Author Topic: Lunacy Star Second (0.72 demo- Bugfixes, Balancing, 90FPS)  (Read 23168 times)

チソウ タイゼン

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Lunacy Star Second (0.72 demo- Bugfixes, Balancing, 90FPS)
« on: February 22, 2012, 02:55:43 PM »
Oh, it's that guy again with his horrible danmaku  :derp:

DOWNLOAD VERSION 0.6
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/48264981/LSS%200.6.zip (21.4 MB)

DOWNLOAD VERSION 0.4
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/48264981/LSS%200.4.zip (16.7 MB)

Arrows to move, Z to shoot, Shift to focus, X to bomb.

The engine was built from scratch this time, so go easy on the technical details this time! :ohdear:

Since there is no highscores, or Evaluation screen, the game will save a screenshot of your last effort if you clear the demo.


I have no spriting experience~~~  :blush:
The bosses in the game so far are all trapezoids that read "Placeholder Boss Sprite."
Can someone please come up with some spaceships for it? Thaaaaaaanks~
(there are only three, two are bosses and one is a midboss)

Since the game only has five stages, I'm terminating the demo at the end of 2-2.

The game will be both polished and severely unpolished.
I realize how that sounds but bear with me.
It was started from scratch a little under a month ago, and I've never had the development cycle go this fast.

YouTube videos (slightly old) :

Random runs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frg9QReuyyw
Stage 1-1, 1-2, and first boss:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSKavO2s2as

Screenshots of what is to come:







« Last Edit: May 16, 2012, 01:56:01 PM by チソウ タイゼン »


チソウ タイゼン

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #1 on: February 23, 2012, 05:04:17 PM »
Version 0.4 out now, with two completed stages, and two bosses.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/48264981/LSS%200.4.zip
Check the OP for more information.


I have no name

  • Dodge ALL the bullets
Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2012, 05:28:48 PM »
1-1: exactly what I'd expect form a first stage.
1-2: Had to bomb the stage part, boss part was good.
2-1: midboss lasts too long.
2-2: By the time you can read the white bullets, they've likely trapped you already (I played whichever difficulty Z selected, the harder of the 2 I think)  Boss patterns also seemed to last too long, probably because they were rather monotonous.

Oh right: I PoC'd immediately before the Stage 2 boss...and had it appear right on top of my sprite.  Insta-cheap-death.

チソウ タイゼン

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #3 on: February 23, 2012, 05:40:02 PM »
1-1: exactly what I'd expect form a first stage.
1-2: Had to bomb the stage part, boss part was good.
2-1: midboss lasts too long.
2-2: By the time you can read the white bullets, they've likely trapped you already (I played whichever difficulty Z selected, the harder of the 2 I think)  Boss patterns also seemed to last too long, probably because they were rather monotonous.

Oh right: I PoC'd immediately before the Stage 2 boss...and had it appear right on top of my sprite.  Insta-cheap-death.

1-1: Oh, okay, good?
1-2: Oh, I thought I've nerfed that enough already? Let me guess, the one bit where two of the green enemies come down?
2-1: Thought so -_-;
2-2: Oh, that's a shame. I'll have to tone that down somehow. Yeah, Z is the harder of the two difficulties.

Yeah, uh. That just happened to me, too ._.
I'll have to change that :(

Thank you for playing it, though!
I'm just playing through it now trying to beat my old highscores :V



Were the music, controls, etc okay...?


I have no name

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2012, 05:55:47 PM »
For 1-2, it was the part with the 'massive streaming', a la EoSD Stage 4.

Music was fine, controls handled pretty well.

チソウ タイゼン

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #5 on: February 23, 2012, 11:35:44 PM »
Oh, I die there when I'm too high on the screen and graze-whoring :P

Thanks again, I will take your comments into consideration for the next version.

Oh, and we have a submitted score from another forum, 39,119,300. I don't have a better score, soooo :V


MMX

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2012, 09:40:45 AM »
What kind of ship sprites do you wanna have in your game? Considering that minimalistic "oldskool" overall design i suppose some pixelart should be fine. PM me with your suggestions or let's go talk on IRC ;)

Also just played the game on advanced. My conclusions:

+ overall it looks awesome! I mean really, better than previous one.
+ some nice patterns and bullets
+ music is good to listen
+ Shottype seems pretty balanced too.

