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[mokesmoe]

I've been waiting for this moment ever since that one time you said you would have a beta in a week. Well, I've been waiting since this devlog started, but since you said it would be in a week, I've been coming on every day hoping the beta would be announced.

[Montoli]

  Sorry for so many days of disappointment!  I sincerely hope it lives up to the expectations then!

One thing I have heard people say is ... "after you finish the first 90% of the game, then you're ready to finish the last 90%."

Well, this project has felt more like "once you finish the first 90%, then it's time for the second 90%, followed of course, by the third 90%.  And then, don't forget the 4th 90%, and 90% #5 is actually a 95%, which compensates for the fact that #6 is only 105%, or wait, that doesn't really compensate at all does it, but don't worry about that because #8 is 120%!"

(Also I apparently have a problem with actually sending things out for people to look at.  I didn't think I was a perfectionist, (I certainly wouldn't have described myself that way) but every time someone asked me if they could see what I'd been working on, my response would be "sure, I'll send you one!  Let me just fix a few things first, since they're easy fixes and I'm embarrassed to leave them in...."  weeks later later... "dude, were you going to send me a build?"

The good news is that every time I pushed out my schedule, it was because I felt that what I was adding was a good tradeoff of "bang for buck".  Every delay added something cool, I think.  The scope has grown to something that was unthinkable at the start of the project, but the end result is something now that I'm pretty happy with.

Hopefully other people will be happy with it too!

On the other hand, this has been a big slap in the face to my belief that I could make even remotely accurate time-estimates...   I think I'm going to do a serious post-mortem when I'm done with this.

[rayteoactive]

lol, I had the exact problem with Vertical Adventure. I remember telling the guys in the team about 3 months ago, "it's the last step, so give it all you got!"

And ever since, I have sent them 6 separate emails with identical content. Now they're all balding of stress and turning zombies.

Boy do I love making games.

[Montoli]

In theory 5:00 am is not the best time to be making changes to deep, core code like the  state-manager.  But it's causing bugs, so here I am.  (fixed, I think.  I needed to defer pushing new things onto the stack until the full update cycle was done, and the only place to really do that was in the state manager.)

Got more friend-n-family feedback.  Largely concerning the "new player experience".  Short answer:  It sucks.  New players have no idea what to do, and are, as a rule, fairly bad about reading instructions.  The usual pattern is

• Player skims instructions, while clicking through, trying to get to the game.
• Game starts.  A ship attacks the player.
• Player sees they are getting hurt and freaks out, pushing buttons randomly trying to make it stop hurting them.
• Player complains that the instructions should be better.

This has been fairly consistent.  No one really READS instructions, so like it or not, I need to provide a better way of teaching the player.  The good news is that I guess my iconography is good, since EVERYONE knows when they are being hurt.  (which makes them panic)

So rather than spending this weekend preparing another bunch of levels for people to play, I'm working on streamlining the new player experience a bit.  Reducing the menu options you see when you play for the first time.  Adding a tutorial that actually walks you through everything in-game, from moving around to firing to getting hit.

(Since a bunch of people are going to be trying it for the first time as new players soon, this feels like a really good time to improve the "new player experience")

Also - Thank you to everyone who dropped me an email for the playtest!  I am very much looking forward to your feedback, as "fresh eyes".  I'm still on schedule to send you something this weekend, although I fear it will be towards the "sunday evening" side of this weekend.  Still though, I should have a pretty solid tutorial hammered out by then, and some better play-flow in general.  (got some other feedback that I was breaing flow horribly by making people go back to the level select screen after every level - putting in a  "go on to next level?" button directly when you finish levels now.)

So yeah!  Tired, but excited!

Onward!

-Chris

[mokesmoe]

Tutorial is usually better than instructions, unless it's a very simple game that is easy to figure out the controls for. Since your game is about controlling a giant spaceship, I wouldn't classify it as simple. From what I've seen from screen shots, your iconography is quite good. Even from a still picture I can tell whats going on.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Hey :D

Good to see all moving on nicely with this project.  All the best with the release man, and keep up the good work.

Badger

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Can't wait to have a play!! It's been a while since I have posted as I have been attending to an online RPG that I've created, and has 50 users already.

It's really good news to hear about the recent developments, and that someone has enjoyed enough to even play for 5 HOURS!!!!  That's says more than most types of feedback would, and perhaps summarises the pinnacle of your accomplishment to date.  If one person likes it that much, the chances are many more will too. 

