RUSHmup bullet patterns prototype (please test and help me)

[XYXYX]

Hi all

Hopefully you guys here, being pretty pro at bullet hell shooters, might be able to test this for me and give me some feedback
http://www.spacedcat.co.uk/RUSHmupPatternTest00/index.html



My RUSHmup game is coming on ok, but I've made this prototype for the bullet patterns for people to test so I can find out how difficult it is and tweak it before implementing it in the final project

I coded this in Processing theres no graphics, just placeholder primitives

The level increases everytime you pass 1/5th of the song length

Arrows moves your square, and Z uses your slowmo ability (in the final game this lets you graze for a combo and use your special weapon)

You dont have to shoot in this, just see how long you survive

When theres ALOT of shots on screen, their lifetime decreases so red outlined ones are safe to hit

Press R to play the included song, press O to select your own (and make sure its an mp3 or it might crash)

Also on a side note, when your playing, the beat sensitivity is calculated from the maximum volume and current volume, what this means is that the first few times you try, it fires more regularly, and when you retry the same song (R) it holds that max volume value, so it gets a little easier with each try until you get to the loudest part. Pressing O to select a new song does reset this though

I've got some ideas how to improve this, like having each beat fire one BIG proper pattern, and a few shots until the pattern is off screen etc and changing the shots amount etc

PLEASE give me some feedback, itd be very useful

And your scores and info are posted on the page too if you have a net connection

[I have no name]

Huh, this is pretty cool.
My biggest complaint would be bullets randomly changing trajectory (I saw a huge ring of bullets all suddenly turn back inwards a bit then end up criss-crossing near the bottom).
Also, is the boss's movement random?  I had it go pretty far down and spam a bunch of dense waves twice, it was pretty much undodgable.

But overall this is pretty fun.

[XYXYX]

Hi there

Firstly, yes, they do randomly change trajectory, ive still yet to think of a way it can warn you of this, but some of the patterns (well most depending on the number of shots) look the same until they 'animate', any ideas on what can warn the player? rotating the shots wont really work since the in game images are round sprites

And the enemy movement, yes that is also random, what ive done in the actual game project is limit the movement to the top 2/3rds of the screen, maybe have level 4 and 5 able to move into your area too, think that would be ok?

Thanks loads for the feedback by the way


We have a new leader too, 145seconds, fair play!!

[I have no name]

That score was mine, using the song "Cascade" from Homestuck at 4/3 speed.  :V
I wouldn't have the enemy move down into player area resulting in a pointblank burst.

Instead of having random trajectory changes, maybe make the bullets always be curving from when they're shot?  Just something to make them more predictable.

[XYXYX]

well done!

ill upload a revised version in a min

the animating the shots is done like this
frameChange = int(something)
when counter % frame change == 0, modify the trajectory

using this method their always going to change direction at some random time,

ive removed that though, changed the enemy movement to be random in the top half, level 4 is random in 2/3rds of the height, level 5 is anywhere AND more shots

[XYXYX]

you can grab the new version now

[I have no name]

I got killed at 263 by the enemy shooting bullets in my face.  Level 4 is good though, really fun, level 5 is also enjoyable except when the enemy goes too far down and you have no real option but to get lucky.  Maybe make level 5 not go below the half line either?  It kind of comes down to luck if it can go anywhere...

[XYXYX]

hmm, dont you just go up when its at the bottom of the screen?
im thinking make the level 5 safe area much smaller then, say 1/5th of the height?

also, ill add in homing shots in the next post (since its a bit easy now) they'll be white and home in on you when the beat that spawned them happened again (ill color the outline so you know what beat they spawned on)

next upload also appends the track length to the end of the track name

ill post here when its done

[I have no name]

Just as an example:

Code: [Select]

  E
    B    B
 B B
        B
      B
   B
            P
You're kind of busy dodging bullets to see if the enemy is moving down and right, and by the time you realize it's getting denser, you're already trapped.  This holds pretty much anywhere below the halfway point on the screen honestly.

[EthanSilver]

Just gave this a shot. It was pretty good. Couple of comments...