- still getiing confused between items and bullets. You should make their sprites surely identifiable
- either deny drawing hitbox at all or make it more visible, like mark it with different color
- something wrong with deathbombing. I mean does it even exist? Sometimes i bombed right after been hit but lost a life anyways. So besides some short deathbomb interval add a longer one during wich player cant waste a bomb.
- difficulty curve is kinda rough. Some stuff happening on stage 2 is ridiculous for stage 2 (i'm scared about later stages). Forcing player to use lots of bombs on earlier stages is not a good idea.

Ah and it needs some backgrounds too. Feels kinda hard to read those random lasers against black for some reason.

Here's a quick video of me failing. And there's some problem too. Program instantly goes "fullscreen", but it not really fullscreen, it uses desktop resolution (guess what happened to my fraps on 2560x1440 :colonveeplusalpha: ) But even on decreased resolution program draws only 640x480 square on video capture. So i had to do such a perversion as set my screen to 720x480 and record with it >_<
« Last Edit: February 24, 2012, 12:55:46 PM by MMX »
My danmakufu thread Most recent - "Kappa Mechanics" (Nitori fight)   My youtube channel Latest update - EoSD extra no bombs clear


チソウ タイゼン

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2012, 02:56:10 PM »
What kind of ship sprites do you wanna have in your game? Considering that minimalistic "oldskool" overall design i suppose some pixelart should be fine. PM me with your suggestions or let's go talk on IRC ;)

Also just played the game on advanced. My conclusions:

+ overall it looks awesome! I mean really, better than previous one.
+ some nice patterns and bullets
+ music is good to listen
+ Shottype seems pretty balanced too.

- still getiing confused between items and bullets. You should make their sprites surely identifiable
- either deny drawing hitbox at all or make it more visible, like mark it with different color
- something wrong with deathbombing. I mean does it even exist? Sometimes i bombed right after been hit but lost a life anyways. So besides some short deathbomb interval add a longer one during wich player cant waste a bomb.
- difficulty curve is kinda rough. Some stuff happening on stage 2 is ridiculous for stage 2 (i'm scared about later stages). Forcing player to use lots of bombs on earlier stages is not a good idea.

Ah and it needs some backgrounds too. Feels kinda hard to read those random lasers against black for some reason.

Here's a quick video of me failing. And there's some problem too. Program instantly goes "fullscreen", but it not really fullscreen, it uses desktop resolution (guess what happened to my fraps on 2560x1440 :colonveeplusalpha: ) But even on decreased resolution program draws only 640x480 square on video capture. So i had to do such a perversion as set my screen to 720x480 and record with it >_<

Excellent work regarding the video, with the bonus, you should have gotten some 25,000,000?
My high is 37, and some other person got 39.
Extends and bomb items are missing here, so it'll get better before it gets worse.

Fullscreening controls are the same -_-;
I figured that I would cut out the possible complaints from people and default it to fullscreen this time, haha

Backgrounds will be implemented.
Eventually.
It took seven months for LS1 to get it's Stage 1 background, so don't get too hopeful :V

Ah, I was afraid of that, regarding the difficulty curve. There's like this incredibly enormous gap between how hard the difficulties are, I find.
But yeah, it could be partially chalked down to this was made in one month
I'll do some editing here and there, and it shouldn't be as bad in later versions.
I have noted that Standard mode should escalate to LS1!Calm levels during Stage 3-1, so take that how you will.

Deathbombing exists, and the window is ten frames, or 0.2 second.
What's missing is the one second delay in which you can't bomb after you die, like in LS1. I just haven't thought to implement it yet...

What color should the hitbox be, then..?

Maybe it's the size.
Those green triangle bullets give me a hard time about that. To remedy, I tried to make points darker, but I might add outlines to the green bullets and the points anyway.

Balancing the shottype took three days. ._.

Thanks about the music- It was suggested demanded of me that I make the soundtrack MP3s this time, soooo

Nice patterns? Hahaha~
It's supposed to be less Touhou, and more Cave, is the deal.
Also, LS1 didn't really support lasers. LS2 does.
There will be lasers everywhere.
A Stage 5 theme is "Radical Laser Underworld" and another is "Neon Metal Arena."
Look forward to it.

