Danmaku Fighter - Beta v0.3 Released

[XDest]

I came with an idea a while ago to create a 2D fighter with tons of bullets onscreen, that you must dodge like a shooting game. Since the Touhou series already had sprites for a fighting game, I thought I might as well try it.

BETA v0.3 RELEASED!
http://www.mediafire.com/?sxk842bxp1zzy9d

(The music folder now works by just copying any mp3 files in.)

Features:
- You have a flying mode that will consistently run out while in use, and charge slowly while not in use. You can hold a button to "focus" and slow down, like the normal Touhou games.
- Dodging bullets will give you super and flying meter. Blocking or getting hit by bullets means you lose flying mode, and lose a good amount of flymeter.
- Projectile damage based on type and size
- Hitboxes vs. bullets are extremely small, allowing for many of them to be onscreen at once, hitboxes with melee uses a pixel perfect method.
- Blocking works on a normal 2D fighter low-mid-high system. Lows can only be blocked low, highs can only be blocked high, mids can be blocked with either.
- Hitstun and Blockstun is based on the melee moves you do. Hitstun builds as you progress through a combo. Some moves may face hitstun proration while in a combo. If you try to use a melee attack more than twice in a row in a combo, the combo will automatically end with a "duplex penalty".
- If you're hit with a projectile, and you're not grounded, you will gain 20 recovery.
- Supers are based on increments of 20%. You have three, one that needs 40%, one that needs 60%, and one that needs 80%.
- Bullets have health too, bigger bullets will destroy smaller ones on collision, and will still take damage themselves. They also take damage upon hitting a player. Super bullets have infinite health, but cannot affect normal bullets.
- Bullets are split into types, and their duration onscreen is based on that.
- Recovery is split into normal and projectile recovery. Normal affects all of your attacks, projectile recovery affects bullet firing (both must be 0 to fire a shot).
- Double jumping and air dashing is present. To air dash, press fly + forwards/backwards.
- 4 completed characters (Reimu, Marisa, Cirno, Flandre), 2 in progress (Chen, Minoriko).
- Online doesn't work yet past connecting and sending a few packets. It does connect, but don't expect anything from it other than desync and crashes..
- Character data is stored in text files, super data is stored in lua scripts, makes it easier to create new characters.
- The music folder accepts up to 1024 mp3/ogg files.
- Skies/BGs/Music are randomly chosen initially.

1P Controls:

Movement - Arrow Keys
Weak - X
Medium - C
Strong - V
Fly - A
Dash - A + Forward/Backwards
Spellcard - B + Direction
Focus - Left Ctrl

2P Controls:

Movement - Numpad 2,4,6,8
Weak - Right Divide
Medium - Right Multiply
Strong - Right Subtract
Spellcard - Numpad 1 + Direction
Fly - Home
Dash - Home + Forward/Backwards
Focus - Delete

Created with C++ and SFML. Should get some videos and a demo out soon, but I still want to get more playable characters in before that time comes. Characters will be editable in simple text files so we can create new ones fast, as long as we have the sprite set for them. If anyone can help me out with this part of development, it would be amazing. It would definitely help me focus on coding instead of changing filenames and numbers around. I think I'm doing pretty well for a week in, the game is pretty playable at this point. Also, I don't really have great skills in creating patterns for spellcards, and I know you guys are great at that. Maybe you guys can help me develop a few different pattern types to put into the game.

Screenshots:
http://boonce.org/up/df-menu3.png
http://boonce.org/up/danmakufighterflan.png
http://boonce.org/up/4555_df-milkyway.png
http://boonce.org/up/8209_df-launching.png
http://boonce.org/up/helixgrid.png

- Made with C++ and SFML.
- FMOD is used for the audio.
- Most art assets taken from the Tasofro Touhou fighters, since I'm doing this on my own I did not have many options here. Any sprites not made by Tasofro are made by fans, who shall later be contacted for approval.
- Credit to Paper Conan for helping out with Flandre and Minoriko.

