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[Montoli]

Sorry for lack of updates - Was sick last week, and then spent this weekend freaking out over the fact that I need to be packed and ready to fly home for vacation in 4 days...

But enough of my bellyaching!  I'll definitely have something playable tomorrow or the next day, I am thinking.  (Mostly I just need to put in a way to switch between bosses without having to change programming constants and recompile...)

Various Responses:

Re:  Speed of flash, etc.  I agree with pretty much everyone has said on this.  Flash IS inefficient, but as has been noted, it is still frequently up to the task of running games, even complicated bullet games with many moving objects.  I'm using my 4-year old laptop as the acid test, figuring that as long as the framerate stays solid on here, I'm probably fine.

(And yeah - I heartily agree with exposure for flash...  I know from experience that getting someone to actually download something and play it takes MUCH more work (even for friends) than just saying "here is a link, click it and play my game!")

Also:  St33d, that looks awesome!  Where can I play that, or what is it called so I can google it?

Re: mouse, interface, random bars on the side, etc:  Everyone who has said that they look like holdovers from Boss Rush is exactly right.  (It's trying to charge up for a boss weapon attack but there is no boss defined, and no boss weapons registered.)  I'll clean it out later and replace it with a real HUD that is more appropriate for the game.  (i. e. score, lives, bombs, etc)

Updates:

I'm getting pretty happy with where things are at!  I'm not as far as I would have liked to be right now, but things are coming nicely!  I've got the framework for different weapon systems in, (and 3 mostly complete weapons done, each with their own bombs) and I've been having a lot of fun making bosses.  (2 more done from the last build you guys saw, with 3-4 forms each.  They are very fun to make, and have a many more gimmicks. > )

And I finally got around to working out a good way to do the math for off-axis elliptical-shaped bullets, which I'd been meaning to do ever since boss rush.  (up until now I had been totally cheating - any elliptical bullets were really just circular, with a radius equal to the minor axis of the ellipse.)

Anyway, I'll post some updated screenshots later, and a playable build in a day or two.  Until then - onward!

[st33d]

Fat Cat

Bullet hell doesn't really warm up until about half way through the game. It was a bit much for the casual audience in the directors cut so we nerfed the beginning by removing the bullet patterns. Level 4 is worth playing through for though. I'm quite proud of that one.

[Montoli]

Neat!  I will totally give it a try as soon as I get off work!  Thanks for the link!  (I've actually been looking for good flash Shmups, just because I'm curious what people have been doing, but haven't found very many that were actually serious about it.  Looking forward to trying this!)

[Montoli]

Ok, I have uploaded an updated version!  It has a few new things!



A pair of new elemental-themed bosses, for one!  (Although the fire one is missing an attack still - he only has 3. )


It also includes a level select - fly your ship into the appropriate placeholder orange circle to choose!  (The middle one is basically the same level from the last build.  The side two are the new bosses.  [no level attached to them yet though.])

It is still heavily a prototype - I haven't fixed the UI, you have unlimited bombs, and most of the graphics are still placeholder.

It has some new controls though:

Movement: Arrow keys
Fire:  Z
Bomb: X
Focus Mode: Shift (slow movement, focus shots)

Water Gun:  A
Flame Thrower:  S
Mercury Bombs:  D

The gun selection is purely temporary - the plan is to have them selected from a menu before the level, as opposed to trying to swap in-game.  For now though, I stuck them on buttons because I already had hooks for reading WASD, and I'm too lazy to write menus just now.

The Water Gun is what you've already seen.  It's a solid basic weapon, with a moderate spread, and good focus damage.  The flamethrower is ... experimental, in a couple of ways.  In terms of game mechanics, powering it up doesn't actually change the damage - (it starts at full damage) - it just increases the range.  And the mercury bombs are respectable, (and fragment on impact for further damage) but fire in not-always-convenient directions.


Link!

Play it here!

[st33d]

Fucking hell. Bullets 

The shift key when held down for a few seconds on Windows activates sticky keys. I'd recommend to offer an alternative.

[Montoli]

Oh man, I forgot all about sticky keys.  (I have it turned off on all my machines because it is used in so many games, and nothing messes up a good game of thief like holding shift to walk slowly past a guard, and having it switch out to windows to ask if you want to turn on sticky keys while you're midway past the doorway.)

I'll see if I can't come up with something else.  (Ultimate goal is to allow for players to set keys, which will probably help here a lot.  I haven't tackled that yet, since it seems like it will be a pain to write the UI for, and I hate writing UIs...)

[Curseman]

It freezes for me when I try to go to the middle boss.

The bombs (water and fire especially) are really overpowered if you sit on top of the boss while you use them.

[Montoli]

Weird, not sure what happened there.  (I knew something would go wrong - was setting up the build as I was on the train this morning)  Anyway, I republished and it seems to work now, so... I think it's all better?  It seems to be fixed now at least.

Also, yeah, bombs are hideously overpowered if you sit on top of the boss.  I have a couple of ideas planned for dealing with this, but not sure which one is best.  Possibilities include drastically limiting player movement while the bomb is fireing, or possibly changing the damage of bomb-spawned bullets to be proportional to the distance they've traveled or something.