I got this from a few friends.
Quote
So I'm guessing the main difference is presentation?

It's funny, all of my feedback is coming from Advanced this time. I got almost no Rage commentary last time and absolutely no Lunatic commentary.

Just... spaceships. One again, if anything does gets made, and I like it, then I'll ask to use it :)
General idea is that in terms of size, it goes Saeiretore > Proteus > Rugamatra and that they're around 64x64 to 48x48.

Thank you for playing~!
and please excuse the fact that I addressed your post in reverse order
« Last Edit: February 24, 2012, 02:58:17 PM by Chisou Taizen »


Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #8 on: February 24, 2012, 03:54:56 PM »
I'll play it only if there is a way to put it into window mode :colbert:

チソウ タイゼン

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #9 on: February 24, 2012, 04:08:14 PM »
The fullscreen toggle is F4.


Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2012, 08:35:05 PM »
Played trough both modes. My only complaint would be that graze, fps etc. didn't stand out at all from the background. Bullet patterns were really enjoyable. Everything else was okay in my opinion.

チソウ タイゼン

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #11 on: February 24, 2012, 09:10:00 PM »
Thank you for playing. None of the HUD is supposed to be in the sidebars anyway- I've yet to choose where the information will go- perhaps at the bottom, next to Power.
Also, Power might be a gauge and the lives and bombs will probably also have gauges next to them indicating your progress extensions (score, and maybe graze?)

Bullet patterns were trying to be in the interrim of Cave and Touhou. I think I gave it the odd effect of stages having more interesting danmaku than the bosses.

If you have any other concern that I might improve on, please don't hesitate to say~


Zil

Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2012, 11:28:51 PM »
I just tried standard. Score was 28,558,810, if you want to know.

The hitbox is hard to see. Making it red would solve that, I think.
I was getting the items confused with the bullets a bit, so maybe do something about that.

Those minor things aside, what I've played seemed great. The ship's easy to control, you don't go under the bottom, the stages kept up a constant barrage, and some boss attacks seemed like they could be amazing if amped up a bit. The midboss took a while to die though. I'm gonna try advanced or whatever the other one is.

BT

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #13 on: February 24, 2012, 11:56:47 PM »
Hitbox definitely needs to be... visible. Would help quite a lot, especially when I find out I pass through walls of lasers for no apparent reason.  ::)

And yeah, some of the bosses's parts are great. I especially liked the last boss's last attack.

Zil

Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #14 on: February 25, 2012, 12:06:46 AM »
Just did advanced. Score was 38,086,990. Probably should've bombed for items assuming remaining resources give no bonus at the end. The blue multiplier said 13.96; I'm not sure how that works.

Even better than standard. The biggest complaint I can make is I think the gray bullets on the second boss went under the ship sprite. The patterns were good though, especially the Remilia/Cave style aimed clusters and the final pattern.

チソウ タイゼン

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #15 on: February 25, 2012, 12:24:34 AM »
Thank you both ~

I guess I'll knock down the midboss to 14,000 HP or so. That's a good seven seconds of shooting's difference from the current 20,000. Only if you don't mind I lower it's multiplier item output from x1.20 to x1.00 or so :V

The "End Of Stage X-Y" bonuses are based on lives, bombs, graze, and the stage, and is affected by the multiplier.
(I've had bonuses as low as 70,000 and as high as 3,000,000...)

The current "Trial Clear Bonus" is fixed at 5,000,000. It might be changed when you clear the game like in LS1 (10m for lives... 1m for bombs...) or it might just be bumped up to 50,000,000 or so because by then it'll likely be chump change.

(Consider LS1...
Score progression by stage went about 4m, 18m, 45m, 70m, 240m, 600m)

And while I was playing today, I found something out.
Those slightly homing yellow bullets in Saeiretore's final attack's hitboxes are turned off :colonveeplusalpha:

Good benchmarks for the stages in this game would be (Advanced mode, past end stage bonus)
1-1: 1,700,000
1-2: 9,000,000
2-1: 16,000,000 (More points in 1-2? 2-1 gives less stars.)
2-2: 33,000,000

Now plot that out to 3-1, 3-2, 4-1, 4-2, 5-1, and 5-2 :V

x13 ain't bad for the multiplier, either. Consider the fact that you lose a quarter of it all every time you die.
(Died once in Standard... Ended with x17.5.... x21 should be quite possible...)

