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[AlexSkylark]

So, hello, everybody. I submit here for your scrutiny my solo dev project, Radiant LUX ^^
It currently has an Alpha Prototype Demo for all you guys to test



The core concept to the game is: destroy enemies of a color, and you level up your shot of that color. You also deal more damage to enemies of the same color as your shot.

You start out in the Red refraction, which spawns red enemies. However, occasionaly an enemy of a different color will appear. Kill that intruder, and a portal will spawn that leads to his refraction, which spawns enemies of that other color. That way you can get a new attack from that color and level it up (oh yeah, leveling up each color provides different attacks and passive abilities to your vessel).

Also, after gathering a few levels in different colors, a boss will appear. These bosses are made of several, multi-colored parts. And, remember, you deal more damage hitting stuff with shots of the same color. So, make use of that in your advantage!

HERE'S A LINK TO RADIANT LUX ITCH.IO PAGE (contains download links for PC and Mac):
https://starlightgs.itch.io/radiantlux

So, fire away all that you think about the game :D
if you find any bugs, I'll do my best to squash them and update the demo, BTW.

UPDATE: I've been working on a full revamp of the game for the past few months, you can see the results here




Leave a comment if you like it!

[DrDog]

Couple of things:
I like the look of it. It's simple but also very slick looking.

The color/weapon concept is clever and it adds something to the game. I might say until you get to the boss and have to use all of the weapons at once it's not clear why you would go to the other areas. It seems like it punishes you for doing so. You leave the area where you weapon is most effective and go to one where it is the very opposite.

The controls in classic mode feel pretty tight

The boss fight itself, the way it is composed of the different elements, is pretty cool.

Green weapon is less effective than the other two. It makes the green zone significantly harder. At the boss I just used the blue weapon and took the damage penalty.

The movement on Original mode feels way too imprecise.

Overall I like the direction this is going. It's a cool concept that needs polish.

[AlexSkylark]

The color/weapon concept is clever and it adds something to the game. I might say until you get to the boss and have to use all of the weapons at once it's not clear why you would go to the other areas. It seems like it punishes you for doing so. You leave the area where you weapon is most effective and go to one where it is the very opposite.

The idea is that you go to the other areas FOR the new shots and abilities, with the goal of getting stronger to fight the boss. You can choose to focus on one color, but the bosses demand (or at least they should as per design) versatility. Maybe that's what's lacking in the boss fight?

The movement on Original mode feels way too imprecise.

I didn't want it to be like Classic Mode, since dealing with momentum and thrust was something that also got lots of positive feedback in the beginning. But maybe the ship is STILL too loose... OK, noted.

Green weapon is less effective than the other two. It makes the green zone significantly harder. At the boss I just used the blue weapon and took the damage penalty.

The green weapon is supposed to be a skill shot - harder to use, with a payoff in damage. Also, the passive ability of that color (the satellite shooter) should be a reward to counterbalance that extra difficulty, but I'm thinking of swapping that with the blue one (the force field), since I'm getting feedback that it's a much more stronger reward. What you would say about that? Also, if the damage of that weapon was higher, would you say that the payoff would make it more desirable?

<Lots of positive feedback>

Thanks a bunch! :D I'm glad you had fun with the game. Yeah, I'm aware it still needs a little more polishing.

[-Ross]

Interesting game, I just played a couple quick runs.

Performance: What system requirements are you aiming for here?. I have a quite low-spec machine (intel HD 4000) and I had to turn the resolution down to 1024 and do "web" mode to get a decent framerate. I'd guess it was going at 10 fps at full resolution. The overdraw of all those full-screen transparent layers is what's killing it I would say. But, if you're okay with requiring higher specs then I'm sure it's fine.

Controls: I started getting used to the "Original" slidy controls somewhat, but I can't say they improved my gameplay experience over traditional shoot-em-up controls (constant movement, instant start/stop). Depending on how far into bullet-hell territory you want to go, it kind of stinks to have such imprecise control. I tried the "Classic" mode for a little bit, I actually think I prefer "Original".  It was kind of nice not to slide around, but the jerkiness was annoying and it wasn't all that much more precise. I guess the movement is just too fast? It feels almost tile-based in "Classic" mode, you can't move in small increments. If you want different movement mechanics that's great, but I think you need to experiment more to find something that's fun and different enough to be it's own thing.

