Finally, after almost two month, I got my new PC on Saturday. So, finally, I am able to run danmakufu again. But I wasn't inactive during this period; I have always been thinking about scripts I could make, and I forged prototypes. These could now be tested, and during this weekend I dedicated most of my time to bring one project ready for a first release.
Long story short:
I'm back, and I brought you a gift!
Player Suika! (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jjkovt1yqne)
Constructive criticism will be appreciated as always. I know that the graphics could need some improvement, but at least for the bombs this is somewhat out of my artistical capapilities... :V
Okay, I played through both the Sariel and Konngara scripts, so here's some comments from a novice Danmakufu scripter. The comments may seem a bit pretentious with me ordering you around or something, but I'm not really trying to be like that D: This is technically my first time giving some sort of input, so I hope I help somehow.
1. Default Danmakufu bullets. Please don't use them. They just look really ugly (at least to me), so it ruins the aesthetic part of the danmaku (since beauty in danmaku is basically the whole point, heh). In Konngara's fight you definitely used the Expanded Shot Data for part of the script, so why not use it for the entire battle? The butterflies and icicles (RED22 and RED23, respectively) especially stand out as one of the worst bullets in the entire fight.
Well, the icicles of the expanded shotdata look too different, too "leaf-esque", in my opinion, compared to the rubble-splinter-look of the regular 23s. The regular butterflies don't look awful at all if you ask me, and the butterflies in the expanded shot sheet look only good as long as they are not add-blended. If they are, they look bad. Dieing and bombing makes bullets fade-delete, which forces the render type to add. So yeah...
Also, the Sariel fight looks horrible because I made it almost a year ago, in a time when I didn't even understand how shotdata properly works. I was happy enough to get the CtC Shot-Replacement-Script implemented on the second spell card to use the dark round bullets. In a revised version (which I actually plan to do) I will of course use expanded shot data to improve the visuals.
3. Difficulties. You've already addressed the fact that it's hard to differentiate from Easy and Normal difficulties, but I'll just add my own comments about it (again). The few differences I see between Easy and Normal is a. the speed of bullets, and b. the frequency of bullets being shot (such as those purple bullets in Cocytus). There aren't really many times where the number of bullets change at any given time, which I think is the reason why Easy is so similar to Normal. Of course this is just from what I see, because it's difficult for me to look into the scripts and understand what's exactly going on...
Well, making greater changes to the number of on-screen bullets can often make the pattern look broken and ugly or even change the way the card plays drastically. So yeah, in most cases I mainly reduced the speed of the entire pattern while keeping the number of on-screen bullets fairly constant. I didn't keep it totally constant, though. The overall number decreases as you move down the difficulties so that the spaces you have to move through get bigger. Not by much, though, I'll give you that.
4. Repetition. Konngara's nonspells were terribly boring, because they were all exactly the same. Really not much else to say about it... ._.;
Well, that is part of the concept. Sariel had different attack patterns because she had distinct phases with different attack patterns in tHRtP. Konngara, on the other hand, had a fairly well-sized arsenal of attacks of which she would choose randomly, so I tried to emulate that, too. Maybe the formula is hurting the quality of the end product a little, but I don't think I am going to change it by now.
Oh, and a personal dislike I have is the Touhoumon sprites, which look unprofessional for scripts like these. But I didn't want to officially complain about it in the list above because it's not something that's easily changed in future scripts, plus I can't make sprites either so yeah ._.;
Well, they look better than what I could make myself. I am going to improve on the Sariel sprite in a future release, though. It needs animation badly.
Spriting is hell...
I think those are the only bad things that really stood out to me as I played it. Otherwise, everything else is pretty cool. The ghost tail effect (on Konngara as well as the homing purple bullets) was amazing, although the bullets are hard to dodge ;_; Phlegethon looks amazing, but is really really difficult. Some of the other effects (like the curving lasers in the nonspell) are also cool, but the curving lasers are difficult to read. I guess my final conclusion is that the patterns are cool, but too difficult for me to play. :(
But the scripts are really amazing in terms of being hard to actually create in Danmakufu, since the patterns look pretty complicated to make. Like Naut said, working on the aesthetics will really make the scripts great. Hope to see more in the future!
Thanks. :D
2. Forced no-vertical. This has already been addressed by Naut, but I'll just add my own comments about it. It works out fine in a game like Highly Responsive to Prayers, but in an actual danmaku game I don't think it's very convenient, especially when you're trapped in the corner and you can't whack the bullets with a gohei or get rid of them by throwing cards. Plus, when a spell card activates, I kept forgetting that I had free movement, and kept trying to no-vert all the cards despite me not having to. (I hope I'm not the only one doing that.) Since it's a danmaku game, maybe it'll be better to extend the movement area a little? (Such as restricting the movement area to a third of the screen, though I don't even know if that's possible...)
Hmm, well, I said Naut's complaint in this regard gave me an idea: To include a seperate version of the boss battle where the non-cards are adjusted so that you can move freely during them. Many attacks would force you somewhere to the bottom already if you actually could move up further, so a few tweaks will make it possible.
Ahem, speaking of which...
Updated release! Konngara v 1.1 download now! (http://bulletforge.org/u/iryan/p/konngara-boss-battle-by-iryan/v/11)
Includes:
- Free Mode: The ability to play the non-cards with free movement, with modifications to keep them interesting if they would get too easy otherwise.
- An additional spell card: Nightmare Sign "Demon Summoning Circle" was added between the last two spell cards to make up for the lack of a) geometrical beauty and b) spell cards with overall slower bullets.
- Other small tweaks here and there.