I think you're onto something with this game.  If you can get that far, the sky is the limit.

Keep me posted, and of any opportunities of play-testing, please, as I'd be honoured being a fellow SHMUP dev-log blogger.  Want to see some more screenshots at least, please!!! lol

 
~Badger

[Ashmaran]

Hey I've been following this thread, and it's a cool concept. Good to see you made it this far

In addition to a tutorial, maybe also make up a quick reference sheet or help screen. So if somebody is stressing out they can pause the game and go over the controls / powers etc.

[Montoli]

I actually had one of those.  No one ever used it.

So I made it pop up automatically the first time they played.

And people clicked past it without reading, since they wanted to get into the game.

so feh!

I have it disabled in the UI right now, but if I can find a good place to stick a button for it, maybe I'll bring it back.  It would be nice to be able to bring it up on demand for confused people.

[droqen]

I'm going to have to keep this short because I have to leave but:

This game has been really, really awesome. I've played with all of the bosses (except the purchased one) fully, and I cheated because -- as I said I'm low on time right now xD

The missions could have been more varied, but I liked what you had. The variety in bosses was great -- and I think you should have made more of a point of pointing out each boss' "final form" (unless that's supposed to be a secret).

I would really love to give versus mode a try.

All-in-all: Boss design is pretty awesome, and they're really fun to play as. Player AI is decent and frustrating at times (mostly because I'm used to being the faster, nimbler one who's doing the dodging, not the other way around!) but in a good way. Again: The missions need a little more variety in my opinion, although it could do with simple 'perceived' variety. They all have the same messages so I know I'm just doing the same thing over again. A bit of repetition isn't bad, especially in getting used to a new boss ship, but if you must do this at least make it feel a little more fresh and interesting each time.

Had a blast. Will play some more later =D

[Hima]

I was planning to work more on my game today. Check my email, got your email.

And now I got no work done because I was playing your game! 

Seriously, this is awesome. I really like how unique the bosses are. It adds a lot to replayability. The AI is very good. I'd really love to know how you do it but if it's a secret then that's ok. 

I like how the mission are not just about 'kill'em all'. The killer ducks are hilarious. Luring the enemies so you can smash them was pretty challenging too.

The graphic is really really nice. It didn't feel like 30 FPS to me and I like that. I also like the bullet patterns. The Unknown's and the cloud's ones are really creative. The final boss mode is really nice as well. The floating head is probably my favorite since I like laz0rssss!

Ok, now move on to the things I didn't like. I feel like the control is kinda awkward. All the shortcut keys needed to be pressed by your left hand since your right hand is on your mouse. But then you have to also control your movement with WASD. Considering how fast the game in survival mission, using mouse clicking on special attacks aren't fast enough for me. Most of the time you would want to launch those special attacks, but the number keys are so difficult to reach, using your left hand. I found myself mistakenly hit cap-lock so many times, as well as launching wrong attacks

After a while I hurt my left hand and stop moving entirely and just launching random attacks. Then I realize maybe this is intentional? Bosses in shmup games are generally slow and use one or two attack at a time and change their shot direction from time to time. So are you intend to force player to act like those bosses? Like, if you want to move, then it will be difficult to launch special attack. But if you sacrifice movement, you will be able to launch special attack at your will. 

In any case, I'm pretty sure that players will want it all. How about, Q or E or mousewheel to cycle through the special attack list and spacebar to launch it? Or maybe once you click a special attack, then you will stick to that special attack until you change to the other one and you can launch the special attack with spacebar. Right now it seems like my left hand is doing the most work and my right hand doesn't really do anything but aim and click. :O
Droqen has already talked about mission design and I second their opinion. I had fun with the first boss but when I tried the Drone one and I found out that they are the same (training, hit targets, ram, survival), I quit and unlock everything to see if there are other more interesting missions.

I think that's all for now. I really like this game and would play it again for sure. I wouldn't mind paying for the game, actually. Good job on this, Montoli! 

Also, unicorn mode rulez. I love shooting hundred of unicorns that ram my foes to death.

[Montoli]

Thank you for the kind words both of you!

Yeah, controls have been a constant problem.  No one (including me) is really completely satisfied with them yet, but I've gone through about 3 or 4 different attempts and haven't found anything I like better yet.  I haven't tried your idea yet, Hima, so I may give that a shot next!  The mouse wheel DOES currently [sorta] work, but whatever you select with it is automatically fired next time you click, so it is awkward.  Thank you for the suggestion!  I will probably try to push out a build with that change in it tomorrow, for comparison and contrasting.