I'll make the graphic for the hitbox red, and larger.
The hitbox won't be larger, just the sprite...
And maybe the player ship would be on the lowest z-plane because the hitbox by default is drawn above all.

And I was hoping you'd notice the fix in diagonal speed, Zil :V

Thank you for playing ~<3


Here's a rundown on scoring:

Blue Orbs: + x0.01 Multiplier
Red Orbs: + 1% Power
Green Squares: + 1,000 Points
Yellow Stars: + 2,000 Points, + x0.02 Multiplier

Enemies who drop Power will drop Points if you are at 100% Power.
Points, Stars, Enemies, and End of Stage Bonuses are affected by the multiplier.

Dying costs 25% of your current multiplier and subtracts 10% (will be 25% later) of your Power. But dying currently generates 8% in replacements, so it's mainly a "I don't get extra point items :qq: " deal when you die.
Of course, that 25% reduction in multiplier's gonna bite you in the ass when you've capped it at x99.99 and it gets stuck down to x75.00 and Stars aren't worth 199,980 points each anymore.

End of stage bonus IIRC:

A * ( (10000*lives) + (1500*bombs) + 10 * graze ) * stage number )
A is 1 on Standard, 4 on Advanced.
Stage number is like, 1-1 is one, 1-2 is two, 2-1 is three, etc.

And... that's it.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2012, 12:54:59 AM by Chisou Taizen »


Zil

Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #16 on: February 25, 2012, 02:17:18 AM »
I tried to "play for score" and got 42,773,330.

4 lives left, no bombs remaining.
3430 graze (the stage 1 boss's final phase can be horribly abused for graze. If its sprite killed you on contact that would be prevented though.)
Final multiplier was at 15.96

I got killed by the stage 2 midboss (or 2-1 boss) after it was dead (the bullets don't go away), so I lost 25% from the multiplier right before the end bonus. :derp:

I love the stage 2 boss's final phase.

チソウ タイゼン

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #17 on: February 25, 2012, 05:00:10 AM »
You'll love it less when I turn on ebullet9's hitboxes :D

You know, I was planning on breaking 40m first, but I can't get over 33m on Advanced and outdoing 39m on Standard is too hard for me.

Thank you, too. I can't wait until I come up with 3-1 through 5-2 so y'all can complain about all that :D

I think I forgot to mention that the song titles were randomly generated three months ago, and the ones people voted for most would be used and shape the story.

And only because you cared:
1-1: The Great City Horror
1-2: Intense Chase Operation
1-B: Hazardous Rocket Posse
2-1: All Night Blood In The Sky
2-2: Grand Rocket Armada
2-B: Presidential Punching Warrior
3-1: Weary Sex Express
*Sits down to make Fantastic Landmine Girl, 3-2 Theme*
The ones with the most votes ended up being the final boss theme and the 4th boss theme.
I'll save their titles for you later :V


MMX

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #18 on: February 25, 2012, 01:51:31 PM »
Excellent work regarding the video, with the bonus, you should have gotten some 25,000,000?
My high is 37, and some other person got 39.
I wasnt playing for score (especially when having no idea of how scoring in this game works).
Fullscreening controls are the same -_-;
I figured that I would cut out the possible complaints from people and default it to fullscreen this time, haha
You'd better either switch it to default well known Alt+Enter or make a note like "Press F4 to fullscreen" at the start. And as i said, it doesnt work like real fullscreen, making video capturing a pain.
What color should the hitbox be, then..?
Red should be fine.
Those green triangle bullets give me a hard time about that. To remedy, I tried to make points darker, but I might add outlines to the green bullets and the points anyway.
There are a lot of differently shaped items falling on player. You should unify their appearance, dont let them form any "patterns" and lower their falling speed. Also there's too much variety in small bullets, and sometimes they look completely like points and vice versa. Look at any touhou game. Even when there are some special items (like cherry, time or faith) they dont mess with the bullets.
Nice patterns? Hahaha~
It's supposed to be less Touhou, and more Cave, is the deal.
Also, LS1 didn't really support lasers. LS2 does.
There will be lasers everywhere.
Several "death fairies" in a row is a bit too much imho for 2nd stage >_< Also, be careful with "lasers everywhere" :ohdear:
Just... spaceships. One again, if anything does gets made, and I like it, then I'll ask to use it :)
General idea is that in terms of size, it goes Saeiretore > Proteus > Rugamatra and that they're around 64x64 to 48x48.
I wont make just some random ships without any certain tips on how they should look (especially when you're not sure you'll like'em) It's a subject of discussion and i ask you again to PM me or go to IRC to talk about it ;)
My danmakufu thread Most recent - "Kappa Mechanics" (Nitori fight)   My youtube channel Latest update - EoSD extra no bombs clear


