Desktop Danmaku - Project Idea

[Nephiros]

Right, so I've had this little idea for a few days now that I think could make for a fun little game.

The basic concept of it is simple. As the title says, it's danmaku on your desktop. Either on your wallpaper below your windows or always on top of everything and with transparency of choice.

It could be either just for show, it could give a hitbox to the mouse cursor or give you a controllable character so you can dodge and graze while browsing, things like that. Having lots of options would be key. I'm thinking of using BulletML (http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/bulletml/index_e.html) and Bulletmorph (http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/bulletml/bulletsmorph/index.html) for the patterns to leave room for user-created content. My programming skills are limited still, so I'm looking for the most efficient and easiest way to create this - any advice is welcome!

That's it for now, please leave your thoughts about whether this could be interesting or not.

Also hi everyone, I'm new!

[KuraiShoka]

Hmmm, I like this idea!
Is there someway I can help out  :3 ?

[bennelsey]

I think you read my mind lol
i've been working on something very similar for a while now
 

(Though i'm just making it as a mini-game to something bigger)

With the way I'm doing it, actual danmaku (with more than 50 bullets at any given period) will make maintaining 60fps for the game really difficult
This is because of the way drawing directly on the desktop works (on windows  XP with GDI+ framework at least)
1. grab the screen after every window updates themselves
2. draw on this "screenshot"
3. display the new screen

These take way too much time compared to normally drawing on a window, which means you'll need to set a really low limit to your game's bullets
- or you'll require really high specs for your users to just play it (not the way to go)
- or you'll require users to be on at least Vista, methinks it has something to do with how drawing the desktop works differently in that and windows 7 - powered by the same DirectX used for rendering games

But I'll leave questions here in hopes of helping you in one way or another
- what language will you be using?
- how exactly will you be drawing on the desktop to begin with? (there aren't too many ways to do this)

As for allowing user-created content, you have me interested there. I'm not exactly sure what BulletML and Bulletmorph actually are (I just assume they are pretty similar to danmakufu), so i was wondering what you meant by "using them"
You can make something that can run scripts made for those?


[edit]
forgot to mention something really important, if you really want a danmaku game (that isn't too easy because of low bullet limits) I would suggest doing it the same way most of the old desktop games so far have done it:
*take a screenshot of the desktop -> use it as the background for the game

That is simple enough and i've already done it on Game Maker for fun

Though i'm really interested if you can find a way to do danmaku on the desktop and maintaining 60fps on it, pretty big  challenge ^^
[edit2[
removed edit and decided to make it a separate post to bump the thread

[bennelsey]

while i don't really like double posting, but i'll do it anyway since this will help the project starter

i ran some tests some to see how possible it is to have a danmaku game on the desktop, and I have great news for you:


a danmaku game IS possible on the desktop, with some minor adjustments:
1. to have the most bullets possible on screen, only move several at a time (i.e. have some bullets wait while others get into position, something like Reimu's blink card in IN)
2. bullets should have short lifespans, which means if you want them to move a relatively far distance they should move fast (can be combined with #1)
3. bullets should be as small as possible - their size has a direct effect on drawing speed since there will be much more of them than players or enemies in a danmaku game

with that said, good luck on your game!

[Unassuming Squid]

If you actually manage to do this I will love you forever.

If you make it so that making your own characters/patterns is about as easy as making your own Shimeji, that would be even better.