(If anyone else has suggestions for controls, [or, of course, anything] feel free to shout'em out!)

Also:  Aww man!  I woke up this morning and realized that after I'd gone to all the trouble to set up most of my text in stringtables so I could run spell checkers on it... I forgot to run a spell checker on it.  Please ignore the rampant and embarrassing spelling mistakes that litter my text!  Pay them no mind!  I'M NOT REALLY AS DUMB AS MY SPELLING MAKES ME LOOK HONEST GUYS

[mokesmoe]

Since I have made a quite big play test report, I will divide it into sections:
First by menu options,
Second by bosses.
I could have picked a better way of organizing things, but this was more fun.

Play!
The missions are good, but somewhat repetitive, like someone said before, unique descriptions and names would help, even if the missions are the same. I really like the Mega-Laser missions as they showed me things that I didn't know before, like how the worms head is invincible. The rotating laser mission for the worm, "The worm turns!", was a bit misleading, as I thought I could power through with my head at first, I figured it out quickly, but figure things out like this games better than most other people I've seen, so others might get frustrated at that level. In the first duck mission, often, when the duck reached the edge of the screen, I would be protecting that side, and he would get intsa-killed when he teleported back to the other side. (or when the next duck appeared, whatever) I think it would be better of the duck turned around instead. I think you don’t need as many survival missions, since you already have survival mode. Also, the last 2 non-donator missions don't unlock, even after I've played and beaten them by going through the level before.

Survival
This mode works well, does what it's supposed to do. Guess I'll talk about some general game play here. Movement is nice, the limited movement area is a good choice. I like how the charge bar only goes down by the level of the weapon. This lets you shoot a level 1 or 2 multiple time at once. since you prevented this with the clouds lightning, I assume you knew they could be spammed, but some attacks are over powered with this. I would suggest giving attacks a small reload time, even just half a second, so they aren't as spamable. Also, the Ai gets really stupid around powerups.

Versus
I found someone to play with, so I got to play test versus mode, I played the boss most of the time, but he gave his opinion.
Seems heavily unbalanced in boss's favour. By changing the options in favour of the small ship, it gets more fair. I've found starting power 2, 10 lives and many powerups to be about good, but it changes for every boss. Having a number of lives between 5 and ten would be nice. The ? boss sucks in versus, and dies quite easily. His attacks are easy to dodge with a humans thinking ahead, as opposed to the Tonbogiri's Attack 3 which is almost impossible to dodge without the AI's reflexes. The Omega's first form die's really quickly too, lowering the starting back to 1 for that boss would probably work, but it would be too weak for the face. Perhaps making the ships hitbox smaller, to compensate for A human's inferior reflexes would make things more balanced.

Options
Guess I'll talk about controls here.
Unlike Hima, I found the number controls quite easy to use, probably because I play first person shooting games, where you move with WASD and switch weapons with number keys. (not sure how you hit caps lock, but your keyboard probably has a slightly different layout than mine.) Using the scroll wheel is a good idea though. I would suggest using left click for shooting all the time, and use right click for the special weapons, which would be switched by the mouse wheel. (left and right switchable in options would be nice too, for if people prefer it) When your using the arrow keys, witch you have to do if your playing versus and your right handed, you half to use the mouse to use attacks witch sucks. (I eventually put the mouse below my keyboard to use wasd, witch was kind of awkward) Making the numpad work would solve that problem, but the previous mouse suggestion would work fine by itself too.
A glitch I found: when Tonbogiri loses some attacks but before he changes form, the mouse controls don’t work properly.

Bonus
Negaverse mode looks awesome, however you can't see the ship on the face boss, due to the background colour. The blur modes are cool, not much to say, same with retro. Super Retro kind of sucks, but It's still neat. Unicorn mode + worms #4(miniworms) = Unicorn Worms. Awesome.

Cheats
Useful for playtesting. Had constant 30 for fps, except for unicorns and/or infinite energy, but I have a fairly new computer so that’s not that useful of info. Also the backgrounds for the UI in this menu are messed up.

Credits
Same UI problem here. Kind of getting ahead of myself here, but for the playtesters do you want my actual name, or is my username fine?


Part 2: The ships! (complete with made up attack names!)

