Let the sunshine in!

Work on Elements of Magic continues, and I don’t mind saying, it is starting to feel kind of cool at this point.  While I want to do a real writeup later for one of the new weapons, (similar to the homing attacks, although the final result is a little more interesting.)  Meanwhile though, I figured I’d post a few quick screenshots of a new boss I coded up over Thanksgiving.

Winter is Coming!

Long-time fans of my work (that’s right, both of you!) may recognize this fellow from a previous game or two.  I didn’t really set out to put the happy-go-lucky “Cloud 9″ in every game I made, but I needed a good mid-boss with a good wind-based theme other than “extreme speed” (since that’s taken by the stage boss) and there he was, all weathery and everything.  So I guess he gets to stay.  And now that he’s been in THREE games, I’m probably stuck with him.  So it goes, I guess.  I think he came out pretty well this iteration though, if I do say so myself!

The secrets of how it was made.

Recently got around to [finally] writing the starter gun for Elements of Magic.  The friendly, nice gun that the player starts out with, to introduce them to the game.  It had some design challenges, and since the whole process was kind of interesting, I figure I’ll document it, and see if I can’t provide some insight into exactly what sorts of things I think about when putting together a shmup weapon.

So, here we go!

First off, let’s talk a little about what needs to go into any shmup weapon.  In general, a shmup weapon should:

• Be distinct from other weapons in some interesting, gameplay-related way.  Preferably through some unique property or advantage.
• Involve some tradeoff.  Work well in some situations, while less well in others.  Should have at least one easily identifiable situation where it shines.
• Conversely, have at least one general  situation where it is actually a sub-optimal choice.
• Never be completely useless, even in sub-optional situations.  (I like to go with the metric “it should never be at worse than 50% efficiency.)  The player should never feel “stuck” because they hit a situation that the gun is just bad for.
• Have some form of risk/reward built into the weapon, where there is a constant, interesting choice for the player to make, where they can consciously assume  some form of risk, in exchange for some form of payoff.

Attempt one:  Basic vanilla homing.

First try: Basic nonstop homing.

So I knew off the bat that this was going to be a homing gun.  This is intended as the “starter gun” that you have when you start the game.  It needs to therefore be both newbie friendly and effective, while still not being so overpowering that you never switch to other guns when you earn them.  Homing is a good match for this, since it is a concept most people are very familiar with, and can understand quickly.  (And as a bonus, it is effective even if they don’t do anything to make use of it – it just happens.)

• Shots tend to blur together into a solid stream.  (This is purely aesthetic, but I think I’d like it to be more distinct.  I want it to be more of homing shots, not one long homing laser.)
• Homing greatly reduces the importance of player positioning.  Shots go after the nearest enemy, so it occasionally matters where you are, but for the most part, it doesn’t matter where you are on screen.
• There is no risk/reward anywhere.  Nothing you do can make the gun perform better or worse.

Attempt two:  Slowing things down, splitting things up.

Attempt #2: Now there are non-homing shots as well as homing shots!

So thoughts at this point about how to fix these things:  The first one is easier.  Make fewer, higher damage bullets, and maybe give them more distinct trajectories.  The second one is harder.

For making player positioning, my first thought is to make the bullets do more damage at the beginning, and then have their damage fall off the longer they take to find a target.  This would reward people for being up-close to their enemies.  But there are a few things that concern me about this solution.  For one thing, I’m worried about conveying this to the user.  I can make the bullets start big and shrink, but I’m not sure that will be enough to make it obvious, and this is supposed to be a super-simple gun.

More worryingly though – if this is supposed to be a very newbie-friendly gun, it feels wrong to make it only work well if they are edging up close to the enemies and putting themselves into extreme danger.  While that could be a fun mechanic, and I may use it later for a different gun, I think I’ll pass on it for now.  It just feels too much at cross-purposes with the homing gun concept.   Part of the advantage of the homing gun in general is that it is a good long-range weapon.  So forcing people to get in close to make use of it just feels too much like muddled design.

So I think on it some more, and come up with plan B:  I think I can make it work if I split the gun into two components.  Instead of a constant stream of homing bullets, I’m going to try splitting the gun into two parts.  A basic vulcan-style shot that fires straight ahead at high speeds, and homing bullets spewing out from the sides.   This gives me a few benefits:

• First and foremost, position matters again!  Since half the damage comes from the direct shots, you can can do better by actually positioning under the thing you are aiming at.
• There is a risk/reward tradeoff now.  You can do better by staying directly under your target, but it is not required.
• Unlike the first idea, it still works fine at long range.   Position matters, but not to the extent that it forces you to get up close and personal with dangerous enemies.
• You have more control over your shots.  One problem before was that sometimes the shots would lock onto things you didn’t want, and you would have to wait for them to get to the thing you actually wanted to destroy.  With this change you can guarantee that at least half of your damage will go towards the target of your choosing.