Unskippable screens: I guess you can't get rid of the unity splash screen without paying money, so that's understandable, but the other delays are not. The "Game Over" text sticks around forever! Not to mention your "Thanks for playing/vote for me" screen. Shareware games from the 90s usually had multiple pages like that with cool screenshots from the full version, but they were always instantly skippable by pressing a key. Forcing me to sit there looking at something every single time (or force-close the game) doesn't make me want to vote for you, it makes me want a refund. Make good stuff that does what the player wants. Harrassment will get you nowhere.

Gameplay: Other than that stuff, the gameplay is decent. Pretty standard shoot-em-up. It's kind of hard to hit stuff, in most shooters I've played you put out a constant stream of bullets. Not that your game has to be standard, but it's a bit frustrating. The weapon color system is interesting. I would really push the gameplay differences between the colors though. You want to give the player different choices, different strategies. If there's only one best way to play, then player actions don't matter and it'll quickly get boring and not replayable.

The enemy types and shapes were not very memorable or interesting. I think you could do more with relating basic shapes to behavior, so you can sort of tell what an enemy will be like by its appearance. Also maybe different design themes for each color could be cool. Circles for blue, squares for green, triangles for red, or something like that. Or use shapes for behavior types. I assume you've seen Geometry Wars? It's fairly pretty, though way too flashy for my taste.

The little damage numbers are good—functional and reasonably slick in appearance.

The background graphics are not so good. It's obviously a few different tiled textures scrolling by. It looks a bit cheap and has no variety. I think you could do more with some particle effects moving at different speeds so it's more organic. And/or some cool shader effect on the background texture. Play around with mixing in a couple other textures panning at different speeds, you can get some cool stuff. Or try distorting the UVs with a panning normal map. Maybe some sort of displacement effect around your ship . . . just some ideas.

[-Ross]

Oh also, the whole "Original" vs. "Classic" thing is confusing. The words are too similar. I would just do "Play" and "Play Classic Mode" or something like that. Or maybe "Normal" and "Classic".

[AlexSkylark]

Hey, thanks for the very thorough analysis and constructive criticism. thought it deserved a reply

Performance: What system requirements are you aiming for here?. I have a quite low-spec machine (intel HD 4000) and I had to turn the resolution down to 1024 and do "web" mode to get a decent framerate. I'd guess it was going at 10 fps at full resolution. The overdraw of all those full-screen transparent layers is what's killing it I would say. But, if you're okay with requiring higher specs then I'm sure it's fine.

Yea, I'm struggling with that myself. I'm still making a decision on that, but it'll probably be up to what I'm gonna do with the background in the future (more on that below)

Controls: I started getting used to the "Original" slidy controls somewhat, but I can't say they improved my gameplay experience over traditional shoot-em-up controls (constant movement, instant start/stop). Depending on how far into bullet-hell territory you want to go, it kind of stinks to have such imprecise control. I tried the "Classic" mode for a little bit, I actually think I prefer "Original".  It was kind of nice not to slide around, but the jerkiness was annoying and it wasn't all that much more precise. I guess the movement is just too fast? It feels almost tile-based in "Classic" mode, you can't move in small increments. If you want different movement mechanics that's great, but I think you need to experiment more to find something that's fun and different enough to be it's own thing.

It's funny you say that about Classic mode feeling too imprecise and fast, I get the exact opposite sensation when I play it, that movement is held back and too slow. You're also the first person who says that about Classic Mode, most feedback I get say that Classic controls are tight and precise. But I could experiment with slowing down Classic a bit and see what happens. Meanwhile, I'm still experimenting with Original controls and trying to find a sweet spot where youhave that inertia/acceleration effect of the physics-based movement so you can "feel" your ship's thrust without controls being imprecise. Hope to find it soon.