So it's quite different than the other Touhou fighters at this point. Although I'm always up for putting new ideas in. This is very unfinished right now, but it's pretty playable for only have about a month of development time.

[Romantique Tp]

Sounds very interesting so far, looking forward to playable demo.

[XDest]

Thanks, I could probably have something ready by the end of the day. The only reason I haven't already is simply because I've only finished a single character. But I made it pretty easy to create new ones, so it shouldn't be that bad.

Updates:
- Pause menu is now done.
- Hitstun and Launching implimented, as well as a combo meter. Proration implimented for hitstun and damage inside combos to stop infinites and high damaging combos. Based on the number of hits in the combo. Bullets are not affected by hitstun proration, since their recovery is already separate.
- Cirno's projectiles are somewhat done, but there's not enough patterns made yet to make another characters really unique. I need to add more in.
- Projectile hitbox while not flying is now lower

Still need to work on Cirno/Reimu, and possibly impliment some kind of scripting for the spellcards so they can all be unique. After I get these things done, the demo will probably be released. The system is coming along very nicely.

[Serina]

Can i help with the sprites and art? I'm not very good, but it's better than nothing  :V This is an example of my sprites:
hereee

It looks great indeed

[XDest]

Yes, you can. Send me a private message with your MSN address and we can talk further about teaming up.

And of course, you can get early alphas/betas too.

[Ruminizer]

Can i help with the sprites and art? I'm not very good, but it's better than nothing  :V This is an example of my sprites:
hereee

It looks great indeed

Wow, that looks really nice.


Also, waiting warmly for this. I really like the idea.

[Serina]

Yes, you can. Send me a private message with your MSN address and we can talk further about teaming up.

And of course, you can get early alphas/betas too.

I can't send PM's ohgod i can pass it by normal message then :p

also thanks Ruminizer.

[XDest]

Alright Serina. Here's my MSN (in an image to detract spambots). Anyone else interested in joining the team, feel free to add me.

[Supreme Gamesmaster]

I can maybe help with design and music (samples available on request, etc) but for now it doesn't seem like I can help so much as offer encouragement and thorny questions.

Any plans for a story mode/boss system?
How do Spell Cards work (if at all)?
Please please please can we pick the musics/stages as well as random? It can be fun to do self-made stories in fighters sometimes, and that gets a bit ruined if you can't pick the stage/musics.

Other than that, looking the forwards very muchly.

[XDest]

How about I give you a little more to go on then? Here's an old video from 3 days back. The engine has progressed steadily since.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w30cOAcuiic

Music/Stages are only random for now, I WILL implement a select into the menu when I have the time.

Update:
- Sprite set images are loaded when a character is created only, instead of streaming them every frame. This should help the frame rate on slower computers, but will use up more RAM. I plan to do the same for the bullets, hopefully I can get more onscreen at once by doing this.

[Supreme Gamesmaster]

...well

Those flying duels may be the closest we ever come to a genuine danmaku duel.

Obviously sprite alignment could use work, and I recommend using delay effects on bullets not spawned on the boss, but on the whole, the project looks great thus far. VERY looking forward.

[XDest]

If you want to help test before public releases, reach me on MSN. I'm always trying to squash bugs I run into.

Update:
- Alright, did the same for bullets. Now getting full FPS everywhere. I still have to try on worse computers, but things are looking really good performance wise.
- Holy shit, just did the stress test. It now lowers below 60FPS at 9,500 bullets onscreen. It used to do that at 200!

http://boonce.org/up/WHAT9000.png

My netbook with a 1.67GHz atom CPU and an NVidia ION GPU can almost keep 60fps with this upgrade! This game wouldn't run on anything but a great computer before this, this is great!