Things are looking pretty good now!  It just needs a little polish.  It doesn’t have as many interesting choices as I’d like yet, but it is already quite a serviceable gun.

Attempt three:  The importance of concentration

Concentration! Fewer homing, but a lot of damage straight ahead.

I’ve been glossing over at least one issue so far.  While I’ve been talking about it as if I were designing a gun, what I actually need are effectively two guns.  One normal, and one when the user is “concentrating their fire”.  (i. e. holding down the shift key and moving slowly.)  Normally guns change their properties slightly when the player is concentrating their shots.

• Participating in the “hey let’s make a game in 1 hour” minijam.  (We took 1.5 hours, but it was fun anyway.  We weren’t the only ones who went over.)  The inestimable Brendan Mauro handled the art, while Jim Crawford and I sat and stared at code.  We made a game about steadily expanding sumo wrestlers, and maybe when I get some time I will post it here because it is rad.
• Eating lunch with random indie people who were visiting from Canada, making jokes about how everyone in Canada knows each other, bringing up Kate Beaton as a shining example of Canadiosity, only to discover that not only does he, in fact, know her personally, but he used to be her roommate.  Inescapable Conclusion:  Everyone from Canada knows each other.  This has now been proven by Science.
• Admiring Brendan’s fine collection of Lego art, depicting various indie games.  (It is a testament to his lego skillz that they were all quite recognizable in spite of the transition between mediums.)
• Discovering over lunch that Brendan was into Celtic tunes, and I am into Celtic tunes, and I had my tinwhistle, and he had an accordion, and having an impromptu jam session out in the parking lot.  (He actually didn’t have his accordion with him, but serendipitously, someone else had brought one which we were able to commandeer.)
• Watching the epic Red Ice tournament on the big screen.
• Watching Team Meat give out Meatboy sound tracks, and then write terrible, terrible things on them, at peoples’ request.
• Seeing all the simply amazing things everyone else was working on.  There was probably too much to list, but the one that sticks out in my mind the most right now is probably “Eels being dicks” simply because it had a name that was both awesome as well as incredibly apt.

So what have we learned from all of this?

Jams are Awesome.

I've been making a game!

Well, it’s that time of year again.  IGF has rolled around.  And with it, a new game announcement!  From me! So while I’m sure in the coming days we’ll see an incredible deluge of amazing games by talented people on the IGF site, I figure I’ll take a moment and talk about my own humble contribution to the festival. A little something I like to call “The Elements of Magic”.

It’s true.  I’ve been working on a new game, and while it’s not done yet, it is at least far enough along that I don’t feel quite so embarrassed showing it.  In what should be no real surprise to anyone who has followed my games, it is another SHMUP.  And it doesn’t even have the strange mechanics of Negative SpaceCraft, or the weird role reversal from Boss Rush!  So what DOES it have?  Well, a few neat things.  Read on to find out more!

So this is a game I started writing a bit over half a year ago, in response to a very specific problem:  I like SHMUPS.  And I know a few other people who also like SHMUPS.  But I have an awful lot of friends who like to watch SHMUPS in action, but who don’t really feel comfortable playing them.  They look too hard.  They die too fast, and even if I try to play co-op with them, they end up dying a lot, stealing all of my continues, and then feeling bad about it later.

This is a game for them.

This is a game for everyone who has a friend who is good at SHMUPS, who wants to participate, without feeling like they are dragging the person down.  This is a game for everyone who likes the pretty patterns, but is too intimidated to try playing themselves.  This is a game with a stated design goal of “I want a SHMUP I can play with my Mom.”

I’ll save the details of how I’m trying to go about this for another post.  But meanwhile, here is a teaser video of the game in action!  (Which, sadly, shows off none of the multiplayer fun, since it was made on the day of the IGF deadline, when no one was around to help me multiplay it.  So it goes!)

In particular, I am paying the fine folks over at Indie Games for Good to spend some quality time with Negative Spacecraft.  Because they are a charity!  And the money they collect goes to something cool, like Child’s Play!  And because, you know what?  I still have a soft spot for that game, and the idea of forcing someone  to play it and fight that stupid bear on livestream while I watch remotely from my volcano-island lair is my idea of a good time.  (Don’t judge me!)

Anyway, if this sounds like your idea of a good time, you should totally go give them money.  Pick a game out of their (fairly exhaustive) list of indie games and pull out your wallet, and BAM!  You have converted your money into their attention, like some sort of fiscal alchemist!  Also, noteworthy because at least one of them is the inestimable Mogwai_Poet, who’s tweets you should probably be following if you aren’t already.