チソウ タイゼン

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #19 on: February 26, 2012, 12:07:38 AM »
I wasnt playing for score (especially when having no idea of how scoring in this game works).You'd better either switch it to default well known Alt+Enter or make a note like "Press F4 to fullscreen" at the start. And as i said, it doesnt work like real fullscreen, making video capturing a pain.Red should be fine.There are a lot of differently shaped items falling on player. You should unify their appearance, dont let them form any "patterns" and lower their falling speed. Also there's too much variety in small bullets, and sometimes they look completely like points and vice versa. Look at any touhou game. Even when there are some special items (like cherry, time or faith) they dont mess with the bullets.Several "death fairies" in a row is a bit too much imho for 2nd stage >_< Also, be careful with "lasers everywhere" :ohdear:I wont make just some random ships without any certain tips on how they should look (especially when you're not sure you'll like'em) It's a subject of discussion and i ask you again to PM me or go to IRC to talk about it ;)

See here.
I can add some sort of blip. It'll do if the last thing I make is the Config screen again.
I'll make them all either orbs or stars or what.
Death fairies is my thing :V I can tone it down though. I don't like putting together popcorn for my stages, really.
I'll PM you tonight with stuff about it.



Oh, and Zil:



The run is illegitimate though because if there were so much as two bullets on the screen the FPS would plunge to 20.
I pulled two frames per second when some of Saeiretore's attacks were cancelled :I
Screw this laptop :qq:

@no one in particular

Oh, I was hoping LSS would be shorter than the first.
I've estimated the game all the way to the end (Stage = stage music, bosses = guessing) and ended up with 27 minutes, which is a typical LS1 clear :I

I guess with the new stage setup most of the game is spent flying through stages, rather than fighting bosses, because in the original, the stage/boss time ratio was 20%/80% :I


YOU GUYS STOP BEING BETTER THAN ME AT THIS GAME

THIS WAS WITH THE ADDED HELP OF STAGES 3-1 AND 3-2 AND I STILL BARELY BEAT 42 MILLION
« Last Edit: March 04, 2012, 04:43:57 AM by Chisou Taizen »


チソウ タイゼン

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.4 DEMO OUT NOW)
« Reply #20 on: March 13, 2012, 01:12:10 AM »
DOWNLOAD VERSION 0.6
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/48264981/LSS%200.6.zip (21.4 MB)


Now with third stage, three shottypes, high scores, a main menu, a working config screen, and some new under-the-hood BS that guarantee extra sexiness!

A notable lack of sexiness would be, unfortunately, the Placeholder Boss Sprites.
But I'll fix those eventually!


Zil

Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.6 DEMO OUT NOW, New STAGE 3 and EXTRA SHOTTYPES)
« Reply #21 on: March 13, 2012, 02:56:56 AM »
Played it. Score was 92,844,980 as Nategasa, for what it's worth.

Some things of note:

The 3-1 boss's first attack doesn't seem to have enough health. There's a good chance you can kill it without having to move. The slower bullets are a good change though.
Those lasers at the end of 3-2 still feel pretty BS.
Nategasa's bomb may be overpowered after all. Bombing near the end of one spell can clear most of the next one as well.
3-2 boss is interesting. I'll have to play it a bit more. Just out of curiosity, how does grazing work with the lasers?