- Please DO NOT RESET THE PATH when the user hits 'o'. You default to the "my documents" folder everytime, even if the currently-playing song is in a different folder. It makes it a pain to try out different songs... (Also just found out, typing in a path and hitting enter "opens" that path as a file. Please, just use the default file selector for the OS you're running on. Please. This one is probably very portable, but it's just bad. (Edit: Actually, just realized this was java. Dunno if you have that option... But at least keeping the current path and defaulting to that would be a nice start.) )

- I don't really know if the bullets' lifespan makes any difference, to be honest. It's an interesting idea but I just never felt it play any role whatsoever. Either bullets disappear long before they get to you (so by the time they "get to you" you've already forgotten they were even there) or bullets disappear after they pass you by (so you just bundle them up with the rest of the regular bullets anyway).

- Full screen plz! Not a big issue, but a couple of years of playing shmups full-screened leaves you sorely lacking when it comes to playing a windowed game. (Edit: See java comments earlier. )

- Please don't make the game SUDDENLY SHUT DOWN WITHOUT WARNING OMG INSTANTLY GONE when the user hits escape. Escape is usually the pause button in most games and, for me at least, it's a major reflex to just hit escape to pause. It can be a bit frustrating to see everything vanish without so much as a confirmation box asking me if I want to quit. A message asking for confirmation or an intermediate "pause" screen would be really great; alternatively, well, I can just hit alt+F4, click the "x" in the upper-right corner, double-click the icon in the upper-left corner, go through the task manager... does the game really need another means of insta-quitting in the first place?

Aside from that, I thought it was a neat idea. How does the beat detection occur? It seems to miss the occasional "beat" but usually gets it right - is it a built-in method your audio API provides or are you using your own algorithm (you mentioned using the volume, so I'm guessing it's your own implementation)? Not too shabby either way. Playing "dodge the screenful of bullets" to some Iron Maiden (and having it work, too) is great.

(and make sure its an mp3 or it might crash)

Testing for that and rejecting the file if it cannot be loaded is pretty standard behavior to expect though. At the very least check the file extension. Best case scenario you should check the return value of your calls - they return error codes for a reason.

Firstly, yes, they do randomly change trajectory, ive still yet to think of a way it can warn you of this

Why not follow Touhou's example? It plays a tinkling sound whenever a bullet re-aims itself or otherwise changes its movement somehow. This could interfere with the music though, so why not go visual and make the bullet blink briefly before it changes directions?

Looking forward to more! Great work!

[Delfigamer]

Tried on some UT music, heh.

Aside from what's already said...
- Sometimes the game freezes. When you click "cancel" in music selection window. When you you try to use screenrecording software (sometimes).
- Don't you want to reverse the score table? To place newest attempts at the top, not at the bottom?
- IPs in this table. I don't mind if everybody can see I'm "192.168.whatever", but I'm sure it is not the result you wanted. Maybe, you should ask the player for his name? Or you may use some file, like "player_name.txt", for that purpose.

[XYXYX]

@Idiot Princess
I see your point, however i think i might leave it for the moment (after making that smaller safe area) bearing in mind this code is going into the final game where the enemy does have an appearance that you'll notice moving around quite easily

@Ethan Silver
Thanks for so much feedback! This will all be in the next update when i post here, but ive fixed that file selection thing, so if you do pick a file it defaults to that ones last path, also if its not an mp3 the file selector shows up again, and clicking cancel plays whatever was played last (or the default), it can be made to be better, its javas built in file selector thing which ive never used before but it seems to be working alot better now (and yes it is properly cross platform which is why i used it)

I see what you mean about the life span, i added it earlier to keep the number of shots down to a managable level, ill see what effect tweaking it has, or remove it all together in the next update

HAHA yes, the fullscreen, you want it to fill the height too? whats the equation for working out how much to increase the dimensions by? (giving that the height will fill the screen, the width will increase based on the aspect ratio? Ill add that in too if i can the article i had on it