I’ve been good!  Terrible about keeping you up to date about my goings on of course, but you’re probably used to that by now.  And other than that, things are going swell!

GDC is of course, this week.  I hope to see many cool people there!  (I have already been seeing many cool people in preparation, since folks like the Final Form Games are out on this coast at the moment.  We hung out on Friday, and it was rad!)   Also it is sounding like there is a TIGSource meetup, and several misc. indie events going on, so I have high hopes for the quality of the random dudes I will meet in the next few days.

In other news, I have a new project, which I’ve been working on ever since Negative Spacecraft.  I am pretty proud of it!  It’s a little bit more ambitious, in some ways, but it is coming along quite nicely, and I’m very happy with the direction it is going.  I’ll do a more formal announcement (with, you know, actual details) once I get a little bit further along.  If I run into you at a party this week though, there is at least a 50% chance I will attempt to draft you into playing it, so consider yourself warned.

So.  Here begins a week of parties, indie gaming, and awesome random dudes.  Life is good!

Negative SpaceCraft!!!

Well, it has been a long and crazy development path, but I am happy to announce that my most recent game, Negative SpaceCraft, has been officially launched!

You can play it over at AddictingGames.com.

Or if you would prefer to read about it, you can do that too.

I have you covered, gentle reader!

First off, I was incredibly gratified to see this article.  While Hydorah was a shoe in for #1, I was incredibly gratified to see Boss Rush even made the list, let alone snagged a respectable placement on it!  (Also gratifying was that, based on the comments, some new people played it who hadn’t seen it yet.  And liked it!)

Second of all:  Final Form Games has snagged an honorable mention for audio in this year’s IGF!   Congrats fellows!  That is no small feat!

Finally:  Negative SpaceCraft!  Nearly released.  Once again, it has been done for a month or two, but I have been bogged down in sponsor-getting.  How do I keep doing this?  I need to not try to release games right before I go on vacation for the holidays, I think.  But it will be public soon.  Soon, I tell you!  Soon!

IGF time!

It’s mid-October, and the pumpkins are out.  And, potentially more interesting, the list of IGF entries for the year is out as well.  There are some fantastic things on that list!  And while there is one of them at least, that I have a certain amount of bias towards, I think I will highlight a few of the others that caught my eye!

Below the fold, of course.  I still have some sense of decorum.

Right.  First off lets get some out of the way that are made by rad people I actually know or have met, and thus are rad by association.

• Jamestown is a shmup, designed from the ground up to be to shmups what Left 4 Dead is to first-person-shooters:  Namely, a tuned experience for for cooperative players, all running around, saving each other from certain death, and generally having a blast.  Made by the fine folks over at Final Form Games, it is looking really cool!
• Under a Different Moon is being created by some fine fellows over at Engient.  I will be honest.  I don’t really feel like I understand this game.  It still looks entertaining though.  I like the bull in the trailer in particular.
• La Mulana is of course a classic game of legendary difficulty.  But much like Cave Story, it is in this year’s IGF due to its imminent rerelease/graphical upgrade on the Wii.  It is looking fantastic!  Also, several of its creators sing some mean karoke.

Now that those are out of the way, here are some other random things that have caught my eye in the list:

• 

  Pretty!

  Hohokum has some of the most fantastic, eye-catching, stylized and whimsical art I have seen in a long time in a game.  It also has a snake that perfectly captures what is fun about the venerable Nibbles game, while still looking modern and fresh.  I really like their style!

• Recettear is a game that has already swallowed multiple hours of my life when it was released a month or two ago.  Who knew that trying to get a fledgling business out from under the burden of crushing debt could be so much fun?
• Nidhogg is Messhof’s most recent minimalistic offering, and it looks surreal as always.  It also looks extremely fun to play.  It also is extremely fun to play, as I can tell you after getting a chance to do exactly that at a party a while back.  (See, sometimes I DO get to go to fun parties.)  It’s sort of a low-fi mashup of the best parts of Karatika and I don’t know what else.
• 

  Stylish!

  Dustforce caught my attention for simply having fantastic visuals.  What’s that?  Tight looking platforming controls, with a focus on ninja-like speed runs, all beautifully and stylistically animated, and even managing a more unique premise than just “kill all the dudes?”  Yes please!

• The Cat and the Coup – I basically just love the idea behind this game.  Even if the art crosses the line sometimes from “stylistic” to “low budget”, the premise is fantastic.  It’s a historical game, reenacting the CIA-engineered coup in Iran.  You play the prime minister’s cat, and help(?) him through this difficult time by knocking things off his desk and jumping on his lap at inopportune moments.  Genius…

This is looking like it is going to be an interesting year, IGF-wise!  Whether or not they win, I now have a lot more games on my radar that I’m watching.  It is a good time to be someone who enjoys games!