チソウ タイゼン

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.6 DEMO OUT NOW, New STAGE 3 and EXTRA SHOTTYPES)
« Reply #22 on: March 13, 2012, 01:31:54 PM »
I'm assuming that score was on Advanced mode?
Yeah, I've only gotten 77 million :I

I can probably give Rexy's first bar a little more HP.
Iirc both of it's attacks have 12,000 HP, but the second lasts much longer for fairly obvious reasons >_>

It's mainly the duration. I can shorten it to 3s and pump up the damage, for instance.
It currently lasts the longest, at 5 seconds, and the current invincibility pause between boss attacks is...

...2.4 seconds.
Whoops. Given Nategasa's bomb can deal about 15,000 damage, those 2.6 seconds can splash onto the next bar for probably about 6,000 (which is about half the average HP bar for every attack in the game...)

Grazing? Lasers? What?

*checks source code
Fuck, I didn't add lasers to the graze controller.
Anyway, it would only count if you 'grazed' the emission point.
I think. I didn't add them :P

*checks source code
Oh, super fuck. I forgot to add, like, 6 types of bullets out of the 14.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-



Thanks for trying it out, ha, even if for you there's only like 2 minutes of new content.

I'll get around to beating 94m... eventually!

Edit:

Oh gdi I only got 57 million this time
(maybe it's because I tried playing as nategasa)

Quote from: my friends who were watching me play
Is that bitch throwing tanks at you?

I didn't even make it to "Shivering Dance of Danmaku." Masagara's seventh attack, "Disorientation Black and White" killed me (again)

If I had beaten it I would have pulled at least 80m.
My high on Standard is about 124m, though, so I'm happy.

As for Masagara, I don't think that it's final attack is as "awesome" as Saeiretore's, but it's better than Black and White, which originally was it's final.


Double Edit:

Whahahaha




Masagara bombspam of course (like Lazer Maze Rain and Black and White and Shivering Dance)

Solar Hydra's lasers completely neuter Tank Summon ~ Protection, I find.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2012, 04:37:34 PM by Chisou Taizen »


チソウ タイゼン

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Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.6 DEMO OUT NOW, New STAGE 3 and EXTRA SHOTTYPES)
« Reply #23 on: March 14, 2012, 07:47:29 PM »
I can't get a score I can be proud of :I

Anyway, I've added some extra things.
There's an indicator of when the next extend is on the screen if you're soon to attain one, as well as high scores.

If you graze a lot, you get extra bombs.
As it stands, that's the only way to get bombs, alongside the EoSD/MoF points --> lives system.

I wanted to place the thresholds low enough for most people to be able to get them, because why feed resources to people who possess skill such that they don't need them?

Lives:
10,000,000 (Stage 2-1)
40,000,000 (Stage 3-1)
100,000,000 (Stage 4-1)
300,000,000

Bombs:
500 graze
1,500 graze
4,500 graze
9,000 graze

That way, a NDNB of this game results in you having 8 bombs and 8 lives, which conveniently spans the entire bottom screen that isn't the power bar.

But what are the chances of that happening?

Difficulty edits:

Rain: Laser Maze Rain (easier)
3-2 laser enemies (slower)


Masagara was noted as being a "massive difficulty spike" by someone on TvTropes.
They also said that 1-2 was particularly nasty "compared to what was around it."

I'll be nerfing the 1-2 death fairy section, the 2-1 intro, and I'll be making the popcorn laser spam in the end of 3-1 harder, seeing as I don't think I actually made any changes from the easier difficulty.

Saeiretore's Will (2nd boss final) is an auto-bomb for me on Advanced, so I might nerf it too.

And Masagara's "Laser: Greatsword" will probably die before it's much of a threat, so I'll add like 1 or 2 thousand HP to it.

I've put together some ideas for the Stage 4 midboss / 4-1 boss, but I need to make the actual Stage 4-1 first, which if the BGM is any indication, might be the longest stage in the game (2:47?!).


And.... I think that's it.

The next version will feature a practice mode (despite my notions that I wouldn't add one) and the fourth, and fifth stages.
And then after that all that would remain is the extra and I'm done!


Zil

Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.6 DEMO OUT NOW, New STAGE 3 and EXTRA SHOTTYPES)
« Reply #24 on: March 14, 2012, 09:48:33 PM »
After playing against Masagara a bit I think I can comment on the attacks.

