HARRY UP! ヽ(｀Д?）ノ o o o (HRtP based Touhou game) v2.Meira

[Mеа]

inb4 "oh great, this again?"
It's kind of funny that a thread was recently necro'd about this

maybe someone else will carry on the idea.

Not necessarily a remake. More like a game that's based off of HRtP, kind of like how PoFV was to PoDD
That being said, I plan on making it a lot harder since controls and feel are a lot smoother now. Also because I can.

I bet the question you're asking is "Is this going to get finished?" This is mostly just for practice and as a hobby. However, I intend to make at least a full story mode to play through.

Anyway, I'm not really looking out for content/story suggestions, but feel free to do so and I might use parts of it if I find it particularly interesting or worthwhile.
I am, however, on the look out for gameplay/mechanics suggestions, such as the ball speed being too fast, or that Reimu's amulet is too fast, or the ball bounces too much.

I've been working on this on and off since the beginning-ish of the year (maybe February or so), so the engine is more or less complete.
Placeholders decorate the walls. I don't think I need any artists, though if you want to help (especially with sprites, or I can't draw well enough for me), then I might start looking for some later on. Also music people, since I can't compose, though I guess I'll try it a bit since I'm interested in it. Again, I don't really feel like recruiting people and then dumping them into some cardboard box too early, so yeah, later on.



I'd greatly appreciate it also if you can tell me what the Render FPS is on your computer. Just for reference, it runs at around 500-ish on my mac, and a bit less than 60 on my netbook while playing this in the background. The only reason why I put music and a 3d background in there was to see how fast it could end up being, so I'll take it out in the next release since it doesn't contribute to anything other than that.
Like I said before, if you have any issues or suggestions (like if the game is really slow, wont work, crashes, or if you think Reimu should move faster) feel free to post up since I'm interested in improving or implementing features that I may not have noticed/thought of.
And I'm not being serious about the bullet density here (heh heh, maybe). Just like with the music and background, it's just there to see how slow/fast this game may end up being.

Current Version: ver2.Meira
(what!? Unconventional naming schemes? Preposterous!)
You can get it for windows here, or for macs here

Previous Versions:
v2.Rika WIN  |  v2.Rika MAC



Controls:
Arrow Keys: Move
Z: Fire
X: Swing
X + Arrow Keys: Slide
Z+X: Bomb

Special Maneuvers
(Input near the end of Slide)
(if sliding right:)
-> + X = Sliding kick
<- + X = Stationary spin kick
no arrows + X = Sliding spin kick
<- or -> + Z = Rapid fire

Short future To Do List:
Bosses
HARRY UP! ヽ(｀Д?）ノ meter

[touhoumaniac]

200-250 fps for me. Ball is too slow in my opinion.

[Imosa]

This may be an issue on my end but every time I started the program my computer's screen went black and I had to do a forced shut down. It might just be me so I'll try this later.
What is the "HARRY UP! ヽ(｀Д?）ノ" meter
If you want a suggestion for different characters, have their ball follow different mechanics entirely. For example, I always thought that if I made a Youmu character for this game, I'd make her ghost unaffected by gravity but give it a maximum distance that it could go away from Youmu before either returning or killing Youmu.

[Jq1790]

What is the "HARRY UP! ヽ(｀Д?）ノ" meter

Presumably a graphical representation of the timer from HRtP, where when the timer ran down, bullets would rain on the field until you either cleared it or died, at which point the meter reset or you moved on, as appropriate.

Or is yours different?

[babbe107]

Heya, I tried the win version of the game and got around 320-340 FPS.
The game system works quite good, but I think the character movement speed could be faster. It is quite fun to play though and I hope you will finish it with many stages :3

[Mеа]

Presumably a graphical representation of the timer from HRtP, where when the timer ran down, bullets would rain on the field until you either cleared it or died, at which point the meter reset or you moved on, as appropriate.