Grand Warship "Tonbogiri"
I like this ship, however it's a bit overpowered. Lots of cheap tactics.

• Main: Split cannon: A good weapon, compliments its other weapons good.
• 1: Support beams: Useful attack combined with other attacks. It's a lot better when your moving. Can spam 4 at a time for a cheap kill, but a small reload would fix this.
• 2: Stationary Laser: Useful for lowering the ships area to dodge. The cheapest weapon, Just put a laser on each side of the ship, and the lasers blast against the wall will do the rest. The reload wouldn't really help. I would suggest removing the blast off the wall, or at least make it smaller. Also the ships AI should let it move a still charging laser, but it doesn't, making this weapon much cheaper. if you lose #1, you can spam 3 at a time, witch is quite powerful, but that doesn't matter that much.
• 3: Minelayers: The best weapon, other than cheap tactics. The main problem with this weapon is that the 4 big projectiles are more useful than the trail. Due to their size and speed, they are quite effective. Making them a bit smaller would be good. If you lose #1 and #2 you can spam 2 at a time, but the chances of still having all four spikes by then is pretty low, so not a problem.
• 4: Starburst: Not good of an attack on it's own, but it and #1 are a good combo.
• 1B: Antimatter: Useful attack. Spamming 3 at a time is kind of cheap, but the AI can still sometimes dodge it, and reload time would fix the cheapness.
• 2B: Same as 4A, kind of lame with new attacks, but still useful.
• 3B: Spear of Heaven's Wrath: Really cheap! By only using this one I got it, I did all the rest of Survival 2 taking no damage. If the ship spawns inside the laser it can't get out and dies. The AI needs to learn to go farther forward to help dodge the splash. The beam could be a bit less wide too. The biggest problem is reload time. The bar starts charging before the attack ends, and you can use it again almost right away. The bar shouldn’t start recharging until the laser is fully gone.

Drone Storage Unit “Antonius”
This ship is neat. The chaos of attacking from multiple directions makes it fun to watch. Not any game braking cheap attacks.

• Main: Slow Shot/Quad Shot: A good attack, easy to dodge, but adds to the chaos.
• 1: Drone Control: Spawns drones and moves them, works as intended, not much to say.
• 2: Shotgun/Drone Attack: Spamming 2 of these can be a bit cheap, reloading should help.
• 3: Quad Laser/Oct shot: The AI does a bad job of dodging the laser when there are other bullets on the screen, too reluctant to go up. Can be used continually but not overpowered.
• 4: Quad²/Chaos Cross: Lots of chaos. Good attack.

Bio-Craft “Nidhoggr”
Fun ship to use, but balanced in a weird way.  Ironically AI suffers from flaw of not going forward less against this ship, witch itself is a flaw against this ship, since it’s at it’s best when the ship is forward.

• Main: Spike Bomb: Quite powerful for a primary, but due to this boss‘s otherwise bad offence, it helps.
• 1: Tri Spike: Good attack, but spamable. Once again, reloading would help.
• 2: Grow: Due to this, the boss is pretty much invincible, until due to its bad offence, a ship gets a lot of powerups and out guns you. I think it should be switched with #3.
• 3: Snake Skin: Keeps the ship away, but not a very good attack due to it‘s low range. You should make the range longer, but to keep it balanced, spread out the spikes so the ship can go between them. Swap with #2
• 4: Snake Egg: Very useful attack, blocks off an area of the screen for a bit. Nothing cheap about it.

Genesis Ark Omega
I don’t really like this ship, although it’s cool idea, and probably the most balanced ship. The first form dies too quickly, and is too weak. The first form to second form power ratio should be more balanced.

• Main: Rocket: The smoke doesn‘t de much, but since it’s your movement, it doesn‘t really matter.
• 1: Pollution: Makes your smoke effective, you need to move to top to use it.
• 2: Bombs: Better near bottom, can be spammed, reload wouldn‘t help. Maybe it‘s should be less dense?
• 3:  Interceptors: Better near top, therefore can be used with #1 effectively.
• 4: Payload: Good attack, not much to say.
• MainB: Glance: Lasers that bounce Nothing special.
• 1B: Look: Spamable,  reload would fix.
• 2B: Stare:  Can be spammed, but AI can still dodge, reload would help anyway.
• 3B: Double Take: Area denial, nothing wrong with it.
• 4B: Ogle: Good curtain fire pattern, fun to watch. Can‘t dodge it myself , but the AI can, even with other laser shooting at him. Still useful.