The best detection is using a Java/Processing library call Minim. It has in built isKick() isSnare() functions but i found them to be a little off, so i set custom ranges for each one, and modify the beat.sensitivity based on how loud it is at the moment, compared to the loudest which seems to work alot better

sometimes it does miss some, but sometimes it just doesnt fire on them because patterns.size() > the set limit (but in game theyll still 'flash and glow'

fixed the non-mp3 files

good idea about the noises playing, in the touhou games isnt that too late though? i know when i had the direction changing in this it always got me when it was right next to me, so even playing a noise wouldnt help too much, i might tint an area of them though and use that

in this update
just fixed the file chooser and path reset
fullscreen (but not filling it yet) esc to exit
track title has length at end now
possibly fixed another audio metadata error (possibly)

so minor, but the next one will have the mentioned gameplay improvements etc

@delfigamer
cancel error should be fixed now, not sure why screen recording would do that though, i use Fraps, pretty sure that works fine
will fix the score table now thanks for that
yeah the ips were just to differentiate between scores without having to add stuff in to save to a file etc, i might add in player names after the next update maybe

[I have no name]

I see your point, however i think i might leave it for the moment (after making that smaller safe area) bearing in mind this code is going into the final game where the enemy does have an appearance that you'll notice moving around quite easily

Unless the boss moving is specifically part of the gimmick of the attack (e.g. Byakuren's 4th nonspell) it's usually not payed attention to.  I know when I'm dodging dense waves of bullets (like levels 4 and 5) the last thing I want to have to do is pay attention to boss movement.

Also, the "Idiot Princess" thing is a silly user title this forum has.  My actual username is a bit above that. :3

[EthanSilver]

HAHA yes, the fullscreen, you want it to fill the height too? whats the equation for working out how much to increase the dimensions by?

That's pretty simple. Just calculate the ratio. Say your screen is 300x500 right now, for example. You want to make it fill an 800x600 region.

1- 800/300 = 2.666, 600/500 = 1.2. We'll use the Y ratio (1.2) since it's the smallest one - if we used the X ratio (2.666) when scaling Y it'd be bigger than the height available...
2- New width = 300 * 1.2 = 360. New height = 500 * 1.2 = 600. Your game's display is 360 x 600.
3- Now you center it. Your screen's width is 800, your display's width is 360. To center something, (ScreenWidth - ObjectWidth) / 2, so (800 - 360) / 2 = 220. For the height we're already taking up all space (600 pixels) so there's no adjustment to make. But just for fun, (600 - 600) / 2 = 0.
4- So, your display is 360x600 and is offset by (+220, +0). If you need to scale stuff in-game, you can use your ratio (1.2) to calculate their new dimensions.

To sum it up, get the smallest ratio between your original and new size (for width and height, that is) to figure out the scaling, then center it by "averaging" together the difference between the screen's size and the element's size.

sometimes it does miss some, but sometimes it just doesnt fire on them because patterns.size() > the set limit (but in game theyll still 'flash and glow'

Somehow that reminds me of the "game hit its bullet cap" gaps when playing the last 5 seconds of Hourai Elixir and a few others.

good idea about the noises playing, in the touhou games isnt that too late though?

It really helps when there's a huge cluster of different types of bullets to know that one of them is currently moving directly at you and that streaming mechanics now need to be factored into your movements. Dunno if that carries over to your game though, since there's mostly just "one" pattern at a time right now and the bullets don't have much in the way of specialized behavior (ie, there's no "way to do this one" for any of the patterns so you don't need to cue the player in as to what's expected of them specifically).

Quick little note, though I haven't tried this - does your high score list have a sanity check? I was planning on using a debugger to boost my score to 9999999 to see if the list would accept it but felt that might be a bit of a cheap thing to do. It's not uncommon to see this though (online highscore lists where the best scores are clearly hax) and it ultimately breaks the point of having a high score list in the first place when everyone's name is "PENIS!!!" and they all have a perfect (completely unattainable) 999,999,999.