The first one - Seems fair enough
Laser Sweep - I feel like the lasers activate a bit too quickly. By the time I notice one's about to appear on me I'm pretty much dead. Do they activate faster in this attack than the others?
Protection - Just too easy. Compared to the rest of the attacks anyway.
Black and White - I have no idea how to survive this. It may just be screwing with my head and there's an easy way to do it, but having to go through the whole game to practice it makes it hard to figure out. I'm probably overthinking it.
Laser Maze Rain - This is a nightmare, which is unfortunate because it looks it would be fun if it didn't overwhelm you completely. So yes, I agree with making it easier.
Greatsword - I like this attack, so more health is always good, especially if the sword keeps going further each time. Actually, I might like it even more if there were a bit more bullets too.
Final attack - Another cool one. The difficulty seems just right.

A practice mode would be nice, yes. Also, something weird happens when I press z in the highscore screen. If it's supposed to be doing something I'm not sure what it is.

Saeiretore's Will is still my favorite attack in the game, but if it must be nerfed, then so be it. If nothing else the health could maybe be reduced a bit.

And one last thing: does the game display your graze count anywhere, or do you have to wait until the end to see it?

チソウ タイゼン

  • tarzan cheetos
  • you'll thank me for the cropping later
Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.6 DEMO OUT NOW, New STAGE 3 and EXTRA SHOTTYPES)
« Reply #25 on: March 14, 2012, 10:14:58 PM »
After playing against Masagara a bit I think I can comment on the attacks.

The first one - Seems fair enough
Laser Sweep - I feel like the lasers activate a bit too quickly. By the time I notice one's about to appear on me I'm pretty much dead. Do they activate faster in this attack than the others?
Protection - Just too easy. Compared to the rest of the attacks anyway.
Black and White - I have no idea how to survive this. It may just be screwing with my head and there's an easy way to do it, but having to go through the whole game to practice it makes it hard to figure out. I'm probably overthinking it.
Laser Maze Rain - This is a nightmare, which is unfortunate because it looks it would be fun if it didn't overwhelm you completely. So yes, I agree with making it easier.
Greatsword - I like this attack, so more health is always good, especially if the sword keeps going further each time. Actually, I might like it even more if there were a bit more bullets too.
Final attack - Another cool one. The difficulty seems just right.

A practice mode would be nice, yes. Also, something weird happens when I press z in the highscore screen. If it's supposed to be doing something I'm not sure what it is.

Saeiretore's Will is still my favorite attack in the game, but if it must be nerfed, then so be it. If nothing else the health could maybe be reduced a bit.

And one last thing: does the game display your graze count anywhere, or do you have to wait until the end to see it?

Tele-Attack used to be faster :3

It used to be, that the lasers in Laser Sweep would take 3 seconds to activate, and then 6 seconds afterward to deactivate.
Somewhere along the line, I thought that was too long, and decided to cut it to like 1s / 2s.
*checks source code

Quote
Wait until active = 50 frames
Destroy self = 150 frames

I find it funny, because Protection used to be the most out-and-out bullshit attack it would put out.
I guess I added too much padding :V

It used to be, that Black and White would have it's bullets only go straight. But now they're angled BV
A pretty reliable rule of thumb would be that only one color moves at one time- black, white, black, white, black, white...

Laser Maze Rain?
Oh jesus :ohdear:
Do you know how many no-miss Standard runs that dingus ruined for me? The one time I captured it, Shivering Dance killed me twice.

Greatsword used to feature at least double the amount of orange bullets it does now. Cut down, because, well, I kept running into them >:(
It's that hilarious thing where you unfocus, and then run into a bullet that's moving away from you.

Shivering Dance of Danmaku... is in a word, unnerving. That's all I have for it.


Practice will allow up to 5-2.
Spoiler:
You actually have to get to 5-3 to unlock it for practice.

What's this weird thing you say?
If you mean the idiocy regarding name inputs, it's probably the amount of pause the game will stick in to facilitate "hold down this button to enter it repeatedly" but I find it a little annoying, so I might remove it. If not, then what do you mean?

