

[Pinqu!]

Protoype 7/8

I'm back, baby. That's right I'm back, took some time off and went on a short vacation. It seems I didn't do a changeblog for prototype 7 so I'll try to add the changes made in that release to this changeblog (as far as I can remember them). This however does not mean that this will be a massive changeblog as progress has been slow lately.

Download here: https://pinqu.itch.io/mooon

Changeblog

Fixed
- Prototype 7 had some really bad balance issues concerning the amount of power used by some weapons when shooting. Meaning some weapons would never be able to fully drain you power level.

Changes
- Touching any enemy will cause damage to the player. In the previous releases only 2 specific enemies would cause damage to the player when touching them.
- Killing enemies rewards you with skulls. For now they don't serve any purpose, but in future releases they can be traded for skills/items etc.
- Killing all enemies in a stage will increase  your multiplier for killing enemies (see above).
- Taking damage reduces the multiplier to 1x.
- The Plasmablaster weapon now consumes power while charging. Previously this would just take a large chunk of power when pressing fire. This would also mean you would lose a lot of power when not finishing the charge.

Added
- When a enemy is hurt a small number appears to show the amount of damage taken.
- A new fire type enemy spawning small fire skulls that will try to touch you. Killing this enemy will spawn a explosion of multiple bullets.
- A new background theme: Lava (the art for this theme is temporary and was only added to provide a home for the new enemy mentioned above).

[Pinqu!]

Protoype 9

Download here: https://pinqu.itch.io/mooon

Changes
- In the previous release when killing an enemy, skulls were automagically rewarded. Now the enemy drops a skull for you to pick up.
- Taking damage no longer reduces the multiplier to 1x, but lowers the current multiplier by 1.
- The lava themed levels now have a new tile set. The spikes which are basically copies of the icicles in the ice themed levels will be changed at a later time.

Added
- New enemy: Phantomskull. Loads up bunch of bullets and shoots them in all directions.
- Shops! Hidden in the depths of the mooncaves you can find shops to trade your skulls for items/skills. The good news is that the shops are fully functional (mostly with placeholder art) but the bad news is only the first shop contains items (the others are still empty). So more to come!

[fireboy]

getting interesting. Good job.

[Ayramen_Studio]

That kind of game has a lot of potential! When you have the skill it is really fun to navigate and shoot

[Pinqu!]

I have been working on some items for the shops, as they are still pretty much empty in the last release. This item is a megaweapon that unleashes a load of thunder upon your enemies. It will definitely come in handy when your low on power and surrounded by enemies.