Unskippable screens: I guess you can't get rid of the unity splash screen without paying money, so that's understandable, but the other delays are not. The "Game Over" text sticks around forever! Not to mention your "Thanks for playing/vote for me" screen. Shareware games from the 90s usually had multiple pages like that with cool screenshots from the full version, but they were always instantly skippable by pressing a key. Forcing me to sit there looking at something every single time (or force-close the game) doesn't make me want to vote for you, it makes me want a refund. Make good stuff that does what the player wants. Harrassment will get you nowhere.

About the game over, NOTED, about the "thanks for playing" screen noted too. Will make it instant-skippable for the next build. Sorry for the bothering  .

Gameplay: Other than that stuff, the gameplay is decent. Pretty standard shoot-em-up. It's kind of hard to hit stuff, in most shooters I've played you put out a constant stream of bullets. Not that your game has to be standard, but it's a bit frustrating. The weapon color system is interesting. I would really push the gameplay differences between the colors though. You want to give the player different choices, different strategies. If there's only one best way to play, then player actions don't matter and it'll quickly get boring and not replayable.

About the lack of stream of bullets, I have to ask you, are you talking specifically about Red Capsule I (the shot you begin the game with)? Red Capsule I is sub-optimal by design, the intention is to reward evolving Red with more and more rate of fire and spread (the Magna Capsule, Red lv 10 that's not on the demo literally fills half the screen with an assload of bullets). Or you're saying that even after evolving the Red color (the demo goes up to Red Capsule III if I'm not mistaken) you still feel it being too slow? or that this that I described just now was not a good design choice? I'm interested in the specifics of this.

Also, you'll be happy to know that making each color gameplay unique and different is exactly what I'm aiming for. red blue and green WERE supposed to be different among themselves, can you detail a bit better why you didn't feel that?

Also, as a teaser, here are the base concepts for the 3 remaining colors:
Violet - You leave helpers behind that keep shooting from their position for a few seconds.
Yellow - non-accelerating, slow shots that replenish your shields by a percentage of damage done.
Orange - A melee-range energy blade (going forward about 1.5x the length of your ship) that deals high damage but makes you go up close and personal with enemies.

The enemy types and shapes were not very memorable or interesting. I think you could do more with relating basic shapes to behavior, so you can sort of tell what an enemy will be like by its appearance. Also maybe different design themes for each color could be cool. Circles for blue, squares for green, triangles for red, or something like that. Or use shapes for behavior types. I assume you've seen Geometry Wars? It's fairly pretty, though way too flashy for my taste.

I'm gonna draw a mea culpa here and say this is the demo's fault. I only released it with 2 out of 8 designed geometric bits possible to assemble enemies with. The idea is that what bit is in the center give the enemy a different ability (force shields, high HP, resistance to synced damage, higher rate of fire, stronger damage, etc) while the smaller ones around the center piece each one have a different attack pattern, which they fire independently. There's really not much variety with only 2 possible choices (triangle and square), but with 8 different forms to choose from the possibilities grow exponentially (specially because higher-sided polygons will have more slots to connect side-pieces on).

The background graphics are not so good. It's obviously a few different tiled textures scrolling by. It looks a bit cheap and has no variety. I think you could do more with some particle effects moving at different speeds so it's more organic. And/or some cool shader effect on the background texture. Play around with mixing in a couple other textures panning at different speeds, you can get some cool stuff. Or try distorting the UVs with a panning normal map. Maybe some sort of displacement effect around your ship . . . just some ideas.

Yea, I know. I'm getting that feedback a lot of times. This background is really pushing my skills as an artist (=not many, ughh) and I keep finding myself spending many hours banging my head against Photoshop trying to improve it that could be used into actually implementing gameplay. I more and more coming to the conclusion that I'll be forced to commission a background artist, problem is right now I'm pretty much broke -_-') Even more thinking that could solve the system requirements problem, by using more shader effects and prettier textures that don't need to be in such high resolution. I also wanted to have different backgrounds for each stage, which will add to the bill. Oh well, who said this is easy, right? heh

Oh also, the whole "Original" vs. "Classic" thing is confusing. The words are too similar. I would just do "Play" and "Play Classic Mode" or something like that. Or maybe "Normal" and "Classic".