[XYXYX]

@I have no name
i shall think on it, a level 4/5 boss are pretty damn big on screen though ingame

@ethansilver
ill try that later today then, thanks!

i will be changing the bullet cap too (or pattern cap) now its more playable, see how it affects the difficulty

ill also see about notifications and add the pattern animation back in again (it does give some nice effects)

also the scoring has NO security at the moment, i dont know if your trainer will work but i can post anything in browser (shhhh!)
also, do you know why its not showing up now? i thought its timing out due to file file size on the httprequest, i broke the table sorting but it wont load at all now (i tested with 1/2 file size and it did again)

[Kaze_Senshi]

It looks cool, I think that you should make the bullets' hitbox a little smaller. Also you shouldn't let the player go under the GUI objects like the slowmo bar or the score text.

[Delfigamer]

It looks cool, I think that you should make the bullets' hitbox a little smaller.

Ah, about hitboxes.
Square or circle, something of this actually is not respective object's hitbox. I bet it is "player", his hitbox is centered on square's left top corner.
Also, I really like moments when sprites of the player's hitbox and a bullet intersect but hitboxes themselves doesn't. It looks cool.

[XYXYX]

@delfigamer
yeah, i kinda realised that, it should be drawing you on top of everything though (i think)

also ive noticed the hit boxes are off which is REALLY annoying, as  far as i know it should be fine, this is whats happening:
player size is 5
player box is drawn at playerpos.x - 2,playerpos.y-2,psize,psize
shots have size 7
shot circle drawn at shotx-3,shoty-3,shotsize,shotsize

collisions are done with:
if(vector2(shotx,shoty).isInCircle(playerposition(x and y), 2) kill
so to me, that should be right? if the center point of the shot falls within a circle centered on the player position, with radius 2, kill them

but like you said it seems to be the top left corner

(0,0) is top left of screen in this case

[EthanSilver]

also, do you know why its not showing up now? i thought its timing out due to file file size on the httprequest, i broke the table sorting but it wont load at all now (i tested with 1/2 file size and it did again)

You have this here in your code...
var x=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("game_data");

A quick peek at the console indicates that a "getElementsByTagName" call is being made for a tag that doesn't exist ("game_data"). I had a look at the score file and...
http://www.spacedcat.co.uk/RUSHmupPatternTest00/scores.xml

Code: [Select]

XML Parsing Error: junk after document element
Location: http://www.spacedcat.co.uk/RUSHmupPatternTest00/scores.xml
Line Number 1928, Column 10:</scores>e_data>
---------^
Firefox throws an error saying one of the tags is broken. Line 1928 looks like this...

</scores>e_data>

Seems like something went wrong writing to the file at some point. Your page's code is probably fine, the browser just can't load the score file because it's not a proper xml document. You just need to figure out how it broke (probably while writing scores to the file, I'd think) and you should be good to go.

[Delfigamer]

if(vector2(shotx,shoty).isInCircle(playerposition(x and y), 2) kill

Also you've missed one right bracket. :3
Maybe I could help you more if you showed the code, since this text seems to be right to me. :/

[XYXYX]

@ethansilver
thanks for that! i fixed it now, just have to fix more empty data, i tried adding a check for special characters, but sometimes it seems to miss some and you get empty tags in the file that cause the table to stop

that particular error though was me ftping a fixed scores file while its getting updated i think

what console did you use in firefox? i should really make use of that

@delfigamer
the actual check code is:
if(playing && shots.alphaa > .1 && sp.isInCircle(player.pos,2)){
maybe because the size is 2, not 3 it goes from the player position and only 1px left??

[Delfigamer]

@delfigamer
the actual check code is:

Code: [Select]

if(playing && shots[i].alphaa > .1 && sp.isInCircle(player.pos,2)){ maybe because the size is 2, not 3 it goes from the player position and only 1px left??

No, issue is more than 1px.
What about square/circle drawing stuff?