Yeah, this. Because you can outrun the ball, it's easy to just keep juggling the ball and rack up the multiplier if you take your time. So the timer is to encourage you to finish quickly before the game starts to throw stuff at you because it's getting bored.

[Imosa]

I can't remember if the ASCII art was in the original game but if not, I find that hilarious.
I tried the windows game and was running around 500 fps.

Now for something totally different. How did you make this? I was expecting GameMaker or maybe Danmakufu (if you were crafty) but this is much more interesting.

And some personal ranting. I love so much about this project. It's not a bottom up shooter, it's a remake of HRtP, and I can't tell exactly how it's done. I see so much potential here that my only issue is not trying it myself. Your motive also looks good. I think pursuing a project as a hobby makes you much more likely to focus on producing, rather then producing something particular, which ultimately leads to more content, which is what I like to see. I really hope to see more from this.

[sumisumi]

My fps was around 320 without omgtonsofbullets and around 250 with.

This seems great so far, it's good to see a project like this actually having good progress made.  Physics and everything seemed quite good to me.  The speed of everything seemed fine (although it's hard to tell.)  I really missed my miko stick, though; I really relied on it in the original game.

Adding focus I think will really make it seem more like a windows game.  Like your aiming for, it will be similar to the progression from PoDD to PoFV.  There certainly are a lot of buttons for the left hand now, though!  It's pretty imbalanced.  Maybe you could make it so that you can active dash by double-tapping the left or right arrows?  (Not while focused, though.)  The right hand isn't doing too much yet anyways, so I think it would be a good idea to at least give the option to do so.

When playing the original game, I've always thought it would be fun if the up arrow made you do a little hop.  Then there could be horizontal bullets moving in from the sides for a fresh challenge.  It would be fun to hop up and whack the ball in mid-air too.  But then again there are already a lot of actions in the game. ^_^;

This seems like it could be a great game that has a lot of improvements over the first.  Like you said the controls do feel smoother, overall.  I'll be glad to see how it turns out.

[Mеа]

I really missed my miko stick, though; I really relied on it in the original game.

It'll be in there, don't worry. Also the stick wave and the dash will be combined like in the original so you don't have to stretch your fingers to hit that 'C'.

Adding focus I think will really make it seem more like a windows game.  Like your aiming for, it will be similar to the progression from PoDD to PoFV.  There certainly are a lot of buttons for the left hand now, though!  It's pretty imbalanced.  Maybe you could make it so that you can active dash by double-tapping the left or right arrows?  (Not while focused, though.)  The right hand isn't doing too much yet anyways, so I think it would be a good idea to at least give the option to do so.

Although I added focus on a whim, I'm actually considering taking it out since I think it's 'contrary to the spirit of the game'. The vertical shooters feel hectic, and with that a keen attention to precision. Thus the focus mechanism. I think that HtRP was more of a technique based game, though you couldn't really feel it with the choppy controls. What with spinkicking through walls of bullets and the such. Focus would likely distract from that, but we'll see.
Active dash is an interesting suggestion, though the problem with implementing that in a shmup (this still kind of counts) is that you might accidentally dash when you're just trying to fidget-graze/stream.

Now for something totally different. How did you make this? I was expecting GameMaker or maybe Danmakufu (if you were crafty) but this is much more interesting.

And some personal ranting. I love so much about this project. It's not a bottom up shooter, it's a remake of HRtP, and I can't tell exactly how it's done. I see so much potential here that my only issue is not trying it myself. Your motive also looks good. I think pursuing a project as a hobby makes you much more likely to focus on producing, rather then producing something particular, which ultimately leads to more content, which is what I like to see. I really hope to see more from this.

Well I'm glad to hear that, thanks. Expectations and enthusiasm hold me liable, I suppose.
BlitzMax. Quite easy (based on Basic) to use, cheap, fairly active board, 2d and 3d support, cross-platform, what can I say?

