Shmuppy shmup mockup

[huZba]

Starting a shmup mockup. Collecting power ups upgrades the ship graphic as well. For gimmicks i was thinking about having 3 elements for shots, so you have 3 shot buttons firing red/green/blue and corresponding colors for enemies as well as a neutral one. Some enemies have multiple colors and some you don't know until they shoot their own bullets. For example shooting a red enemy with red does nothing or powers up the enemy. If the enemy is powered up and you shoot it with another color to destroy it, you get more points/items/powerups. Probably could use this on level structures as well.

So far i have 3 power up levels as well as the red shot. Might add a 4th "overpower" level that only lasts for a set amount of time before reverting back to level 3.
Taking a minor hit takes off one power up, taking a major hit kills you.

[Ragnarok]

Ooo, very purty. I also like the background solar cloud/debris thingys. However, on the last upgrade, it kind of looks like it's facing backwards, and the middle bullets are too close to read as seperate entities. I think, with the colour things, you should make the different colours different weapon types (kinda like in Demonstar, I think)

[Faceless]

The final upgrade doesn't feel like an upgrade at all.
It just looks like an alternate ship design. I'd feel seriously ripped off if I was playing the game.
As for weapon upgrades, they're a bit underwhelming. 7 bullets as opposed to 6? You can do better than that!
Also, I always enjoy a shmup more when there are tons of upgrades.
1 bullet > 2 bullets > 2 bullets and 2 missiles > spread shot > wider spread shot > wider spread shot and 2 missiles > beam of ultimate destruction.
Something more along these lines.

[AdamAtomic]

haha I don't think I would feel ripped off, but I agree that the third ship should be beefed up some more, and that the middle bullets are too close.  New weapon types or additional weapon types would be very welcome (like add a beam in the middle instead of close bullets maybe?).  Your ideas about the gameplay and game balance sound pretty fun too, let's see some more of this!

[LoTekK]

Your proposed gameplay and control scheme seem like the lovechild of Ikaruga and Ether Vapor. Awesome.

I definitely agree about the third ship. Something beefier, or sleeker. I know size isn't supposed to matter, but right now it almost looks like a downgrade from the second one. :p I like the idea of adding a central beam to replace the middle bullets, though if you want to keep the bullets, a wider design would allow you to spread the guns a bit more evenly.

[huZba]

Thanks guys! Tried making the third ship more powerful looking. More noticable weapon upgrades and a small spread for the last red one. Now i'm thinking along lines:
 Blue: Precision. Can be used to destroy specific targets and/or smite the core Gradius style, when the other weapons just can't effectively reach the core.
 Green: maybe bombs/plasmaballs that blow up a really large area. Good if you have screen full of one-hit enemies, but not so good for beefy single targets.
 Red: Somewhere in between of red and green, good for small consentrations of medium strength enemies or big enemies with multiple targets inside, like turrets.

Effectiveness pokemon style: Red wins green, green wins blue, blue wins red

Bus trip to work takes some time, so i always have time to think of useless things, so i pretty much came up with a story as well 
BG is still placeholder, but i'll probably do something similarly in monochrome.

[EyeCraft]

Oh, very nice! Stages 2 and 3 of the blue weapon, at their ends where they are 'contacting' with the target, its a little noisy. Stage 1 in comparison is smoother.

Stages 1 and 2 of blue, with the tendrils of lightning feeding from the ship into the main beam, they don't look like they connect nicely with the beam, I'll do an edit;



Editted the 2nd beam's start and end to show what I mean.



Just edited the colours of the shots in this one to up the contrast of them.

[AdamAtomic]

good progress and edits!  third ship is definitely looking beefier but it looks a bit non-aggressive now, more A-wing than X-wing (which i generally prefer, but for the like top-upgrade level, i think scarier would work better here).  like the new gameplay ideas too!

[Zero]

I think the lasers on the third would look better if they went out of the ship in an arc of 6 or so shots. The five going forward and two off to the side layout doesn't look that good imo. An arc would look much better.

Love how this is coming along. 

[Ragnarok]

It may not be a pixel-orientated critique, but to add to gameplay, variety, and difficulty give the player a load of incompatible weapons before a section of enemies that need a different type.