67 replies to this topic

[The Observer]

Official site and demo download:

http://zerobyteorbit.blog135.fc2.com/

So, this was posted on november 8th and it's seriously the surprise of the year. Or the second surprise if we take into account the glorious ring^-27.

The videos speak more than a thousand words (I'll write them anyway =P)





What do we have here? As I said in the test video I sent to the developer: "Hellsinker meets Rez meets Ikaruga meets Cave" with over 9000 of surreal value for the greater good.

I was delightfully surprised at the guy's speed of response and how fast he put up the demo and fixed a big fps issue so I hope he'll be able to finish it sooner or later! It's VERY early in development (there is no game over screen, if you get hit on the first three stages you are instantly kicked to the main menu, replays don't work, the scoring system is still shaping up, I'm assuming we'll eventually see numbers and multipliers everywhere, eh) but it already has four stages to check how it looks and I'm really liking it so far. And the music is crazy awesome punchi punchi of the good kind (the one that goes "pum pum" all day long ala Psyvariar 2).

It uses XNA but the installer comes with everything you need.

The game has a neat "ship switching" mechanic that is best used with a 360 pad or any that has twin sticks. I asked if the movement could be done with keyboard+mouse but, for now, it's pad only. So be warned.

I'm definitely keeping an eye on this one and so should you, guys. In fact, report him your system specs, tell him how the game runs so it can be as optimised as possible.

The boss warning could use a sound but it's already Ikaruga-epic. And fire up Inferno (stage 4?) to see the boss warning. You know from the go this is going to be one hell(sinker) of a surreal trip.

Your ship looks like a lotus, the theme seems to be seeking ascension. Crazy stuff happens.

[ViperAcidZX]

Very surreal indeed.

[Riskbreaker23]

Wh a! Its strange yet cool at the same time.

[Formless God]

I have yet to see the Cave aspect but so far this looks quite promising.

[The Observer]

Formless God, on 10 November 2010 - 06:56 AM, said:

I have yet to see the Cave aspect but so far this looks quite promising.

Oh, it's the danmaku on the Inferno stage and whenever you let enemies fire for more than 1 second. The screen suddenly becomes a mass and mess of blue/bluish bullets. The patterns themselves have that feeling too and are less Touhouish.

By the way, the second ship can be controlled with the right thumbstick so you can position it where you want to.

[Pitamac]

Title made me think it's Touhou, lol.

looking at the videos, it looks very good. Sadly I don't have a pad so I can't play it. :V

[Ghalion]

curse the ikaruga part. I just don't like shmups where you can bypass bullets by ignoring them, absorbing them, deflecting them, whatever. To me shmups are about dodging bullets more than actually shooting stuff. So while the game looks well-done so far for an early development, it doesn't look like it's for me ='(

[UltimaPi]

Koikon, on 10 November 2010 - 07:53 PM, said:

looking at the videos, it looks very good. Sadly I don't have a pad so I can't play it.

This. Sigh... *hopes for keyboardness

[The Observer]

Don't fear to ask him about the keyboard support for the next version. I'll do so too just in case because I really want to map stuff to the keyboard just in case but I fear it might cause problems because you kind of have to move two ships at the same time while firing and dodging.

At the moment it seems the game will be Windows-only until he can figure out most of the stuff. Later on it might probably get an XBLIG release.

[TrevHead]

Isnt there utilities that map controller inputs to mouse and keyboard like an anti xpadder?

What about this? http://www.gold-soft...review12540.htm

[The Observer]

I guess we'll have to ask. I bought a 360 controller (my recent PS2-like pad died...) and the game seems to be more suited for it but I can see controlling the main ship movement and shot/secondary shot with the left/right click and switching ships with the mousewheel while positioning the second ship with the WASD or arrow keys. Could be interesting to try it, I mean, that's what test versions are for, heh.

Also, I just noticed this game has TATE mode.

[The Observer]

Well, there is a new version out! Head to the site linked previously to retrieve it and don't forget to uninstall the previous version before doing anything.

This time it comes with an english readme so please check it out. And he added a new weapon with search lasers. Search awesome!

I've made a video of stage 02 (I think it's by far the hardest) now that I kind of figured out how to stay alive for more than 5 seconds. It might convince some people to try it. Remember the game will not be everyone's cup of tea given the high levels of weirdness and such.



If you have suggestions on how to actually make the ship switching mechanic work with the keyboard (or keyboard+mouse), you can contact deathpiyo via Twitter or Youtube or his site because it would be really good to see such a support available. I have something in mind but I'm not sure if it's viable or if he'll be able to code it in C#/XNA. =/

You have to dodge more now and switch with speed in order to survive some stuff, it gets ridiculously frantic and one mistake equals Game Over. No lives, no continues, no nothing. However, on the Inferno stage you actually don't die but start losing score like crazy whenever you are hit.

[grgspunk]

When is the full version going to come out?

[The Observer]

grgspunk, on 01 December 2010 - 09:06 PM, said:

When is the full version going to come out?

It might take a while... It's a 1-man thing. I'm helping with the testing and optimisation process (I have to admit and say I bought the 360 pad JUST for this game, also I noticed I can use it on Audiosurf, Shatter and Beat Hazard too), reporting any unusual behaviour or decreases in performance (for example, found out the bloom effect would cause performance issues after a while) and now he's testing the game build in a laptop and trying to optimise for it so if it runs nice in a laptop, it'll pretty much run on everything else.

edit: I also asked to add some control options and invert the ships to mouse/keyboard to fit most people (Some might want the main ship in the mouse, some might want it on the keyboard) but it's still really hard to control with the keyboard+mouse.