I was considering adding a graze counter below the multiplier. But there's already a bar for it under the bomb extends, but you would lose track after hitting the 9,000 Graze bomb extend, so....
How does one under the multiplier sound?

Saeiretore's Will is fine on Standard, but on Advanced it's that cup-shaped formation that those homing bullets keep making that kills me. Unless I'm doing it wrong, which is highly likely.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2012, 10:19:25 PM by Chisou Taizen »


Zil

Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.6 DEMO OUT NOW, New STAGE 3 and EXTRA SHOTTYPES)
« Reply #26 on: March 14, 2012, 10:32:13 PM »
A graze counter under the multiplier should be good enough.

And the weird thing I mentioned is when you go to the highscore screen from the main menu and press z, it makes a sound like you just selected something and takes you back to the score list for gear axis.

Saeiretore's Will takes some drastic misdirection up the sides of the screen to avoid those aimed parts. Then I rush to the other side as fast as possible while zig-zaging up and down to avoid the white bullets, basically unfocused the whole time. It's probably harder than it should be if you compare it to everything else, but Masagara's final is still harder, so it's not like it makes no sense as a final attack.

チソウ タイゼン

  • tarzan cheetos
  • you'll thank me for the cropping later
Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.6 DEMO OUT NOW, New STAGE 3 and EXTRA SHOTTYPES)
« Reply #27 on: March 14, 2012, 10:58:32 PM »
A graze counter under the multiplier should be good enough.

And the weird thing I mentioned is when you go to the highscore screen from the main menu and press z, it makes a sound like you just selected something and takes you back to the score list for gear axis.


Excellent, adding it now.

That... that's among the list of things I don't look for :I

Quote
Saeiretore's Will takes some drastic misdirection up the sides of the screen to avoid those aimed parts. Then I rush to the other side as fast as possible while zig-zaging up and down to avoid the white bullets, basically unfocused the whole time. It's probably harder than it should be if you compare it to everything else, but Masagara's final is still harder, so it's not like it makes no sense as a final attack.


... ...
... I'll just settle for "I am bad at this game" (~_ ~  )


puremrz

  • Can't stop playing Minecraft!
Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.6 DEMO OUT NOW, New STAGE 3 and EXTRA SHOTTYPES)
« Reply #28 on: April 12, 2012, 07:20:22 PM »
I just played the demo as you asked. ;)
I like the style of this game, it's a bit retro (yes, I'm going to keep on calling things you make retro), yet modern at the same time.
The simple graphics are nice too. It's like I'm playing on a super buffed Atari. In a good way of course :V
As for the difficulty... Just right I think. I never play other shooting games besides Touhou, so this felt a bit different to me.

I played it on Standard, Solar Hydra. And ended with 3 lives left when the demo ended. My high score was 93114780

(And that "Game Over" screen is awesome)
Full Danmakufu game "Juuni Jumon - Summer Interlude" is done!
By the same person who made Koishi Hell 1,2 (except this game is serious)
Topic: http://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,9647.0.html

チソウ タイゼン

  • tarzan cheetos
  • you'll thank me for the cropping later
Re: Lunacy Star Second (0.6 DEMO OUT NOW, New STAGE 3 and EXTRA SHOTTYPES)
« Reply #29 on: April 12, 2012, 10:29:19 PM »
Heh, thanks for playing :V

I remember a debate on a game making forum I frequent that was essentially whether or not twelve year olds could call the shit graphics they put together "retro style," so apologies if you calling my stuff retro makes me laugh. :getdown:

> 3 lives left when ended

Wait, three spare lives? Getting the second extend? Was this your first try, with you only dying twice?

Making Stage 4 ridiculously hard was obviously the correct decision :qq:

Speaking of Stage 4, it's done :toot:
Like, totally, this time. Here's a hint:

The boy's final attack is harder on Advanced mode and the girl's is on Standard.

And with that, the total gametime is now about 16 minutes!

As for scoring-related interests, I only died once, losing about x10 from the multiplier, and ended 4-2 with x61.69.
I wound up with 427,000,000 points. D:

Stage 1 - > 10,000,000
Stage 2 - > 40,000,000
Stage 3 - > 100,000,000
Stage 4 - > 400,000,000

Only because that makes sense