Yeah, I know. I just love seeing the ships transform through all the different possible variations, even if it's for a brief period of time. Of course the more power-ups the longer it takes to see the end result and I enjoy that little voyage. On the flip side it's also good to not have a 'set' amount of power-ups, ships that have no powers-ups, etc, but it does seem that generally the current trend (Phoenix HD vs Phoenix SD if nothing else) is moving away from having so many.
It is less with the newer ships mainly because they have stronger individual gameplay characters. The earlier ships have relatively simple extra mechanic and rely heavily on 'traditional' weapons. Nothing wrong with that, that's just what our direction was and it changed over time I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this, if not, here's an exclusive bit of post-mortem on Phoenix development! We initially (aka, just after Phoenix classic release) planned to add a second faction of enemies. They would use the same turret setups and only differ in appearance and slightly in turret position. The factions would have a chance of switching during an encounter of scouts (the small enemies), so it would be random. We also considered using different backgrounds, but no actual work on that was done. After I spent about a month on the new enemies (we had concepts for almost every size) I prototyped changing the appearance of turrets. This was clearly much cooler than different looking ships and we decided to drop the other enemy appearances in favor of a custom turret appearance per turret level. Yes indeed, all turrets of the same type looked the same in early Phoenix. Enemies at level 1 basically looked the same as level 100. Maybe I should write a complete post mortem some day so I can include all this trivia and some of the graphics we never used. Will be cool to highlight all the community suggestions and input as well.
Yeah, that kind of background info could go on your website. You could make a section called 'Tidbits' or something equally catchy. This and t-shirts
I'm glad to hear that you've beta tested and are considering the idea! I love them since encountering then in Outwitters, which while giving extra replay value, also makes getting a prized position more realistic even with immense competition. Following sumo asking for for tons of extra power ups and you talking about it being cosmetic, I would like to suggest an idea that you might look at; the powerups on the next shop NOT being cosmetic okay here it is: -The shop has 4 or 5 different weapon types (similar style to Phoenix, but each quite unique) -Each time a weapon upgrade is dropped from an enemy, instead of staying blue it flickers blue, and cycles through amber, red, purple and green, flickering just before each change, changing say, every 3 seconds? -Depending on the colour you get it at, you upgrade a different weapon! This can allow you to personalise your ship in unique ways, custom fit to how you like it! Example ideas for upgrades: -Lock on rockets (just because) -small orbs that spin around the ship absorbing bullets (up to 3) -A straight stream of bullets/lazer -a very spread out, but slightly more powerful attack than the straight beam -very powerful missiles that travel in the opposite direction to your movement Also, here's an example of a shmup with the idea of powerups that change colour; just keep watching and you'll notice them, there are little UFO's that change red green blue: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Clwf8O-t7g
I don't think you got it, sumo was talking about stickers Selachii... But icade for sine mora is done, it will come out in the next update. Where's waldo?
After reading this and knowing that a rewrite of how the ships are powered up is never going to change, it did offer up another, more feasible idea: a ship with morphing capabilities. Follow my train of thought here... We'll call this ship 'X' for the sole reason it has no singular identity, but rather the identity of all the ships. Like Necro said, the power-ups could drop as different colors for this ship only--one color representing each of the other six ships--and whatever color you pick up, for example blue for the Phoenix, that would be the ship you'd morph into. Your entire run would be compromised of ALL the ships at varying times and for varying durations. In the ship selection screen ship 'X' would have to be represented in a different way. Maybe as a box with a question mark, or maybe a ship that has the look of all the ships together as a conglomerate. Another application for this idea would be to have ship X as a mode all by itself. You could call it 'Hybrid' mode, where you'd select the mode and you'd start the game with a random ship. From there the power-ups would drop as described above and you'd change ships throughout the entire run, having to adapt on the fly.
Hah, I like some of those suggestions. An Alpha Strike switching between all available pickups might be nice fresh addition. It's a pretty common mechanic, funny it never occurred to me to use it. It is a bit moot though as pick-ups are attracted pretty fast so it's hard to actually chose what you're getting. Mixing and matching ship weapons is definitely an interesting direction and I can reveal that we already have a couple of concepts in that direction. I think you are a bit too much into details though, a ship still needs a strong character for its gameplay and I'm not sure "Frankenstein" will cut it
Actually, it's Dr. Frankenstein, with the monster being his creation But in this case, it would be Frankenship and Frankenstrike So many damn ideas for this game. They just flow like a frankenriver.
Yeah, still would like a fast bullet option, or heck through it on testflight so I can try it hehe. Pmed you too. Take care.
I took advantage of the cave sale the other day and bought all their universal apps. I've only played a couple so far and have been enjoying the bullet hell. I'm wondering if there would be any reason to pick up this free game and if its as good as the cave games? Thank you.
Hahahahahhahahhhahaahhaha!!!!! Well... If you spend a couple hours and read back through this beautiful thread, you will see that Phoenix HD competes with just about any vertical shooter out there. Wait, are you still reading this? GO DOWNLOAD and enjoy more of The Bullet Hell.
Yes, this is one of the best non cave shmups out there. Get it, plasma sky, dariusburst, raystorm, space tripper, and icarus x. But start with this one first, cause it is free to try, if you like it you can buy any of the other ships later for a buck, I recommend the Trinity. And it has icade support which cave games don't have!
I have and really like plasma sky and space tripper. Ill check out the others though. Ill try this one, as well. Thanks! Too bad about cave and lack of Icade support cause I really dig the 8bity. Recently, I've been playing bug princess bl using a stylus, which works surprisingly well, although definitely not as nice as a controller.
Connector is going to contact Cave directly for iCade support, right Connector? Don't forget Danmaku 2.
Yes, that is my plan. I will be contacting Ion (who makes icade) and Cave (who makes shmups) very soon. It'll be interesting to see both how ion and cave respond. Maybe I will get lucky, and get some stickers, everyone loves giving me stickers. Haha!
Well, if you get ahold of Cave, poke around for some HD versions of Bug Princess, DeathSmiles and DoDon BD. I know it will never happen, but try anyway.
No real point in contacting Ion though, they just supply the instructions on how to integrate their hardware and pray to the yods that developers will add it to their apps Really curious if Cave responds though, let me know iOS 7 coming at us pretty fast, we'll make sure a nice little support patch will be available in time.
Or at least universal support for deathsmiles and bug panic. I really want to pick those up but have a hang up about x2 display as I don't game much on my iphone5
Ok, will do, I have some Japanese friends, I think I will have them draft the letter in Japanese, so hopefully, they will respond. Well, I don't know if you read the HDMI or icade threads that are in my title, but I think alot of my hdmi and icade pictures have indirectly sold alot of icades. But we shall how Cave and Ion will respond. I am actually curious too myself.