Can't wait for the finished thing, I mean, it's like this game fell out from the sky right for the Hellsinker/surreal STG fans. Plus the ship switching actually adds a lot of tension trying to switch at the right time to avoid getting pwn'd.

[Pitamac]

I need to get a 360 controller cable so I can plug that damn thing in my laptop...

I need to playtest this..... the music and the visuals look damn awesome.... (can't talk about the gameplay since I haven't played it)
if he'd release this on XBLA or on steam, the dev might make some nice money off it.

I might get my controller hooked up this month, so I can playtest it.


edit: also; what specs does the dev expect a 'laptop' to have? I have a laptop here but I think my specs aren't your typical laptop specs....
If they are close to what you want to test, my laptop can help performance testing.

Edited by Koikon, 03 December 2010 - 06:35 AM.

[The Observer]

There is a new version out, this time with improved keyboard+mouse support. You can switch the ships to the keyboard or the mouse to see whichever suits you. I made a video with the keyboard+mouse in action. If I can do it, so should most people.



A new weapon was added and the game runs smoother, solid 60fps which is good because XNA stuff tends to have some dodgy fps on their Windows/PC versions (Beat Hazard is a big example).

The new weapon has a very Hellsinkeresque feeling to it (it's like a SOL bomb with multidirectional fire).

He also added an assist option for the ship switching although the manual switch feels like the natural way to go. Same deal with the 360 pad. The game is technically made with any twin stick pad in mind.

About the laptop, he commented it has an Atom CPU, so I have to assume it is a relatively new machine? Although japanese people don't seem as hardware-crazy as the western PC users who can run Starcraft 2 in ultra during a 4v4 at max cap and live to tell the tale.

I'll be sending him a message soon about the stuff you guys have been mentioning. He is checking the thread too so I bet he already has in mind all these things. I'm also making a digital painting (well, we could call it fanart too) about the game.

Either way, I would really like him to implement the 8 stages he has in mind and perhaps 1-2 Extras that could crank the levels of epic to Lost Property 771+Quadruple Ones levels and have a tea party with the Stone-Like.

[ViperAcidZX]

Whoa... Now this is an acid trip. O,e It was quite tricky getting the controls of this game considering I am controlling two ships at once with a single joypad, but its a really interest concept. I did ran into a few FPS hiccups sometimes.

[The Observer]

ViperAcidZX, on 03 December 2010 - 01:36 AM, said:

Whoa... Now this is an acid trip. O,e It was quite tricky getting the controls of this game considering I am controlling two ships at once with a single joypad, but its a really interest concept. I did ran into a few FPS hiccups sometimes.

If you don't mind posting your system specs (also the locale if you have WindowsXP just in case) and the model of your pad (so it can be added to the list of working pads) it'll be great. I've also encountered a few moments where things behave a bit weird (well, not Inferno weird... if you saw the boss of that stage you'll get what I mean, it's clearly and heavily on-acid, heh).

Also, if anyone can confirm this, try clearing a stage and watching a replay. I cleared stage 02 but the replay of that particular stage desyncs, something similar to what happened in Mountain of Faith if I'm not wrong.

[Aisha]

This is a dumb question, but there's no way to use a wireless 360 pad with the PC, right? I just remembered that I actually have one of those, because I had only ever used it once, during the initial set up of my J360, before putting it away and forgetting about it in favor of my HRAP EX-SE.

[Pitamac]

So I played it with the mouse and keyboard controls.... and god, it's hard as balls...
I only managed to beat Stage01 and Inferno so far... (since you can't die there anyways. )

I'll attempt to write down my thoughts in the most structured way possible, please excuse any messy writing. It'll be mostly be structural critisism.

So, what do I think about the game so far? plays pretty neat, looks neat and sounds neat, especially for an early test version. The stage design could still use a lot of work though. Stages tend to consist of a few pattern which repeat many, many times..... Could use a bit more variation, but why am I complaining? This is still a very early version.

Backgrounds are nicely done, enemy designs simple but charming. The text constantly flashing onto your screen screams ""HELLSINKER". It runs at a smooth 60 FPS (with bloom) on my laptop with an i3 processor, 2 gigs of RAM, an nVidia GeForce GT 330 and Win 7 64-bit as OS.

If I play a replay in windowed mode, do something in another window, and click on the game window again, the game occasionally crashes. FPS also drops to ±20 when the game window is not the main window.

The bloom effect is gorgeous, though I generally dislike bloom, it works perfectly with the background visuals. I have to warn you about relying too much on the bloom for the visuals, though. Because without the bloom some things look a lot less charming, the start screen in particular, looks boring without the bloom.
Having a way to change the intensity of the bloom would be nice, though. I'd like to put it a little bit lower myself.

giving players an option to set the screen vertical, to turn on/off bloom or to set the game to full screen is nice. Too bad the user settings don't get saved yet.

I haven't played it with an X360 controller (and I doubt this feature would be useful for that anyway..), but the switch assist feature is really neat for keyboard users; switching mouse and key control between ships upon swapping places. Separate highscore boards (both for switch assist on and off) would need to be implemented if you keep this feature in, though (if you'll implement highsore boards). Dodging bullets becomes extremely easy with a good mouse.
Separate HS boards would also be needed for both keyboard+mouse players and pad players.



I might expand this post at a later time. (probably ranting aboot the shot types)


Also, a question; what do those two items do that appear at the start of a stage?