67 replies to this topic

[The Observer]

ViperAcidZX, on 11 June 2011 - 01:50 AM, said:

So anything good or bad with deathpiyo?

Good as in he composed a bunch of new music, reworked the menus and gave the finishing touches to some stages.

His cat died as well. While this might appear as a minor detail, he mentioned it was a disease or something but I thought it could've been due to the radiation effects after two months of that...

Bad news regarding his health (he needs to visit rehab periodically due to the disease, the whole earthquake didn't help with this) so, like with Stella Vanity, patience is the only option.

[ViperAcidZX]

Oh God, I feel sorry for the loss of his cat. T_T

[The Observer]

ViperAcidZX, on 11 June 2011 - 07:06 PM, said:

Oh God, I feel sorry for the loss of his cat. T_T

Me too, it's the least thing you want to happen after being isolated for weeks, 50km away from the Fukushima Dainichi plant and pretty much thinking you are going to die...

BUT, spring is here (well, in Japan) and deathpiyo came with AWESOME good news: progress on UTL is steady and he's reworking menus (for accessibility, he's adding japanese text below the english), music and general stuff. He added captions and stage names, redesigned a bit the main ships, changed patterns and formations, fixing the inferno stage to make it the real punishment stage it should be (for example, by pumping up even more the speed of the music) all in all, this is looking to be fucking awesome and crazy surreal in capitals.

Can't wait to try the new version!!!

[chk]

Will you add another gameplay video on YT when it's finished? I always love watching those because I suck playing them myself

[The Observer]

Well, this was unexpected. Deathpiyo released an early test version to show what he's been doing.



The download link is at the official site.

The bloom effect is a bit too strong, at least for me. It does make things look prettier but I think it should have some configuration like with Genetos (so we can set it to OFF, 25, 50, 75 and 100 bloom). There are some improvements in performance (which is welcomed considering the increased amount of flak) although for some weird reason the spawning dainichi items now cause a strange fps hiccup.

As for the increased difficulty, it's also very welcomed but stage 1 now packs some nasty, nasty tricks.

I've also noticed that if you go overboard shooting and not even allowing things to shoot, things get easier but your score will be quite bad. You kind of have to let the enemies fill the screen with bullets then start switching like mad to cancel for points. This is very noticeable in stages 00 and 02.

The transfer system is now officially nicknamed Soul Transfer Process (S.T.P.).

I hope he will be able to finish the game sooner or later so it doesn't happen like the Rosenkreuzstilette sequel always postponed due to the author's health. Why do good people have to suffer from serious sickness and stuff... =(

[ViperAcidZX]

I like where this is going. Did you suggest the idea for changing the bloom settings to deathpiyo? And if ask me, let's just say fate conspires against people like deathpiyo and isemiya from [erka:es].

[The Observer]

ViperAcidZX, on 13 June 2011 - 09:51 PM, said:

I like where this is going. Did you suggest the idea for changing the bloom settings to deathpiyo? And if ask me, let's just say fate conspires against people like deathpiyo and isemiya from [erka:es].

He released an update to adjust bloom density. Let's see how that performs, heh. As for the fate... Fate can be really evil!

If you guys check Inferno you'll notice the enemies move a bit different (kind of like they are dancing to the music) but they don't shoot patterns yet. Whatever bullets you see come from the point items you don't pick up so it's like you are playing the stage backwards.

Same deal with Stage 2 where you face the boss first and the stage later! Pretty nice for a change, especially because Indra (the boss) is absolutely weird and the Hatsune Miku-like singing coupled with the brutal headbanging techno punchi punchi makes it crazier.

[Aisha]

That looks pretty polished.

Does this game have a story? I see Hellsinker-ish flashes of text throughout the stage. The game looks so surreal and abstract that one would likely interest me.

[The Observer]

It only gets crazier in regards of the text and stuff. Inferno boss is literally on LSD.

As for the story, the readme has a small chart that is simply priceless. In short: you are a brother who adored/loved Miroku Bosatsu, aka, Maitreya *cue Mai-chan from Nichijou hugging a Maitreya wooden statue* and his sister killed him so now you are both linked together in a surreal, epic quest for ascension against freaking everything, including insanity and Hell. So yes, you seek to become ascended Buddhas/spiritual beings. But karma weighs heavily!

No wonder the opening stage is called "The Ascending Function". The latest tunes I listened to really made me think about reality-breaking bosses and brutal patterns.

Also, guess that's why the boss names are put in sanskrit if I'm not wrong.

http://www.onmarkpro...ml/miroku.shtml

And guess this is Indra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra

Maybe someone could ask deathpiyo for more info. As it is, I like mysteries, heh.

[mjclark]

Wow! Sanskrit in an STG! TF VI has Mongolian but this is way better.
Turning down Bloom Density makes my screen really, really dark- is that supposed to happen?
Still developing the ambidextrous skills to play this properly. It's not just a shmup, it involves some real body co-ordination skills (like Raiden III dual play) which makes this even more FUN eh?

[ViperAcidZX]

I just installed the latest version of the game, and all I have to say is...

HOLY SHIT THIS IS A HUGE IMPROVEMENT SINCE THE LAST TIME I TESTED THIS GAME!! XwX Last time was ver. 3d

I'm really glad he took my advice on the menus, now it's a lot simpler for Arrow Keys Z X abusers like myself. Graphics, better; HUD, definitely; Keyboard controls, tighter than from what I can remember, still learning how to control these two with the mouse and keyboard; and Inferno's boss, can I smoke whatever deathpiyo is smoking?