Noted. I used "Original" because that was the only one available for the vast majority of development time so far. Classic Mode was implemented due to massive backlash from the SHMUP community over the inertia/acceleration of the movement and Shield Bar, but when I talked to everybody who was used to play the first alpha builds about just getting rid of the current movement system, the feedback I received was that it would be a shame because I'm onto something good with it, just need more tweaking and experimenting. So I decided to leave them both.

Anyhow, I digress. You're right, Original makes sense to ME, but not to my audience. Will make a note to change the mode's name.

Thanks again for the thorough analysis, that was VERY valuable feedback

[-Ross]

If you want to know what real, physics-based movement is like, try out VoR: http://sametwice.com/vor

I tried a couple random free shoot 'em ups from itch to check their movement. There's a pretty big range. Rym 9000 for example is quite slow. Xydonia seemed about as fast as yours. I didn't find any decent free ones that seemed comfortable to me. If you've tried Steredenn, it's got the right balance to me. Not so slow that it's like flying through molasses, not so fast that it's hard to move a tiny bit.

I'm not sure about the stream of bullets thing to be honest. It's hard to get a good balance between powerful upgrades and not feeling too weak in the beginning. You want it to feel satisfying at every stage. I think I could go an entire game without hitting anything with that green rocket though. Some of this may not be about the weapons too, enemy size, movement patterns, fire rate, etc., will have an impact. Also all the "game feel" stuff. Some nice sounds and visual effects can make a weapon feel twice as powerful, without changing gameplay at all.



The other weapons/colors sound more interesting. Mine-drones, life stealing, and a melee weapon? Those sound cool and gameplay-changing, as long as their characteristics are exaggerated enough. Red, Blue, and Green are basically just three different variations of fire rate vs. damage-per-shot.

If you put up a build that doesn't take ~25 seconds to restart I will try it some more.

Another thing I forgot to mention before. Make it more obvious where your weapon powerups come from. I only just noticed there are some particle things that suck into your ship from killed enemies. That should be more noticeable. Not too big and contrasty to get in the way, but more obvious than they are now. Maybe have several small sparks from each kill.

[AlexSkylark]

I've played some of the games you mentioned, and I'll check out Steredenn and VoR. Your feedback was the most complete and detailed I got about movement so far, and I'll be sure to try a bit with your suggestions

Anyhow, yeah, the red shot is something worth looking at, you're not the first person to say that about Red Capsule I (hence why I wanted to confirm). It is unbalanced against all the other I shots.

I show some shots of the other 3 colors in my trailer, if you wanna check it out.




The Green Missile is designed to be a Skill Shot. It's the most powerful weapon in the game, but it's hard to master by design. You didn't see it because you didn't manage to hit anything with it, but when it hits something, it creates an area explosion that stays in place for a second, damaging everything that touches it. As you level up, the damage raises and the explosion gets bigger and lasts longer, and the missiles themselves also get bigger, so they get easier to hit. If you get a full hit on the head of a wave, you can take down that entire wave with one shot, or even multiple waves if they cross each other's paths and you manage to time it right.

Also, its passive ability is to add shooter satellites to your ship, which is pretty useful.

Now, the Green Missile I MIGHT be suffering from the same illness of Red Capsule I. I'll look into maybe making it a little bigger and widen the collision radius a bit.

Also, about the energy bits (that's what I call those things that you mention in the last part of your post) - I was trying to make them discreet so they didn't get mixed up with enemy shots and your own. But you're right, they are a little too transparent. Also gonna look there.

Anyhow, I'm gonna have a new build up soon, but I wanna look into all those things before, so it might take a few days. Also, on a related note, expect a PM from me soon.

[-Ross]

Regarding the background, I don't think you need to hire a background artist, and I'm not sure one would be effective considering your chosen aesthetic and dynamic requirements. You will have to spend some time on it though, if you want it to look nice. But if you're stuck beating your head against the wall then it's time to go look at some other games and stuff for ideas.