Update:
- Cirno is done except for her spellcards (might need help with coming up with something good for the patterns), but I'm not really satisfied with all the bullet combinations I gave her. Probably will go over it another time.
- Character text files have a lot of things added to them in terms of move properties, ensuring further that they can be unique.
- Going to try if I can implement some kind of scripting from files for the spellcards to make them more unique as well.
- If the above happens tomorrow, there will be an alpha released tomorrow.
- Reimu will probably not be in the first alpha unless I can get somebody to help me do it a bit faster. I made it pretty easy through the use of text configuration files, but I've been too busy coding to make any new characters.

Update:
- Set up Lua for use with the spell cards, still have to figure out a few things before everything works properly
- Alright, things are coming together with the scripting.

Here's how it works:
You're given the current bullet in the loop (0 to N). N is defined in the *character*-danmaku.txt file when spawning bullets for a spellcard.

You can return these values back to the game, and the game will spawn a bullet with those properties:
- Horizontal Offset, Vertical Offset, Horizontal Velocity, Vertical Velocity, Bounce (Y/N), Size(Multiple), Angle, Direction, Bullet Used (must exist as an index in the character's text file)

Since it's Lua, you can do any kind of logic/math you want to fool around with these values. It's obviously pretty limited right now, but if you guys have any ideas on how to expand this idea, I'm up for it. It's pretty much uncharted territory for me right now.

Just redid one of Marisa's spells with a script, and now it picks the bullet used based on what the bullet # divides into.
http://boonce.org/up/7071_DanmakuFighter6.png

The custom scripts are available to all bullet patterns, not just spells.

Update:
- Added the player's health, combo count, flying meter, super meter, position x, position y, and if they're flying to the inputs of the script
- Added rotation to the outputs of the script
- Alpha public release in a couple of hours

http://boonce.org/up/DanmakuFighter7.png

<rdj> The images were over the dimension and size limits.

[XDest]

ALPHA v0.01 RELEASED!
http://www.mediafire.com/?zvemxajwuvh4fu2

Optional pre-built music folder - Just random ZUN Touhou music converted to .ogg and numbered correctly.
http://www.mediafire.com/?4ovybh5lklyby5u
You can make your own /music folder by simply converting your songs to .ogg and naming them sequentially from 0.ogg to 15.ogg.

1P Controls:

Movement - Arrow Keys
Weak - X
Medium - C
Strong - V
Fly - A
Focus - Shift
20% (1 slot) Super - B
60% (3 slots) Super - N
40% (2 slots) Super - M
80% (4 slots) Super - Comma

2P Controls:

Movement - Numpad 2,4,6,8
Weak - Right Divide
Medium - Right Multiply
Strong - Right Subtract
Fly - Home
Focus - Delete
20% (1 slot) Super - Numpad 7
60% (3 slots) Super - Numpad 3
40% (2 slots) Super - Numpad 1
80% (4 slots) Super - Numpad 9

No direct gamepad support yet, but you can always bind with xpadder and the such.

Feel free to ask any questions or report any bugs. As this is an alpha release, it's still at an experimental, not solid stage. But it should be sufficient for public release at this point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOFN7TAv3eY
Video from the Alpha.

[Romantique Tp]

The separate buttons for supers are only temporary, right ? Things could get confusing with so many buttons.  :V

[XDest]

Yeah, it is. Had to be like that because I don't have double tap or quarter circle motions working yet.

Update:
- Okay, going to have a small patch today with bugfixes. Got to test it with a second player. Here's the list of changes I'll implement in it:

TODO:
- You need to be able to block in the air or while flying. It's allowing for infinites right now. (Done!)
- You're allowed to get meter during supers. This is very bad when in conjunction with the above, allows for spamming spellcards. (Done!)
- Focused needs to be toggle instead of hold with the current input code. Because once P2 presses a button, it's counted as P1 releasing it right now, having really odd results. It will be toggle in the patch. (Done! Also fixed physics during back/down movement in focus)
- Spellcards will be bound to B/numpad 1 and the directions pushed together, instead of 4 different face buttons. This was alright when building the engine and such, but for public use having 4 different buttons was confusing. (Done!)

