TOSSTNE

[entertainment.net]

This post by entertainment.net was thumbed up by:

Killswitch (May 8th, 2012, 4:27 pm)

[Canine]

Here's a suggestion...

Small Blue = 1 Hit
Small Brown = 2 Hit
Purple Ones w/ Shield = 1 Missile
Big Blue = 5 Hits
Big Pink = 5 Hits
Carpet Bomber = 3 Missiles/ 10 Hits

[fourinone]

This is a good start, but it has some balancing issues. In this style of Shoot 'em up, where enemies are tough, come in swarms, and move forward mostly in a straight line, and you shoot only in front of you, destroying foes punctually before they overwhelm you by filling the entire screen is a top priority. This is a trait shared by many shmups of this style, I've noticed. Neglecting even one enemy would spell trouble, since more enemies would appear behind it, effectively blocking off that column of space, since you can't attack sideways, and you don't have enough time to jump in and destroy a ship before it crosses the lower boundary. This limits your movement space, and eventually you'll be confined to a single narrow column which is not populated by enemies.
In your game, given the toughness of the enemies and your relatively low damage output, this trap is very difficult to prevent.

I don't know if you have different plans in the future, but right now, it's suggested that the goal of the game is to destroy enemies, since you're awarded points solely for defeating enemies and not for simply surviving and dodging. This is a problem, though, because the enemies are rather hard to kill, and since you don't have much HP, you'll be spending most of your time dodging rather than killing. In my playthroughs, I found myself killing only the weak blue enemies while dodging all the rest, then hoping for a box containing a good upgrade.

One thing that you have to keep in mind is that an enemy's SPEED, not just its HP, factors into its endurance. The faster an enemy is, the less time you have to move in and the fewer shots you can get in. This is especially noticeable with the shooting enemies, since they are rather fast and still take four hits to kill. It's even worse if you want to take time to dodge its bullets. Same deal with the orange enemies that move back and forth: its movement pattern already causes most of your bullets to miss, so it should probably get less HP. A good way to measure this "endurance" is to see how much of the screen you need to destroy it. This means that if you start shooting at it when it first appears at the top of the screen, and don't destroy it until it's more than halfway across the vertical length of the screen, maybe that's a bit too much HP.

So basically, the objective of the game is to kill enemies, so you need to either build around this objective, or change your objective.

I suggest using one or more of the following:
- decrease enemy health
- increase your rate of fire
- different firing patterns than directly in front of you, such as spread shot (this might be a powerup already, but I haven't encountered it)
- more varied enemy movement, e.g. diagonally
- higher missile capacity, and/or missile regenerate naturally over time (or some way to acquire missiles other than killing foes)
- more abundant powerups, and are temporary (to balance it out)
- award points for amount of time survived

Bug Report:
- after the bomber passes, the sound of bombs being dropped keeps going (my guess is the bomber is not reset)
- after a while (about three minutes in), enemies stopped appearing, besides the purple ones and powerup boxes, then after a bit those stop coming as well (could this be due to enemies being spawned with 0 or negative speed?)
- not a bug, but double bullets makes the game lag dramatically (maybe something can be done?)
- one of the powerups makes it so your bullets can't do damage

Also, a description of what each item does would be useful; I can't figure out some of them, such as the curve thing dropped by the shooting enemies.

[entertainment.net]

A few responses:

a) I will be weakening the enemies.
b) I'm going to make a few more upgrades, and make them more commonplace.
c) I'm going to modify the gun a bit.
d) They stop appearing after 3-ish minutes because it's supposed to add in tougher ones, but I haven't made them yet.


Bugfixes:
a) remove bomber movieclip earlier
b) enemy spawn responded above
c) gun will be modified
d) I'll take a look at the damage power-up's code.

I will add a power-ups list, in more detail, to the instructions screen.
Thanks for the feedback!

[entertainment.net]

V.0.1.1

Updates in the link.

[fourinone]

Awesome, an update!

Now I'm kind of worried that the game is too easy now! o_O I know I gave a bunch of suggestions, but I wasn't really expecting that you'd use so many of them. :O I think the speed boost received from level up more than made up for your weak bullets. It seems too difficult to die now, since you now get more HP and higher dodging capabilities when you level up...maybe take out the HP increase? I thought the amount of HP you got in the previous version was fair, especially now when shields are easier to get. I also still think powerups should be temporary.

So yeah, the game is kind of easy now, but you mentioned that there were going to be tougher enemies appearing later. If the demo can be considered "level 1", I think the difficulty may be alright, then.

V.0.1.1 Bug Report:
- If you hold down X, missiles are fired rapidly with no delay. (I killed a bomber with this. )
- Minor thing, but it looks like the bullet jumps forward a little after hitting an enemy if you have the piercing powerup.

Also, a description of the items dropped by the enemies would be nice, too.

[entertainment.net]

Well, about the jump. That's just so that when shot at an enemy, the bullet won't apply damage every frame it touches them.
I'm not sure how to fix that in another way

And with the missiles...
I was going to change the missile timing script, so I deleted the old one and forgot about it.
So yeah...

Just a preview of what's to come:

~Stealth Striker
~NegaPlayer
~Pod Ship
~Frigate
~Repulsor Blast

[entertainment.net]

Version 0.1.2 is on!

Lemme know how it works out.

[entertainment.net]

Disclaimer: show

This isn't double post/bump because I'm vmk and I'm responding to narfnin.

Here's just a list of bugs that I've found:
• Filler text on preloader overlaps the loadbar (at least on my comp). Breaking the text apart into vectors should work.
• I have no idea how to use the repulsor. Is it automatic (in which case it's broken), or is there a button you have to press? Either way, putting a description in the the instructions would help.
• Piercing upgrades keep coming even after you've already got piercing. If you collect a second upgrade, it turns piercing off, and you can't get it back.
• Also, one last suggestion: Add in highscores with cookies.

That is all.

---

vmk89

[entertainment.net]

V.0.1.3 is up!

edit: Text should be OKAY, repulsor is 'Z', pierce should be fixed, and Cookie-based features are on the way.



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