Phenomenon “Cloud Nine”
This ship is awesome! Due to not having a credit card, and not spending much money, I probably wouldn’t donate, but that’s just me. If I did donate however, this would be totally worth the money! This boss is very balanced too!

• Passive: Rain: By itself, it can kill enemies below you. It’s slow and not worth the healthy you lose, but can be useful in the short term.
• Main: Fall: Adds more chaos, but spreads out
• 1: Lighting laser: Not spamable. Your main weapon, since most other attacks are area denial, setting up the ship to be hit by this. The AI will sit next to is and get hit when it explodes, you should code it not to sit next to the lightning
• 2: Winter: Area denial. Use it after Main to make harder to navigate, or use it on your normal rain to make a wall.
• 3: Summer: Curtain fire. Because you block bullets, forces you to stay back, preventing any cheap shots with lightning. Glitch: you can use sun and then freeze to have snow flakes during the sun attack, not very useful, but still. Maybe the sun rays them selves should melt snow, instead of the sun appearing and them melting automatically.
• 4: Spring: Area Denial and certain fire! Can‘t use lightning, but that’s good because it would be cheap otherwise

???
Neat boss, has some cheap attacks. A bit low on health too. However, you can make the enemy ship hit your invulnerable dot and survive forever until the AI gets missiles. Make the AI move to the side to hit you.

• Main: …: This boss has a lot of area denial too, so this attack is good at killing.
• 1: ?: Useful for near the sides, since it‘s hard to ram ships, but otherwise not that good.
• 2: @: Spamming 2 of these is fine, but once you can spam 4 you just put 4 down across the screen and it can‘t be avoided. Maybe it should weaken one you get to !!!.
• 3: *: Area denial. Once you can spam 2 it‘s a bit cheap, but reload would help a bit, maybe make it spread a bit less?
• 4: #: Area denial. Makes a small area to manoeuvre in, but is short, so it‘s balanced.
• 5: !: Good chaos attack. Unlike the clouds lightning, the ship wont stand next to a ! waiting for it to explode.

That should be it! Took a few hours to type this up, (including time spent thinking up names, and testing move in-game) which shows you how much I love this game! One thing to add though: the best part of this game for me was finding out how all the bosses worked, and more bosses, or a boss editor (maybe only for donators to prevent people from just making the cloud boss, Or maybe any uploaded bosses go through you, to prevent this and other things that idiots will make. Probably that second one either way, if you use a database) would be awesome.

[mokesmoe]

Sorry for the double post, but I would like to keep discussion separate from my crazy post.

Also:  Aww man!  I woke up this morning and realized that after I'd gone to all the trouble to set up most of my text in stringtables so I could run spell checkers on it... I forgot to run a spell checker on it.  Please ignore the rampant and embarrassing spelling mistakes that litter my text!  Pay them no mind!  I'M NOT REALLY AS DUMB AS MY SPELLING MAKES ME LOOK HONEST GUYS

I didn't notice any, but I wasn't paying much attention.
Also, now that I look, on "Omega" mission 3, Sparta difficulty, half the text is missing.

[droqen]

mokesmoe:
How do you get to play Cloud Nine? D:

Also, I think it's good that Tonbogiri (the first ship) is a bit overpowered. After all, it's the introduction to the game! Let the player think "oh wow, being a boss ship is so easy!" and then introduce them to the other ships which are different but more difficult to use.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Hey :D thank you for allowing me to play your cool game before you finish it.. it's coming on really really well man.  First off the white background works very well; you will have some people say make it black, but ignore them.. I was very close to making my game with a grey background, I think the white does in fact work really well.
I also like the icons used for the unlocked items, perhaps the pop-up window surrounding them itself should be a little less like an app and slightly more gamey, but there are maybe too many (not sure if you're planning on spreading out the order in which stuff gets unlocked in the final build?)
The game looks hypnotic when bullets are invading the screen at full pelt amongst all the mayhem!!!  The bullets and ships move with appropriate fluidity and in interesting waveforms.  I really liked the homing missiles and in fact all the different bullet spawning formations.
The large face was my favourite boss, I especially liked the way that shooting at it/(him) makes a gradual piece-by-piece demolition like chipping away at a cley model with a hammer lol.  Awesome.
So all in all initial reactions are very positive, and let me one of the first to congratulate you on such a fun and complete program that you've created.
More to follow as I play your demo a bit more and explore the full content.. It's fun, I guess that's probably the most important thing, and it does make me want to go back for more, which I will be doing shortly.
Also, good luck as you make the final polishes.
Nice works,
 
Badger

[mokesmoe]

mokesmoe:
How do you get to play Cloud Nine? D:

Click on the donate button, I think he mentioned it in the e-mail.