Also done:
- Hitstun provides animation to the person being hit.
- Blocking provides an animation
- Being hit by an blocking projectiles provides a separate animation.
- Launching now has a separate animation.
- Jumping physics are a bit better

Things I had no way of knowing by testing by myself, but very easy to fix. Expect this by 7PM.

Patch should be ready very soon. Just need to test a little more.

[XDest]

Alpha 0.015 Patch
http://www.mediafire.com/?d1x6far1dix2wrw

[rfw]

Oh wow, that's pretty cool! I hope you're planning on making it open-source (and not with a super-anally license like GPL). I'd really like to take a look at the source and see how other people do things.

Now, rant time.

You might want to consider power-of-two sprite sheets so you allocate a large texture onto the GPU rather than lots of tiny ones, as it saves reading from different parts of the VRAM and results in better performance.

The game also seems to hang a lot while loading (not sure if it's my fault or yours) -- maybe throw in a few loading screens, and manage your assets a little better; with a content manager, perhaps?

... and is that compiled with GCC? On Windows?! For anything on Windows, you should really use MSVC++ as it hooks into Windows better -- crash reports, consistent name mangling, etc.

(also, lol Lua)

[XDest]

Ah, I couldn't get SFML to properly compile things properly on the visual studio compiler (even with extremely minimal code), so  I went for GCC instead. Probably something stupid, but had me frustrated for hours on end.

I can't get it to freeze at all on load. Even on my slow netbook. Maybe it's your computer.

I could make a single spritesheet image for each sprite, which would save space and load times, but would require me to rewrite a lot of code. But RAM usage isn't even an issue here, 100MB isn't that bad, and it's not likely to expand that much, since you're just loading in a character and their projectiles, as well as the BG, sky, and music.

Loading only happens:
- Right before the load screen
- When changing characters on the menu screen
- Right after selecting the two characters and the game begins

There is no loading that goes on ingame, I believe.

If you want to help me code anything with this project, you can actually look at my mangled code and try to fix some functions. I probably wouldn't want to release the source until it gets to a relatively bug-free status.

About Lua, can you think of a better way to incorparate scripting in for the spellcards? I don't want to keep hard-coding the patterns in since it would end up making the code pretty needlessly unmanageable. Plus this way, it's easier for people without access to the code to make new characters and etc...

[Danielu Yoshikoto]

It doesn?t seem to work for me... somehow  :V Whenever I try to start it up, it just stops working and the program shuts down.

[XDest]

Odd, does it completely freeze on you on startup? What type of computer do you have? If it shuts down without freezing, usually that means that it couldn't load crucial files properly. Look at your img folder, is that empty, if so you only downloaded just the patch and not the full game.

Also a new patch (v0.02):
http://www.mediafire.com/?9cgq1dc8f93xzcc

Fixed:
- Characters turn around automatically when the other character goes behind them

Still buggy:
- Beam attacks (namely Marisa's 6C) will not work properly on the right side. I'm still trying to figure out why.

[Danielu Yoshikoto]

you only downloaded just the patch

Dude... I can see what is a patch and what a full download, and YES I downloaded V0.01

Well All I get is a window opening, whice then closes again.

Just installed 0.02 patch, and still doesn?t run.

I have an MSi Wind Computer, Operating System is XP SP3.

[Janitor Morgan]

Please keep in mind that posted images need to be a) smaller than 640x480 (or 480x640) and b) under 150 kb, for bandwidth reasons. I've gone and fixed that in the posts so far.

Regardless, this looks very interesting, and I look forward to seeing the finished product.

[XDest]

Please keep in mind that posted images need to be a) smaller than 640x480 (or 480x640) and b) under 150 kb, for bandwidth reasons. I've gone and fixed that in the posts so far.

Regardless, this looks very interesting, and I look forward to seeing the finished product.

Alright, that's fine with me. I did not know about that rule.