On a side note, I'm going to pause work on this for a while (maybe a couple of days?). Direct work, anyway. I'm experimenting with Lua to see if it'll be worth implementing since I'm currently hardcoding all the levels and etc in the game. Not that it's inflexible, since I'm trying to keep it easy to reuse and fix up here and there, but Lua is apparently really good. So it's either I give up and just finish the game without it, or figure it out (because it's stubbornly uncooperative)

[Mеа]

Ok, screw it, I'll practice with Lua next time. I'm not going to compromise on game design because I'm trying something new.

This is update number 2: v2.Meira (all links will be in the OP)

Here's a small list of changes (though I may have forgotten about some)
GamePlay:
- Removed focus feature
- Moved dash command from 'C' to 'X'
- Added life and bomb stock
- Can gameover
- Added death/rebirth pause (ie: death animation)
- Improved ball physics (faster, can get hit in different directions based on the move and [depending on the move,] the angle)
- Fixed dashing so it isn't continuous
- Sliding, slide kicking, spinning, stationary spin-kicking, and multi-shot were added
- When sliding, hitbox shrinks by 80% and is a few pixels closer to the ground

Other:
- New placeholder sprites for the player, cards, and orb (to get the proportions right)
- Added primitive HUD at the top

The ball is a heck of a lot faster now, and you can hit it in different directions. Gravity is less floaty, and about the same as HRtP
Those sprites took a loooong time. Although I think all those new sprites in 2~3 days is pretty good for being my first time ever
HUD sucks, I know. "Touhou" /lol
A big portion of my time was spent on adding all those extra moves like the spin kicking and the such. I'll add the instructions under the 'Controls' section in the OP. It's basically the same as in HRtP.

I'll also add that nothing is optimized yet. Which is to say that collisions are probably working really hard. I really don't feel like finishing that thought. "Premature optimization is the root of all evil", I suppose. I'll worry about that later.

In the mean time, I'd still appreciate knowing what your Render FPS numbers are to see the differences between versions and get a feel of how things are running on other computers. Speaking of computers, I vaguely remember reading a post about the screen getting black and having to restart. What happened to that?
Getting opinions on speed and such is still very much wanted.

In other related news, I was playing around again with the level designs. Don't take them too seriously. Maybe.
And just for fun, I'll throw these in:

These were the first 2 sprites I made and decided to trash it and use 3 head proportions instead because it looked a little too silly

Also obligatory name change +1 anti-monotony points. not to mention there's already an Edible so it'd sound kind of repetitive, and I myself got confused once already, so yeah. Guess what I've been rewatching recently

[AnonymousPondScum]

Those Reimu sprites are adowabull. :3

[Zil]

Render fps was 950-1000. I'm finding it very easy to accidentally bomb, though maybe I'm just careless. It also seemed hard to reliably keep the orb from hitting the floor, partly because the bullets get in the way, partly because it's fast enough to escape you. It's hard to say anything about just how the orb should move without seeing what more levels will be like though, so I won't nitpick any further.

[Mеа]

Those Reimu sprites are adowabull. :3

Knock yourself out
 

Render fps was 950-1000. I'm finding it very easy to accidentally bomb, though maybe I'm just careless. It also seemed hard to reliably keep the orb from hitting the floor, partly because the bullets get in the way, partly because it's fast enough to escape you.

Wha- 950~1000!?
I reread the controls, and apparently it's Z+X twice in HRtP. I might revert it to that if it becomes a significant problem, or maybe even map it to, say, A or C instead.
As for the speed issue, I guess that is a problem for score runs. I'll fiddle again with the gravity and speed numbers, or maybe come up with a different scoring/reward gimmick.

[Savory]

Awesome job! Good luck.

You thinking of adding dialogue?

[Mеа]

Yes~.., dialogue is an intended feature

By the way, school is soon starting for me, so current status is limited to whenever time and whims permit.