A shader or some combination of shaders and particle effects could be way lighter on performance and easily tweaked to make variations for different stages. You can look at http://glslsandbox.com/ for some ideas and code. They range from really simple to rather complicated. http://glslsandbox.com/e#39340.0 http://glslsandbox.com/e#39271.0 http://glslsandbox.com/e#39273.0 http://glslsandbox.com/e#39291.1

Don't make it too complicated. Simple things can look nice. Even a very basic parallax starfield on a black background could work well. You want it to have variety, but no jarring differences. You have both problems. 1. Your textures repeat too often so they're a bit boring and ugly, sort of like this: http://glslsandbox.com/e#39205.3 2. You have two completely different textures: the hex-ish pattern and the smoke texture. They don't fit together.

I forget what Unity has for particle stuff. If you could have a force effect around your ship to make some kind of interactive particle effects, that could be fun.

[AlexSkylark]

WHat do you mean by a force effect?

[indominator]

Love the game, but theres 4 things i found weird.

1. It was confusing that it was said CONfirm, instead of return or enter.

2. Controls seem to be weird, i couldnt find how to shoot.

3. When pressed enter( there was the objectives, but no control or anything else) please make so that in the pause screen you can change audio levels for sfx and bgm, also windowed and resolutions[they are all easy to do in unity])

4. Please make the logo screen skippable ;p

[-Ross]

I meant a particle attractor or repulsor. It looks like it's not built-in, but it's doable if you want. http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/64932/creative-way-to-attract-particles.html

[AlexSkylark]

I can build a particle attractor/repulsor, I use a very sophisticated particle system for this game that has this capability. What I didn't understand is what kind of effect you were thinking about, visually.

[AlexSkylark]

Guys, I uploaded a new build with some fixes and improvements based on your (and a bunch of other) feedbacks.

Get it at the same link on the OP, or here: http://starlightgs.itch.io/radiantlux

[AlexSkylark]

So, for the bunch of you who thought my background was a bit on the dull side, I've outsourced someone to build me a custom fractal shader.

Here's some early tests I've been doing with it lately. It's far from the finished look, but already showcases some of the possibilities

[Oats]

Hiya! Just played the demo, huge potential!

I liked the movement of the enemies, the waves seemed to come at a good rate (atleast until where I got up to) and the enemies where very fluid and everything travelled at a good speed. I had enough time to usually get out of the way and when I was hit it felt like my own fault. The aesthetic was on point, the neon simple glowy geometry thing is a good look and the electronic music matched. I liked the feeling of exploring the areas, I wish there was more diversity between the worlds but I suppose that's just an alpha thing.

There were a few things I didn't like though. Firstly, and probably most importantly I think I had too much health. There where a lot of times where I knew the run was over and I would just struggle for a few minutes before dying, I wasn't able to fail quickly. If I was shot down in a few hits (maybe with invincibility frames and more ways to get health back) I think it would be a lot more tense. Related to that I think it took way to long to level up (except in the blue zone, if you lined it up you could level up very quickly which I liked ), the game in general is very slow, which is contradicting the pumping aesthetic. I also wasn't so sure about the missions, pressing a button to check the missions sort of broke the pacing, if the missions where just displayed passively somewhere I think that would be good enough for me. My final gripe was that there was never a reason to experiment with weapons. The detriment for using the wrong color was so great that I would never use it outside of it's zone, if weapons dealt damage to all colors the same I would have reason to start thinking about which was most effective in different situations. I like the idea of having different areas I can jump to whenever, but entering a zone at the start of the game made me feel very underpowered, and yet it wasn't difficult because of the amount of health I had.

All in all I liked the game, I had a good half hour playing it, and I'll definitely play future builds as they come, goodluck

ps. I also might of found a bug. When I was fighting the first boss I got hit, there was a brief message which I didn't read (there where a lot of bullets), and then I couldn't shoot (I only had red unlocked at the time), so after maybe five seconds of that I just relaunched.

[AlexSkylark]

OK, so, there has been a hiatus for the past 8 months, I've done a complete revamp of the game (see video on the OP).

What do you guys think? :D