Dude... I can see what is a patch and what a full download, and YES I downloaded V0.01

Well All I get is a window opening, whice then closes again.

Just installed 0.02 patch, and still doesn?t run.

I have an MSi Wind Computer, Operating System is XP SP3.

I believe the window will only exit if your computer does not support OpenGL shaders (I just rechecked my code). Therefore, it does not meet the requirements to run the game.

Update:
- Released v0.025, fixes the aforementioned beam bug.

With that, I believe most of the engine stuff is somewhat solid (I'll obviously find more bugs in the coming days). I believe now I should start working on some more content for the game. I would like to extend an invitation to anyone that's good with scripting to join me in creating new content for the game.

---------------------------------------------------

Update:
- A blocking bug was fixed that allowed you to keep blocking after releasing the button
- Now allowed to have multiple spellcards out at once, as long as the duration hasn't worn off. Of course, this mostly just applies to cards that need 20, 40 or 60 meter to do, as you could have enough for a second spellcard at that point.
- These will be in the next patch. I would like to get a couple more characters done before providing the next patch.
- Training mode is in progress. So far, options for regenerating spell and health meters is available at the pause menu. Planning on giving more customization for training so you can screw around.
- Training mode mode is now almost done, command list is done: http://boonce.org/up/trainingmode.png
- Stage/Music/Sky select screen (Done!)
- Make a command list to be shown (Done!)
- Make music loop (Done! Volume also turned to 25%)
- Fullscreen fixed, doesn't change back to windowed or destroy the screen upon returning to the menu, buttons work in fullscreen (Done!)
- Create a training mode (Done!)

To-do List for the next patch:
- More characters

General To-Do List (to be done whenever):
- Give melee attacks high/low property. If they choose wrong, they get hit.

----------------------------------------------------
Update:
- Moving into a character now has a separate hitbox that's somewhat smaller.
- Characters switching directions are no longer glitchy
- Melee attacks mostly done for Reimu, working on her projectiles now
- Expanded the playing field, added a camera, the camera zooms in and out depending on how far away each character is, and keeps both characters onscreen.
http://boonce.org/up/datcamera.png
- Added character specific special abilities for 20 meter, mapped to the spellcard button without direction. Cirno can freeze all of her own bullets onscreen with it, and a couple seconds later they'll retain their original speed. I wonder what I should do for Marisa's and Reimu's.
- Added support for spellcards that keep adding bullets while their duration is not 0, will only do this for the last spellcard you've done. Scripts are now also sent the duration left, so you can create a completely different pattern a few seconds in if you wanted to.

A video of what I've changed recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywBl28TDr8w

I don't really want to release anything more until I finish some more characters, but I keep getting distracted by doing more features/bugfixes in the engine.

- Hitbox viewer for the training mode. Green is the moving collision box. Red is the vs. projectiles hitbox, Blue is projectile hitbox. The melee hitbox is just a match of the sprite itself. http://boonce.org/up/hitboxes.png

- Will probably release a new version some time today or tomorrow.

[XDest]

ALPHA v0.05 RELEASED!
http://www.mediafire.com/?i1eh62wx0c4topo

Reimu added, tons of bug fixes and added features that I've previously talked about. Spellcards are still probably going to change, I'm not used to scripting patterns at all. There will probably be more normal bullet pattern types in the next patch if I have the time. I'm going to get working on a 4th character for the next patch, I wonder which it should be.

-------------------------------------------------
Working on more engine stuff again:
- Refined the combo system, hitstun/recovery penalties are also given when you do the same move twice in a row in a combo, to promote diversity. Hitstun now grows from the previous hit in the combo (divided by the number of hits in the combo), plus the hitstun the move was going to do, create a more potent "untechable time" early in a combo.
- Added a double jump.

