[C+C] Bullet Void - a SHMUP

[mega_19]

downloaded and played your game, and its amazing! 
its really fun!

[Skaz]

Well thanks you very much mega_19! I appreciate you gave me a bit of your time. Anything wrong you noticed, what was good/bad in your opinion?

Practically finished the ship for the artwork. But as I'll probably be to lazy to modify it, I think I'll call it DONE.

[wzl]

I gave it a brief play as well and what i can say so far is, it feels good to move and shoot around. which is the important part. the frustrating part, to me at least, was that the bullets speed are hella slow. its hard to aim and hit something specific, especially with the erratic movement patterns of the enemies.

visually it feels pretty satisfying. explosions are great, the ships look cool. only thing that stands out negatively to me are the asteroids

[Skaz]

Thank you for your feedback! I really appreciate it.

I totally understand your point about bullet speed, the fact is your projectiles are affected by your own motion while firing. It can be disorienting at first and requires to anticipate that fact. Did you tried to shoot with the machine gun from afar? The ideal technique is to try to be close of the targets, shooting from a long distance is not meant to be efficient. Lure them to follow you on top of the screen, steer violently backward and pass behind them. Dogfighting!

I also understand that enemies can be demanding to fight, they don't simply obey a pattern, they really want you dead. And they want to stay alive too. But it's really rewarding once you get it, you can take them down real quick. Single missile and a little burst, job done.

Anyway, gameplay is at an early stage, a lot of thing can and will change in the future. Feedbacks are very important, thank you again!

What did you mean about the asteroids? Did you think they stand out negatively visually or in terms of interactions? Both? Did they feel out of place compared to the ships? Right now their implementation is really basic. They will blow up and create more, smaller asteroids.

[Decroded]

I think ur designs r great I like how they have a unique style instead of copying too heavily off other games.
there are design changes u could make to appeal to wider audiences but I like the niche feeling of this project.
star wars ships r cool I had an idea to do a side scroller pf star wars one day but probably never get around to it lol.

The 3d ship looks really great good lighting colours and chunky shapes in the design makes it look like some kind of cool space tank.
I think the way the turret connects to the body could be improved it just doesnt look right so consider some references of real military weapons such as navy ship machine guns.
the blue energy coloured light in centre of chassis is throwing me off too its kinda hard to tell what it is and looks like an out of place design choice as a weak spot among all the armour.

the asteroids are plain ugly lol suffering from pillow shading and complete lack of texture.
my suggestion is pick a global light source as well as a subtle secondary backlight that you use just on the most shadowed parts of objects u want to stand put against the darkness of space.

Here's a recent topic about asteroids I posted my process in there if it helps and check out ryumara's version too very cool.
http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=17777.0

[Skaz]

Thanks for the feedback Decroded!

What kind of design changes have you in mind? I don't aim specifically at any public, this game is more a training than a real game.
I might re design the turret, it looks a bit to small compared to the barrels. I get what you mean with the central light, considering none of the other ships have similar stuff, I will probably throw it off. The ships are "kinda" aimed at semi-realistic design, and this can look odd.

I get the criticism for the asteroids, but my main problem is that they can rotate. If a choose a directional light, rotations will look out of place. I chose the zenithal approach to allow such rotations. So I don't really know what to do, throw rotations off, make lateral lights, try to improve the current lights... I'll have to make some tests I guess. Maybe go with strong directional lights on the big ones, and make it zenithal on the small ones, make them rotate...

An other solution would be allowing asteroids to rotate only when inside the screen, and very subtly. This way they rotate, but not long enough for it to become chocking regarding their light sources :p

EDIT:

Ok, so I'll made it more of a tank. The turret will keep this shape, to be in accordance with the in-game sprites, I just made it bigger to fit the HUGE barrels.

[Decroded]

I think what feels wrong about the turret is there is no counter-weight.
I'm no scientist but I think the motor would spin more efficiently if the weight in front and behind were balanced instead of a tiny turret with a big fat gun hanging off it.

How about mounting it in something like this kind of turret which explains how it can move horizontally and vertically? You could sink alot of the machinery inside the design and just have the 2 hinges poking out and a hole carved under for it to rotate.
Otherwise there's ball turrets (minus the space for a guy inside obviously).
Also check this out for an idea of what could be going on inside and also just coz it looks sick.

[Skaz]

3 months later....

I'm finally back on this project, determined to finish it as fast as possible. I made a new asteroid, what do you think?



The current ones, for comparison:

[Pusty]

I looks better but I'm not sure if I would see a asteroid if you wouldn't have told it

[Howard Day]

Oh, man! I love what you're doing here. I sort of wish the explosions were meatier, but i do like the sucking fx at the end... like the black hole powering them has cut loose. can't wait to see more!