Stellar Story - first testing. Obsolete thread.

[MMX]

My game now finally has a name. Yay! It will be called Stellar Story
This thread is now obsolete! New one will be created upon demo release.

Old Post:
As for now i have to present my Testing stage. This is not what an actual stage from the game will likely to be (it still doesnt even have a boss) but a showcase of developing process and a platform to test new stuff. There's one playable character (one more to come) and 3 enemy types ready.

Some more details about stuff:
The only playable character avaliable now is Waverider - a small but powerfull space ship armed with some serious shit. Main weapon - gamma ray cannon shots only when player stands still and makes a single shot click. It fires a short, almost invisible but powerfull gamma laser with high penetration. It's very usefull for destroying vertical rows of enemies or make precise shots between them. Options aka powerups are random missles wich are shot in random directions with a wide spread (unfocused). Their count will depend on power level (as soon as i'll implement power system) like it does in MoF, SA etc. Bomb is Gamma flash. A bubble-like one like in MoF but attached to player's position. For now it's rather weak (180 damage) and slows player down.

There're 3 types of NMEs now: orbs, turrets and lolfighters
Orbs arent actually an enemies. As far as you dont tuch them, they wont do anything but fly their path. But they have a purpose: green orbs carry items (point and power), red carry danmaku. If you shoot'em down they release their baggage. Also there're red radar orbs (yeah, that's not lasers!), wich explode into danmaku when player's sprite cross it.
Turrets (aka mindfuck turrets) are nothing you can find in touhou. They can't move except only with background and they shoot bullets "aimed" at player but relative to background. So once you dont move they most likely fly away from you. This looks silly but causes hilarious issues untill you'll get used to them. Also if background stops (like in bossfight) they shoot trully aimed bullets wich may cause mindfuck again. Time will show if it's woth it but i'll keep'em for now.
Lolfighters (inspired by tiefigters from Star Wars but i couldnt think of another name) are first common enemies like regular fairies from touhou stages. They may fly a specific path and shoot aimed bullets (and maybe also not aimed sometime)

Also this stage script features:
 - fancy title showing routine inspired by Ten Desires
 - builtin enemy actions script system

Spoiler:

yo dawg i herd you liek scripting...

wich allows to aggange enemies in various simple patterns fast and easy
 - lolcode and unfixed glithches like that one with gamma ray (you already noticed?)
[/color]

[Foremoster]

Graphic looks nice  :V
I think the enemies are coming down too fast, and at the same time their shooting at you so it's almost instant death if you don't know what your doing. The beginning word is unreadable because the front is too small and the color kinda blends in with the back ground. Meanwhile, enemies are still shooting at you while you're reading the text  :wikipedia:

I can't tell where is the ship's hit box though.

Enemies coming from the bottom at the center of the screen and they also spawn bullets after death derp derp surprise but sek
NO
That's just really cheap way of killing the player.  :flamingv:
but I do like how they move in DNA formation though  :V

Oh gog what, enemies coming from every corners, oh gog why are they so fast. Oh gog they spawn bullets after their death, oh gog the bullets are too fast to react FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. Ok the hit box is HUGE . . that means in the part where enemies come from left - right up - down you have to kill the enemies and it's almost impossible to dodge.

I really dislike the part where the orange balls come from the lower right corner because it's too fast and their beside the player and meanwhile when you kill them they spawn bullets that are too fast to dodge and too many.
*bomb spam

Overall conclusion
Good
Graphics
Decent player character
effective player bomb

Bad
HUGE HITBOX
spazzing enemy movement
terrible enemy spawn point
lack of danmakufu patterns (so far I only see circle patterned bullets)
Is this suppose to be stage 1 because IT IS NOT stage 1 difficulty, I can't say that it's lunatic because it's not finished yet.
SLOW player bullet

[MMX]

Oh well. As i said in my post this is NOT stage 1 or represent of any difficulty level. And all those crazy patterns with sudden enemies jumping out the corner are just a demonstration of the script system. Moreover i use the very beginning of the stage to test new things and the rest orb patterns is just a leftover from the moment i've made 1st enemy and that string parser for it. And the "lack of danmaku" seems for the same reason. But dont worry. There _will be_ a lot of it.

Enemies coming from the bottom at the center of the screen and they also spawn bullets after death

You mean red orbs? That's their purpose to spawn bullets after being killed. So in some cases its better NOT to kill them. There surely will be a lot of patterns based on this.

The beginning word is unreadable because the front is too small and the color kinda blends in with the back ground.

OK i'll fix it

I can't tell where is the ship's hit box though.

I've disabled SetAutoEffect so it doesnt show the builtin danmakufu hitbox. It's located just under ship's cockpit. Maybe i'll add a sprite for it when focused. And i also made SetIntersectionCircle(GetPlayerX,GetPlayerY,2); I dunno if this makes the hitbox big or not?

[Yukari-Chan]

This looks nice

[KLH]

Enemies coming from the bottom at the center of the screen and they also spawn bullets after death derp derp surprise but sek
NO
That's just really cheap way of killing the player.  :flamingv:

Oh gog what, enemies coming from every corners, oh gog why are they so fast. Oh gog they spawn bullets after their death, oh gog the bullets are too fast to react FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. Ok the hit box is HUGE . . that means in the part where enemies come from left - right up - down you have to kill the enemies and it's almost impossible to dodge.