[Kaze_Senshi]

collisions are done with:
if(vector2(shotx,shoty).isInCircle(playerposition(x and y), 2) kill
so to me, that should be right? if the center point of the shot falls within a circle centered on the player position, with radius 2, kill them

I think that this is wrong, you are doing the collision check of a point and a circle. Since the player is a box, the collision check should be between a box and a circle. I don't know well how to create collision check functions but this paper may have some keywords to help you to do it.

http://www.micsymposium.org/mics2012/submissions/mics2012_submission_44.pdf

[Delfigamer]

I think that this is wrong, you are doing the collision check of a point and a circle. Since the player is a box, the collision check should be between a box and a circle. I don't know well how to create collision check functions but this paper may have some keywords to help you to do it.

http://www.micsymposium.org/mics2012/submissions/mics2012_submission_44.pdf

Oh no. Why you've posted this? Now I feel like my engine won't be good even when I'll finish it.
Also, circles are fine. If you haven't noticed, most of ZUN's hitboxes are circles. Even Toyomi/Monobe arrows are circles. You can check.

[XYXYX]

@delfigamer
i think ive sorted it now (havent updated the download yet), i was changing all the code for centerpoints etc, just realised that ellipse(x,y,width,height) uses x&y as the center, not the topleft like the players rect(), so having the shots draw at(x-3,y-3,7,7) was giving them that 3px offset

@Kaze
it doesnt really matter too much though, the collision point is smaller than the player anyway, so i thought a circle around its origin of 3px would do fine, and using the position of the shot as a point

@delfigamer
what language are you using for your engine??
IF its java, then go grab a copy of toxiclibs, its a DAMN fine library for LOTS of geometry/maths stuff
My positions are Vec2Ds, and the Vec2D class has a nice Vec2D.isInCircle() isInRectangle functions that are nice and fast

[EthanSilver]

what console did you use in firefox? i should really make use of that

It's the default console (ctrl+shift+j). Any browser will give you this info in one way or another - it's an error after all.

[Delfigamer]

@delfigamer
what language are you using for your engine??
IF its java, then go grab a copy of toxiclibs, its a DAMN fine library for LOTS of geometry/maths stuff
My positions are Vec2Ds, and the Vec2D class has a nice Vec2D.isInCircle() isInRectangle functions that are nice and fast

Pff, I'm cool enough to manage memory, binary file streaming, direct use of DirectX and do lots of stuff unavailable in Java, so I use Delphi, it's like c++ with a bit other syntax.
So, I've read this article. Pff, that features are already available in the last stable version, and even some more like actually using Lua, he-he.

[Sparen]

Mac version tested.

It's Okay when you use the built in music. However, when I did custom music... O_O

I got wiped out in 2 seconds using custom music. I'd say that there were about 400 bullets on the screen within those 2 seconds.

On mac, it's fine, but there's an issue with the ReadMe (which is not needed) and the fact that it is forced into fullscreen mode (I though it was going to crash my computer).

[XYXYX]

@Sparen
Depends on the music you use, the first time you play a selected song, its much more sensitive as it finds the loudest part while your playing, any retry after that has the stored maximum volume, what tune did you use?

No idea about that readme issue, Processing compiles the various apps for you, what issue were you refering to?

Hmmm ok fullscreening
@EthanSilver
Im not sure what to do here, if you want it fullscreened without a window border then you have to compile in 'present' mode which forces that fullscreen, if not you can set the size during runtime but youll have the window borders, but you can then set it as an option, so i might have to do that

Ill also add Esc pausing in the next update along with...

New shot types:
Level 2+ -Pattern Animation (shots will fade to white then change direction)
Level 3+ -On beat shots will move horizontally or vertically with a trail
Level 4+ -Certain shots will burst into smaller patterns on the next beat
Level 5 -Shots will home in on player

Level 5 may also spawn multiple patterns with a delay offset to make denser patterns

Fixes:
The shot lifespan will be removed or tweaked to stop them disappearing
The pattern cap will be removed or tweaked
You'll be able to set a player name and generate a player icon
(depending on the fps hit) Ill add in some player stats, like average distances, time played etc, but this might wait until i setup a MySQL database and a more secure way of submitting the player data

Note to self, add average FPS to game_data

[Sparen]

Oh yeah. On MacOSX, esc button instantly crashes the game.