Yup, side by side mirv balls and three in a row, seen both. But yeah, I see where you're coming from. You chose to have the emphasis on the bullet patterns, whether they follow the turret or not. In the case of the mirv balls, you wanted the pattern that the three in a row would make, sacrificing an exact exit point from the end of the moving turret. Interesting. Look at it this way: who else would you be having a discussion like this with besides Tijmen the Invisible?
Oh I welcome any discussion. Please ask questions, bring critique whatever. I will always be honest about my opinion/standpoint, so don't be disappointed if I already have an answer ready We had a lot of 'pattern' prototyping at the start of Phoenix (we're talking june/july 2010 here!). Back then we also had 'shotgun' turrets, so they would just shoot a random buck shot of bullets in their aiming direction. Scaling this in terms of difficulty was hard and we noticed that the only way to dependably avoid getting hit was to move around the entire cloud of bullets, not navigate through them. We also found that navigating through (seemingly impossible) patterns was cool and satisfying (if succeeded). So we wanted more of that and eventually the shotgun turrets were removed far before the release. We also had enemy homing missiles in the game during beta (you can still spot them near the end of this old beta footage video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9fnZc-4w-4 (appears at 0:55) ) but we also removed these in favor of 'predictable patterns'.
Two different concepts going on here with you splitting the difference. You technically could do what I'm saying and have every single projectile fired follow the exact movement of the ship that the turret is attached to every single time. This would however lead to less structured bullet patterns, at least from the perspective of what you want to present. Therefore, you make the bullets follow the turret with ship movement as much as possible, but never in favor of sacrificing the pattern itself that may be presented better by having it fire from a fixed location. I'm curious to see it if it was done the way I've been talking about, just to visualize a more 'muddled bullet pattern' look. I'm trying to picture the example I used earlier with the three mirv balls and how they would look when fired side by side following ship movement (instead of a straight line), how they would look when opened up and how difficult they'd be to weave through.
Some other thoughts: -If you decide to apply particle overflow to score, it could be demonstrated by the score counter itself changing color. Achieve full health, you pick up extra particles, score gets brighter; get hit, score reverts back to normal color. Having a visual cue would enable the player to see the score actually benefit from the mechanic. -Did you see my question about the scout ships being mixed in more with the larger ships? -I thought of an idea on how to 'fix' the issue of bullets appearing out of thin air. Every time there is a pattern where the bullets stay fixed and the ship firing them moves, the turret could fire a projectile that THEN fires the other projectiles from it. In the case of the mirv balls (which might I add look fantastic on my iPad before they expand) example, the turret that fires these three shots in a row would first fire an 'intermediate' projectile of some kind. Once in place, this intermediate would not move. It would then fire the three mirv balls in the straight line, thus excluding the factor of the moving turret. Ok, I'm done. I'll let you catch up
With regards to the scouts I am reverting to my default balancing answer. We really enjoy the current balance and progression in both difficulty and turret distribution. We need some very good reasons if we want to start pulling strings here and frankly we'd rather put the time and effort in something truly new. There are many ways to implement the turrets firing patterns and we chose one that gave us the results we wanted. The gameplay needs to be awesome and the game needs to look great. I understand your suggestion is some kind of 2-stage projectile to ensure a pattern stays intact? This would look really weird, turrets would even be shooting backwards because the pattern was initiated behind the ship (above on screen). (but it would indeed solve the problem). I agree that improvements on the current situation can be found and many hours can be spend on little things, but we have to make choices. Stuff like the health particle overflow and toothpaste laser are much more interesting to me in that case If you want to simulate a broken pattern you can easily do that. There is one turret we have always been on the fence about, whether it should aim or not. It is the 'slow cone' turret as we call it, the level 4 version. When a ship with that turret shows up: move from left to right and back across the screen and watch the mass of bullets with no structure and embrace your demise I'm talking about this guy:
You lost me here, but I like riddles. Sorry about the wrap quotes tags appearance. I can never quite seem to get it right.
It was in response to your earlier quote: I thought you meant what it would look like if a pattern was disturbed, that's what my response answered at least.
Grrrr, you're showing me up with the wrap quotes. Damn! I don't know why I can't get that to work right. WTF. I'll keep an eye out for that ship, although I bet it's a wild goose chase set up by Tijmen the Invisible designed to lure me away from the forum so I stop posting in this thread. Thinks he's slick he does. I'm onto his game.
Got an ipad 4 now, not too much different in this game over the ipad 3, maybe a slight bit better framerates, some games are showing drastic differences. Guess that's not a bad thing, cause it means it is well optimized on lower devices, but could there be special effects added to ipad 4, ipad air, iphone 5s, and the such?
4S to the iPad 4 was a ridiculous difference. But yeah, MORE PARTICLE EFFECTS!!! El are you going to add Alpha Strikes based off the Trinity and Phantom? And El, how the heEl have you been?
The one drawback of playing on the iPad is something I shall label right here as 'finger drop.' I hold the pad will my right hand and guide the ship with my left. Since the iPad screen is so much wider than the iPhone, one of my other fingers on my guiding hand always manages to accidently drop down and touch the screen, setting off the two finger touch mechanism. Of course if you have an Alpha Strike or an EMP equipped, they get set off by accident as well. I just lost a game where I accidentally set off the health orb when I had almost full health. I am conscious of it too, which I think is half the problem. You become overly cautious of it happening, forcing you to hold your hand more stiff to prevent it from happening. Your hand gets tired faster, subsequent finger drop ensues. A minor quip, but a consistent one nonetheless. A way to fix it would be to change the two finger touch to three fingers, specifically for the iPad. It would prevent it from happening entirely.
Yeah, more particle effects or some kind of transparent backgrounds would be a cool addition for ipad 4's and newer.
I just played an entire six million point game and not one health orb dropped. A little frustrating while it was happening, but it definitely made me think of how it may be interesting to play without any power-ups at all whatsoever, except for ship upgrades. No health orbs, no EMP, no Alpha Strikes. Just you and the bullets with one bar of energy.
Would be cool if there was a way to get one free drone play every week or a couple of days. That would give people some incentive too to play it once in a while and keep it always on their systems.
Hey guys. More particles you say? Music to my ears Yes it would be nice if we could make an 'optimised' version for each new chip/hardware configuration. The new A7 would be an even bigger step up again. Alas, it is all not so easy. The fact that you hardly see a difference between iPad 3 and iPad 4 is a compliment in my eyes, so thanks . We worked hard to achieve 60fps on the hardware configurations from that time and have been able to crank up the resolution towards retina with each new hardware configuration. Also, remember that we removed a gun from the original Phoenix because the amount of impact particles simply obscured the enemies too much. This is still problematic in my eyes, on most screenshots the enemies are hardly visible We are currently not working on Phoenix HD but have a new concept for a ship which we might add in the future
Cool Selachii, hope you are doing well, and hopefully you will have another great game out soon. Merry xmas!
I must say, sometimes I even surprise myself. A few months back when we were talking about ideas for a new ship, I either mentioned (or had considered mentioning) the concept of a 'black hole' weapon that would suck in bullets. It just so happens that Taito has already used this idea in Space Invaders Infinity Gene with the Gravity shot. I just picked up this title recently. Anywho, I still think this would make for an awesome weapon in Phoenix, or any bullet hell shooter. In addition to the black hole sucking in enemy bullets, I envision an explosion taking place once the black hole fills up to capacity.
