Good post. Using the bombs is risk/reward. They are very helpful at clearing a wave. However, using the bomb voluntarily and then getting hit and losing the multiplier is game over for any chance at a high score. Definitely a balancing act. Your second point is one of the more obscure aspects of the game. Paying attention to which waves loop around and which ones don't is pretty important. I still think that anyone's best run is dependent almost solely on the type of drops you get and when you get them. If you are getting loaded with good drops, then you will take out the waves without having to be worried about bombs or which waves do what. The more bombs that drop, the more you can use them freely. I get some games with multiple bomb drops and other games with maybe only one bomb drop. The luck of the draw is a big factor.
Not getting hit is the ONLY path to a high score. You lose that multiplier, you have zero chance at maxing out a high score. Keeping the bombs is the safest way to a solid high score, but chancing it and using the bombs to take out large waves quickly is a big part to the even better high score. This of course depends on how many bombs drop for any particular run. Health upgrades are only relevant to Conquest mode. Volbard will hopefully be making the health drops count for points, which will give them relevance in Survival and Hardcore.
Thanks to duckee75 having a higher score than me in hardcore and survival being down (well, im not going to play until its fixed), i just got a new high score in hardcore! duckee75 - For your highscore in conquest mode, did you get hit once or? Because there's a huge margin between yourself and first place :S There's something about me and conquest that just doesnt mix :/ Selachii: A good way to practice is start off having the bomb and not using it(meaning dont get hit or dont activate it). Just get use to reaching the later lvls without dying and the different loops that occur.
This game is humbling. It looks so easy on the surface, yet it is so tricky. I just played about 50 games in a row where I quit every single one, simply because I kept getting hit and things weren't going my way. Other times I can play a few times in a row and get very good scores. Volbard, what are your thoughts on making the wingmen appear right next to your ship, instead of having them enter from the bottom? I find that I lose a lot of wingmen if my ship is in the middle or top of the screen, since they often have to penetrate a wave of enemies before they end up reaching my ship.
Thanks for helping to all the developers that helped us out. Thanks for responding to my call for aid. Thanks. Well, I got some REALLY good news for you all. I have been given permission to state that I am an official beta tester of the icade upgrade coming in the future, and it is going GREAT!!! Really great... Stay tuned for more news soon...
Yeah, I can agree with that. This is evident right from the start; it's rare but if I start off with a bunch of crappy powers/not enough yellow things I might find myself needing to restart pretty early on.
Of course this is relative with any game I suppose. However, I do find a big difference between the runs that give you a ton of good drops and the runs that give you a lot less. It may need to be balanced out a little bit.
Ha, I'm not gonna live that one down, am I? I may have underestimated myself a little when I made that comment. I don't consider myself to be adept at shmups, to be honest I haven't played as many as I'd have liked to over the years. I like the genre, and I've bought a bunch of them on iOS, but Plasma Sky is the first to really get me hooked.
I've got that in the TestFlight build. Right now wingmen get a second of invulnerability when they spawn. How about I bump that up to two seconds? That's enough for them to get to you anywhere on the screen. Let me know what you think! I'm thinking about how I could make the drops less random, at least in some modes. It may be too deep in the game systems for me to reasonably change though, and I'll just have to save it for another game.
I actually think this is fine as is. You do a little better on some playthroughs, a little worse on others. Sometimes you even do better when you should be doing worse, and vice versa. There's nothing wrong with random variance in difficulty from one playthrough to another. In fact, it creates a certain depth of its own. Games such as Canabalt and Super Hexagon thrive largely due to this precise factor.
Volbard, It's funny, in some ways I kind of like the challenge of trying to get the wingmen to my ship, but yeah, it would make the most sense if the wingmen had no way to die until they actually become equipped at your side. This way they die under your control, which is more fair. The randomness of the drops in general is a good thing. I just feel there is slightly too wide a margin between the runs with an extreme amount of tasty drops and the runs where you are praying for a little extra help. Good job on the health orbs counting for points. Now every orb is part of the gameplay!
The drop system is fine, its what makes the game exciting. Sometimes you have really lucky runs, others somewhat lucky but vary rarely do I have continued bad runs for drops. Plus im thinking SumoSplash you are mainly talking about survival mode? Dont worry about it, seriously if the timer is being changed you wont have to worry about getting awesome drops because all it will come down to is collecting all the extra times and not getting hit, kind of like hardcore... As for the wingmen coming on screen, 2 seconds will do fine. I would kind of like seeing the wingmen acquiring the spread shot ha.. that might be too much killing power but maybe make it super hard to get... Like, you have to collect 10 ships in a row (3 maxed out) before you acquire it! Volbard, let's start making plasma sky 2! I have an idea.... *3 different ships, but each with their unique leveling up system.. *customizable colour for the backgroud + creeps (or maybe just the 3 different ships have their own unique colour + background colours)... *a multiplier that doesnt stop... *the leveling cap increased.. *more exciting boss battles.. give us something to fear! *another mode where depending on how many creeps you kill equals the multiliper that you build, kind of like the leveling up system you have now, the multiplier will decrease if you do not kill anything in a certain period of time... *different types of wingmen that do different things (maybe wingmen that act as shields for a brief period of time or wingmen that increase your multiplier for a certain period of time)... *hardcore mode where the bombs dont act as a shield.. *the more powerups you collect the longer they stay active (like it has a circle around the icon, it still has the time limit but maybe a small 1 or 2 next to it to show how many times its overlapped) *have to keep it simplistic though, I think thats half the reason why plasma sky is so good, simple yet challenging... so probably everything I said will take the charm away :S
Haha. You will always find me pushing for more firepower, hence my desire for more weapon drops The spread shot for the wingmen. That sounds most delicious. You could have the spread shot and just tweak the strength so it doesn't overpower the enemies. Plasma Sky 2! That would make for an awesome Christmas present, Santa Volbard
Yeah, I think my need for firepower would be satisfied if the wingmen could use the spread shot Yes! Plasma sky 2! Ill be a beta tester for you Volbard! Make it happen
My point with this is that it can become an exercise in futility if you are going for a high score and there are multiple runs in a row where the weapon drops are sparse. It's an automatic reset if I see that my chances of advancing far into the game are slim. Some runs I have almost nothing but the little orbs and health orbs dropping. With runs like this, my ship feels anemic. To get farther into the game to achieve a high score, the better orbs have to be in your favor. I don't want to be spoon fed all the best drops, but I also don't want to have too little at my disposal to advance.
Sorry SumoSplash but I agree with Gabrien, it's what makes these type of games fun. The whole randomness, its challenging and keeps you coming back! Dont listen to him Volbard!!!!
Like I've previously stated, I agree that the randomness is a good thing, so technically I'm not disagreeing with anyone. I am merely talking about the scope of the drops. Not to mention that Volbard seems to agree based on his response to my original point. Ultimately, I don't care if it changes at all, but after playing this game hundreds of times, it is definitely something I noticed.
God damn that's an amazing score you got on hardcore!!! I've been trying to beat it for the last day now I've made it as far as level 93 I don't know if I'll ever catch up to you but I'll try as for the high score I got on conquest I played that game without getting hit infact there may be a glitch with the achievements as I got the hardcore achievement after that game I have no clue how the person above me got that high a score