[Paper Conan]

OH my god. I love you.
:getdown:

I just saw all the progress you have made and it is AMAZING! I can't wait for the full version to be released!

btw, just some tips on things that might need improvement.
-Add hit-sparks (they make every attack seem pretty strong)
-MOAR CHARACTERS :getdown: (the only thing I love about fangames is the amount of playable characters)

and if you can:
-fix the jumping thingy. It looks odd....
-make Cirno float (doesn't she?)
-add a graphic for appearing and disappearing bullets.

(I really don't care if you can't fix those things. All I would love to see would be a complete version of this game)
 :3

[XDest]

Thanks for the response.

Jumping was changed quite a few times in the past few versions, it's a little less teleporty now. Double jumping, air dashing, and forward dashing on the ground have all been added to future versions. If you want more characters, you can simply help me out yourself if you want. It would only involve editing text and script files, no real programming required. Otherwise, character addition will be a really slow process if I don't get any help...

The Cirno floating I can probably play around with (probably would just make the gravity less when playing as her, shouldn't be too hard to do). As for the hit-sparks and graphics for appearing/disappearing spells, yeah I know I need to add some SFX for those eventually.

Update:
- Cirno has less gravity
- Bullets can kill other bullets. Bullets win based on area. Two of the same bullets are not affected by this. Spellcard bullets are not affected.
- You cannot block during spellcard usage to make it fair for the opponent. Since the opponent cannot get close to you, they need to be able to hit you while they're at such a huge disadvantage. Don't know if this will stay in, have to test more. Pretty much during spellcards it should be you firing and them dodging anyways, and turtling behind your myriad of bullets and blocking defeats that purpose.
- Combo system is a lot more diverse, as previously stated

[XDest]

The first beta has been released and there have been a lot of revisions.
- Numerous movement issues fixed
- Numerous collision issues fixed
- Hitbox issues fixed
- Combo system revamped
- Added a high/low blocking system
- Much more

Among other things. I'll provide a list of some combos you can play around with in a bit. It's still a bit rough around the edges, but it's a lot more playable than it was a while back.

[Serina]

Hello, it's me again I'm really, really sorry about not replying this thread. Because my pc was a total junk, i had to Reinstall Windows, etc etc.
I really apologize!

[XDest]

Alright, mind contacting me on MSN if you really want to join up on the project? I sent you a PM with it inside.

Haven't updated in a while:
- Camera back to fixed, but very zoomed out (no more camera jitter or offscreen bullets)
- Normal bullets globally slower
- Beams can no longer destroy any bullet, as they would win every time
- More combo system changes (extra hitstun proration while in combo for 1A, 3A, and 6A, less damage proration on normal attacks)
- Damage tweaked for many moves
- More collision issues fixed
- Lowered the characters and upped the ceiling, there's double the amount of vertical room now to move in. The amount of horizontal movement room is the same as the previous version.
- 1A can now be used as a sort of "drop kick" while flying. It will take you out of fly and gravity will kick in.
- Picked up a Flandre spriteset from a Japanese mugen site, most of it is already converted to work here, but I have to work on her bullets/spellcards now
- Added an in-game options menu where you can save fullscreen/smoothing/vsync options for next time, instead of editing config.txt yourself

More to come. I'll release this when I feel ready to.

Update
- Added movement ability to bullets after they're fired instead of being linear. Can now go in circles, waves, spirals, zig-zags, slow-down, speed-up, stop then start again, etc...
- Changed Marisa's 80% spellcard, switched Reimu's 40% and 60% spellcards and changed her new 60% one.
- Started working on netplay. It connects proper, but it's unsynced and has several, several bugs that need to be worked out before it's anywhere near playable.

[XDest]

BETA v0.23 RELEASED!
http://www.mediafire.com/?674a0cus5n72un5

Tons of system changes this time.

Screenshots:
http://boonce.org/up/df-menu3.png
http://boonce.org/up/danmakufighterflan.png
http://boonce.org/up/4555_df-milkyway.png
http://boonce.org/up/8209_df-launching.png
http://boonce.org/up/helixgrid.png