I really dislike the part where the orange balls come from the lower right corner because it's too fast and their beside the player and meanwhile when you kill them they spawn bullets that are too fast to dodge and too many.
*bomb spam

Overall conclusion
Good
Graphics
Decent player character
effective player bomb

Bad
HUGE HITBOX
spazzing enemy movement
terrible enemy spawn point

Larger hitboxes do not make a game bad. Take Battle Garrega, for example.

Suicide bullets? I'm surprised I haven't seen more of these. Ketsui likes to throw a lot of these at you, but they don't spawn if the destroyed enemy is close enough to the player. This might be something to consider adding.

Finally, enemy spawn points are always memorized.

[MMX]

Larger hitboxes do not make a game bad. Take Battle Garrega, for example.

Suicide bullets? I'm surprised I haven't seen more of these. Ketsui likes to throw a lot of these at you, but they don't spawn if the destroyed enemy is close enough to the player. This might be something to consider adding.

Finally, enemy spawn points are always memorized.

Hehe. Nice to see a player with arcade shmup experience (i have touhou only). Speaking of hitboxes, how do you think, do i need to make a visible hitbox while focusing or leave it like now (a spot right below the cockpit)? And once again on suicide bullets. Those red orbs gonna be kinda "trademark" of gameplay here. I'll even make several types of barrage they can throw at player :V And no. They will explode point blank too, so it's better to avoid killing them in a close range. (though it's a good idea for easy mode, so i'll think about it )

[KLH]

Hehe. Nice to see a player with arcade shmup experience (i have touhou only). Speaking of hitboxes, how do you think, do i need to make a visible hitbox while focusing or leave it like now (a spot right below the cockpit)? And once again on suicide bullets. Those red orbs gonna be kinda "trademark" of gameplay here. I'll even make several types of barrage they can throw at player :V And no. They will explode point blank too, so it's better to avoid killing them in a close range. (though it's a good idea for easy mode, so i'll think about it )

Because of the player sprite design, I would recommend rendering a visible hitbox for focused movement. Players may mistakenly read the hitbox as the white spot below the actual hitbox.

As for the suicide bullets, I feel you should be able to do as you please. Attempting to destroy enemies as far as possible seems like an interesting difficulty mechanic.

[BajaBlood]

Hey there, just tested the game.

Hitbox: I have no problems with it's size - just something different for the Touhou-only players to get used to. I do think it would be a good idea to show players where and how large the hitbox is though. If you don't want to have the hitbox glowing every time the player focuses, an alternative would be just to show it to the player during the Stage 1 screen.

Power: I've never been a fan of the death = you need to collect 100 power items that UFO introduced, but that's your prerogative. The amount of shots to take down enemies in the stage was fine, but I think the boss has significantly more HP than it should (particularly given the random movement of the boss and the long delay on the Waverunner missiles). I don't think I killed a single 'spell' or 'nonspell' within the time allotted, even the during final one where the boss stands still, I remained under it the whole time and didn't kill it fast enough. I died once in the midpoint of the stage, so I may never have reached the power level expected for the first boss (though I would argue this isn't an excuse).

Gameplay: Liked what I saw. I'd adjust the boss's second nonspell such that staying perfectly still wouldn't let you dodge all the bullets. The mindfuck turrets were awesome, I can imagine some ridiculous stuff happening when the patterns get more intense and those things are around. The suicide bullets were fine too.

[MMX]

Hey there, just tested the game.

Thanx for reply I'm currently working on a final version of this stage completely rebuilding it from scratch, so expect more stuff, especially on hard mode.

Hitbox: I have no problems with it's size - just something different for the Touhou-only players to get used to. I do think it would be a good idea to show players where and how large the hitbox is though. If you don't want to have the hitbox glowing every time the player focuses, an alternative would be just to show it to the player during the Stage 1 screen.

I've already decided to make hitbox visible while focusing, though it can be surely recognized even when unfocused, watch drawloops in player scripts where i've made an adjustments for it's appearance.

Power: I've never been a fan of the death = you need to collect 100 power items that UFO introduced, but that's your prerogative. The amount of shots to take down enemies in the stage was fine, but I think the boss has significantly more HP than it should (particularly given the random movement of the boss and the long delay on the Waverunner missiles). I don't think I killed a single 'spell' or 'nonspell' within the time allotted, even the during final one where the boss stands still, I remained under it the whole time and didn't kill it fast enough. I died once in the midpoint of the stage, so I may never have reached the power level expected for the first boss (though I would argue this isn't an excuse).

I've got familar with this power system in Ten Desires and found it fair. 1st stage is about collecting the precious power, and this test one was designed to make player easily collect 3 power before the boss (or even 4 with some effort). As for fighting bosses with low power - dont forget that both players (especially Waverider) have powerfull primary "weapons of last hope" wich allow to deal good ammount of damage even at low power. Waverider's Gamma Ray fires a short laser impulse on a single shot button click when player doesnt move. It deals 50 damage with total penetration. I'm even thinking about nerfing it a little cause once you can stand still in front of an enemy you can trivialize it's attack by rapid clicking Just try it on boss and see how it works.

Gameplay: Liked what I saw. I'd adjust the boss's second nonspell such that staying perfectly still wouldn't let you dodge all the bullets. The mindfuck turrets were awesome, I can imagine some ridiculous stuff happening when the patterns get more intense and those things are around. The suicide bullets were fine too.

That nonspell is easy enough for easy mode It will surely be more trickier on hard. Glad, you liked the turrets. They'll make a lot of fun in this game.