Also, I think it's good that Tonbogiri (the first ship) is a bit overpowered. After all, it's the introduction to the game! Let the player think "oh wow, being a boss ship is so easy!" and then introduce them to the other ships which are different but more difficult to use.

More powerful is fine, but have one attack that you spam over and over again that kills the ship every time is a bit cheap.

[Montoli]

Ok, this is amazingly great feedback you guys.  I don't have time to make as detailed a response as I would like right now (will try to do so later this week, but work has kicked up and swamped me tonight) but for now, let me just say... you guys rock!  I am getting SO much good info!  Thank you so much!

I will try to write up a real response tomorrow night, but for now, at least know that I am definitely reading all of these posts, and am DEFINITELY appreciating them greatly!

Oh, and to answer the question of how to display your names in credits, if you want a screen name or real name, or something else, that's really up to you.  Let me know if you have a preference, otherwise I'll just use whatever your TIGSource handle was.

Thanks bunches guys!

-Montoli

[droqen]

additionally: I think one might be tempted. I mean, it's a cloud. Maybe you should put in a little tidbit about Cloud Nine? I know I might be more tempted if I knew it had a passive attack ability :0

( I was using the wrong donate button xD but I got to try it finally yay )

[Montoli]

Ok.  Finally managed to find some time to respond!  (Busy week!)

Responses, in no particular order:

First off, in general, I just want to reitterate how useful this is, and how much this helps.  Thank you again everyone!

Ok.  On to specifics!

The AI is very good. I'd really love to know how you do it but if it's a secret then that's ok. 

No secret!  Just math!  I'll do a post further down dedicated to just the AI, so as not to put a big block of programming in the middle here though, so it's easier to skip for people who don't want to bother slogging through some dry programming.

The missions are good, but somewhat repetitive, like someone said before, unique descriptions and names would help, even if the missions are the same.

Is this in reference to the missions that are shared across several bosses (blow up a target, kill N ships that can't shoot back, etc) or just in general?

I've gone back and forth on whether or not to include the same mission on different bosses.  On one hand it feels lazy and "filler", but on the other hand, they play differently enough that often the mission goes fairly differently with a different boss.  I can certainly give them more unique descriptions.  (That part's all just in a plaintext file [that I forgot to spellcheck, ] so that's not a problem.  Was just rushing to get a build out before, and didn't have time to give them unique comments.)

Speaking of missions, what's the sense of missions in general?  I realized I had started to get kind of crazy with some of the mission designs, especially after I hooked up my bullet-scripting system into the mission-scripting system.  (This is when things like "The worm turns" and "the omega target" started getting made, which almost feel [in retrospect] like what I REALLY want to be doing is making a standard shmup now, since I'm making the player dodge bullet curtains...)

Do people feel like missions are getting too far out into left field?  Should there be more "kill ships, with some constraint" style missions?  (things like the "Don't shoot the target" one?

I'm interested in what people felt on those.  The baby ducks seemed popular (both with you guys and with a few random friends I've managed to kidnap and stick in front of a computer) but that might just be because they're baby ducks.  I mean.  Who doesn't like baby ducks?

Versus
I found someone to play with, so I got to play test versus mode, I played the boss most of the time, but he gave his opinion.
Seems heavily unbalanced in boss's favour. By changing the options in favour of the small ship, it gets more fair. I've found starting power 2, 10 lives and many powerups to be about good, but it changes for every boss.

The default versus options are basically random.  Since most of my friends aren't really into shooters (and the ones that are live in Philadelphia, on the opposite side of the country from me) I haven't had much chance to test this first hand.  If anyone who has managed to find people to play this with can weigh in, I'd love to know what people think would be a reasonable "default value" for the settings.  (I basically tried to sidestep this by just adding lots of options and hoping people could find a group of settings that was fun.)