[Terrorbuns]

Or just limit bombs ;/

I enjoyed it. I haven't really played many bullet hells, but I've grown a fondness for them 

I can't wait to see where this goes. Also, I suggest keeping the level select. I think it's neat.

[mokesmoe]

Using a bomb on the main screen kills the warps.
On the water boss, Deep wirlpool and puddle jumping are both way easier than riptide dreams, for me at least.

[Montoli]

Yeah, the level select will be staying.  The end goal is something along the lines of a megaman game, where you have a bunch of levels you can play in any order, and playing them gets you new toys to try in the other levels.  (With a level or two at the end now that you have everything.)

Also, boss pattern difficulty is all over the map right now.  These should be considered "sketches" at best.  They are the general shapeI want, but they have a lot of balance tweaking left to do, and some are definitely significantly harder than others.

[mokesmoe]

I think an actual level select menu would be a good idea.

[Montoli]

We'll see about the level select.  I have some reasons (real ones, not just "it's easier!") for wanting to keep that part "in game", but I'll go into those later.

Home (out of state) on vacation now, which means updates will be spotty for a bit - we'll see how much programming I get done, but this is the time of year when I get to see family and friends.  Of course this is also the time of year when I sometimes have whole days where friends are at work and I'm still on vacation and I have nothing to do but program, so who knows!

Anyway, meanwhile, I have updates!

In particular I threw together a new boss on the train and airplain rides.



The main difference is the new rock boss.  He has 3 out of 4 attacks complete.  Oh, and I added a new attack to the fire boss while I was at it, bringing him up to 4.  Various other boss attacks have had various tweaks, but I forget what exactly I did.

Controls are the same as last time:


Movement: Arrow keys
Fire:  Z
Bomb: X
Focus Mode: Shift (slow movement, focus shots)

Water Gun:  A
Flame Thrower:  S
Mercury Bombs:  D


Have at it!

Link!

[Montoli]

Christmas, holidays and family have left relatively little time for coding, but I did have time to put together a new form for the fire boss.  I'll probably post a build with him soon - I just want to add a few more things to the mix.  (Can't be just spamming builds every time I add a new boss form, or where would we be?)

The basic idea should be familiar to anyone who has played level 3 of the old NES game "Life Force".



Anyway, off to go add some weapons, I think.  I've been coasting for too long on the 3 I have. :D

-Montoli

[mokesmoe]

(Can't be just spamming builds every time I add a new boss form, or where would we be?)

We would be playing this game more often, that's where we'd be.

More weapons = Awesome

[Montoli]

Quick update!

#1 - Still alive!  I was home for 3 weeks over holidays (they let me telecommute from work) and while I got some good programming done, I was mostly incommunicado with my laptop.

#2 - Expect a playable build sometime this week.  It's been too long since I had people look at it who weren't me, and I've learned from experience that I'm rather biased. :D

#3 - I made some new bosses and weapons.  (Up to 5 of each complete!)  I think they're pretty neat!  Hopefully so will other people!

#4 - I rewrote most of my renderer, and finally ditched the "accumulation buffer blur" effect that was a holdover from Boss Rush.  I'm trying a new graphical style for this one, now that I'm feeling a bit more confident with AS3.  I'm looking forward to hearing what people think of it!

Finally, here's a teaser!

[Montoli]

Ok!  I have a build!  It is still not done (obviously) but has a bit more stuff now!  New bosses and new weapons, and even a few tweaks to existing weapons!

Controls:

Move:  Arrow keys
Shoot:  Z
Focus:  Shift
Bomb:  X

Next Weapon:  A
Previous Weapon:  S
Cheat and get lots of power ups:  D

(I'm planning on having a real power up select menu later, which is accessible from the main area, but for now, it's done with debug buttons)

There are now 5 weapons total, one for each elemental-themed boss:  Water, Fire, Mercury, Chlorine, and Carbon.

Bombs are still a little overpowered if you fire them off and then move directly on top of the enemy.  (Pretend that you can't move while bombing for now or something.)  Also, bombing now costs you one power level.


Things I'm particularly interested in this time:

    * Are the weapons fun?
    * Are the bosses fun and the right difficulty?  Are some too hard or too easy?  (Mercury and Water are nearly untouched, so are probably still on the hard side)
    * Is the graphical style too annoying/heavy handed?  Are there any suggestions for making it better?


Play it here:
http://flammie.net/flash/elements/


And I think that's everything!  Have at it!

[PureQuestion]

The play link leads to a version of boss rush where none of the buttons do anything. :V

[Montoli]

woah, that's troubling.  I just double checked the link, and it seemed to work fine for me, both on my main dev machine, and on an alternate machine.

Is there any chance you have an old version of the flash player?  Now that you mention it, I may have forgotten to include the "check their plugin version" in the html - I'll check that in a minute.

Otherwise - that's very weird, and a little troubling.  I'll poke at it some more tomorrow or this weekend, when I have some time.  Thanks for letting me know!

-Montoli

[PureQuestion]

It works now. Dunno what was going on earlier. o.o