[The Observer]

ViperAcidZX, on 15 June 2011 - 02:01 AM, said:

I just installed the latest version of the game, and all I have to say is...

HOLY SHIT THIS IS A HUGE IMPROVEMENT SINCE THE LAST TIME I TESTED THIS GAME!! XwX Last time was ver. 3d

I'm really glad he took my advice on the menus, now it's a lot simpler for Arrow Keys Z X abusers like myself. Graphics, better; HUD, definitely; Keyboard controls, tighter than from what I can remember, still learning how to control these two with the mouse and keyboard; and Inferno's boss, can I smoke whatever deathpiyo is smoking?

heh, glad to see this enthusiasm because it's the kind of stuff he needs at the moment. I also want to know if he's sharing the smoke =P

The controls are tightier, yeah, far more responsive than before. Same with the performance. Just DO NOT attempt to play this with wireless keyboard+mouse. Sane advise. You have to plug those with cables or else the input lag will be noticeable. This comes from a personal experience (I have a wireless Logitech set and I'm already thinking about dropping it for my old wired ones!).

Btw, I suggested to add more "No Mercy" patterns to the stage 01 boss because it kind of gets locked in the same pattern for a long time until you can trigger its berserker/final stage mode where it goes crazy shooting stuff everywhere, which by the way is one of the scoring pillars: cycling through boss phases as fast as possible to get to the final boss stage and finish it in that last mode. It's quite tricky to do it with the stage 02 since it'll time out rather quickly so you have to be fast... and that isn't easy when the thing literally showers flak and you have to control two ships at once.

edit: the last paragraph translates as "forgive me if suddenly stage 01 boss gets even more difficult".

edit2: New version with the boss patterns added is up. It just got crazy difficult.

[Pitamac]

Will download it later today and tell what I think about it.

And yeah, don't play games like this with a wireless keyboard. The input lag will screw you over. Wireless mouse is fine for me, though.

[Aisha]

Can someone please upload the game pre-installed? The installer is pretty weird and I don't really want to risk it messing things up. :\

[ViperAcidZX]

Aisha, on 16 June 2011 - 03:56 AM, said:

Can someone please upload the game pre-installed? The installer is pretty weird and I don't really want to risk it messing things up. :\

I'm not sure if that's possible because one time I tried to WinRAR the game into my computer after installing it, then uninstall it and my game didn't work and extracting the archieve. I'll try and see if I can get a pre-installed one ready.

[Aisha]

Thanks. The installer tried to install .Net Framework 3.5 and XNA, and I'm pretty sure that I already have both. The installer also appeared to hang.

[ViperAcidZX]

I'm back with good news. I got test ver3h here pre-installed and ready to play. Turns out the game (if not other XNA games, but I could be wrong) are installed to the AppData folder for Windows Vista and 7 users. I found the game somewhere under the "Local" section of AppData and it was somewhere within one of those folders. I'm not sur if you also need the latest XNA or the version the game is compatible with.

[The Observer]

ViperAcidZX, on 16 June 2011 - 10:34 AM, said:

I'm back with good news. I got test ver3h here pre-installed and ready to play. Turns out the game (if not other XNA games, but I could be wrong) are installed to the AppData folder for Windows Vista and 7 users. I found the game somewhere under the "Local" section of AppData and it was somewhere within one of those folders. I'm not sur if you also need the latest XNA or the version the game is compatible with.

Zeit2 (another XNA game) does the exactly the same thing with the runtime (and it also hangs), but it puts install data on the Steam Folder. I think you are forced to include these runtimes if you are going to distribute the game... Microsoft stuff. That's why the Beat Hazard dude ported the game from XNA to C++ and began coding from there for PC.

[ViperAcidZX]

The Observer, on 16 June 2011 - 12:50 PM, said:

Zeit2 (another XNA game) does the exactly the same thing with the runtime (and it also hangs), but it puts install data on the Steam Folder. I think you are forced to include these runtimes if you are going to distribute the game... Microsoft stuff. That's why the Beat Hazard dude ported the game from XNA to C++ and began coding from there for PC.

-Off Topic-

Spoiler

Heard about how Microsoft's rejecting Steve for publishing Beat Hazard Ultra on XBLA? What a bunch of arch-douches, especially since they got the original on their (mostly) crappy XBLIG service.

[The Observer]

ViperAcidZX, on 16 June 2011 - 11:53 PM, said:

-Off Topic-

Spoiler

Heard about how Microsoft's rejecting Steve for publishing Beat Hazard Ultra on XBLA? What a bunch of arch-douches, especially since they got the original on their (mostly) crappy XBLIG service.

Spoiler

Proves once again why I dislike Microsoft. Not just for not ever releasing the 360 here or treating us like 3rd rate customers... They even do it to the very developers that try to submit stuff =/ Look at what happened to the Doucette brothers, it's really heart breaking! All that stupid rating abuse...

By the way, deathpiyo registered to the forums and is actively reading and checking so, yep, any suggestions or commentary are welcomed. Post performance related stuff and such too, those are important.

The bloom looks awesome now! Epic surreal awesome! (and spiritual too)