When your using the arrow keys, witch you have to do if your playing versus and your right handed, you half to use the mouse to use attacks witch sucks. (I eventually put the mouse below my keyboard to use wasd, witch was kind of awkward) Making the numpad work would solve that problem, but the previous mouse suggestion would work fine by itself too.
A glitch I found: when Tonbogiri loses some attacks but before he changes form, the mouse controls don’t work properly.

Sadly, flash can't handle right-mouse button pressing.   I'll admit I had assumed/hoped that the numpad keys would work if you turned on numlock, but after just checking, seems that's not the case.  (what makes it even more annoying is that they DO register as arrow keys.)

Can you elaborate on the bug you saw?  what part of mouse controls stopped working?

Bio-Craft “Nidhoggr”

...

    * 2: Grow: Due to this, the boss is pretty much invincible, until due to its bad offence, a ship gets a lot of powerups and out guns you. I think it should be switched with #3.
    * 3: Snake Skin: Keeps the ship away, but not a very good attack due to it‘s low range. You should make the range longer, but to keep it balanced, spread out the spikes so the ship can go between them. Swap with #2

I've gone back and forth on this one.  For a while, regrowth was #3, and snake skin was #2, and people complained because it never seemed worth it to wait for regrowth.  A lot has changed since then though, so I could believe if it is out of balance.  (I've eyed that one myself a few times for the same reason - Snake Skin seems too weak to be a #3, really.  (And energy grows back faster now than it did then)  Maybe I'll give'em a swap for next build.

(also:  Your names for moves are much cooler than [most of] mine.  Mine tend to be in code labeled things like "roundBullet" and "sideShot", or occasionally difficult to translate things like "spinnyDeath" or "cone")

Genesis Ark Omega
I don’t really like this ship, although it’s cool idea, and probably the most balanced ship. The first form dies too quickly, and is too weak. The first form to second form power ratio should be more balanced.
really matter

This ship has undergone a lot of changes.  Originally the first form was supposed to be a total psych-out, like "here is the boss... OH NO HERE IS THE REAL BOSS BWA HAH HAH".  Originally he had like 2 attacks, but in order to complete the ruse, I had to give him more.  (Until now where he's basically as involved as several "full" bosses by himself.)

He's still a little weak in the first form though.  (Originally because again, the first form was so crappy, so I figured I'd get people out of it quickly.)  I can certainly bump up his hp a little though.  In fact.  Bang.  It's done.  (Holy crap, it was down at 20, the default.  For reference, each ship bullet does 1, and missiles do 2 damage, so no wonder it was dying so fast.)

Also, now that I look, on "Omega" mission 3, Sparta difficulty, half the text is missing.

Good catch!  Fixed!

First off the white background works very well; you will have some people say make it black, but ignore them.  I was very close to making my game with a grey background, I think the white does in fact work really well.

The white background is, alas, not universally loved.  I think I will keep it though, since it's how I envisioned the game originally, and I still like it.

I also like the icons used for the unlocked items, perhaps the pop-up window surrounding them itself should be a little less like an app and slightly more gamey, but there are maybe too many (not sure if you're planning on spreading out the order in which stuff gets unlocked in the final build?)

My problem here is just that I'm not much of a graphic designer, so I went with the simplest style I could come up with.  I can see if I can think of anything to spruce them up, but no guarantees.  (And yes, they show up in order normally.  They only show up all at once if you click "unlock everything", because then when you go in, it realizes "holy crap, they earned XXX and I haven't told them yet!" for every item in a row.

The normal unlock order is:

• New ship after beating level 12 of the previous ship
• Survival mode after beating level 12 of Tonbogiri.  (Since Antonius starts unlocked, to give them some variety)
• Bonus options (unicorn mode, etc) unlocked after beating all challenges on a ship on "sparta" difficulty.  (Gotta give'em something nice if they're that crazy)

Anyway.  Currently writing "intro tutorials" for all of the bosses, like the one Tonbogiri gets.  Even though by then they should know how to move and fire and basics like that, each ship has enough weirdness that I figure it's probably worth walking them through some of it.  (Stuff like how Nidhoggr regenerates, or how the Genesis Ark has to hold down fire to fly.)  Was hoping to do a build tonight with bugfixes, but that's probably not going to happen at this point.  Should be something in the next day or two though with various tweaks and suggestions implemented.  (I keep not getting to try the alternate weapon selection scheme, but I need to.  I want to try it out, and see what people think of it.)

Thanks again for all the great feedback, kind words, and honest criticisms about parts you aren't enjoying!

Onward!

-Montoli