Oh shit sorry, I forgot all about this! No complaints here, you did pretty much everything I asked. The highlighting and auto-homing in Repel definitely helps, and I actually have to watch what I'm doing in Be now. Just one thing, don't map anything to any keys below WASD. Ghost is weird, I'll reserve judgement on that one for the next demo because I'm not at all sure where this is going to go. I managed to glitch the game out so I could only shoot white squares- I think I had both ships on the same panel or something, it resolved itself once I started moving around. Depends, but conventional is probably the best choice. I love boss rushes, but I'd only go with that if your bosses are going as cool and/or varied as Treasure's are. Even then, you'd still want to have some bite-sized level layouts in there to give the player a chance to breathe. Mixed could be interesting, but it's generally a bad idea to be switching core game mechanics constantly between rounds. Is there going to be some sort of narrative tying all these games together?
I can't make any promises, sorry - I'm trying to find a control layout that'll work for left-handed gamers to go with the conventional right-hand setup. Weird? Good to know. And about the glitch, also good to know. Here's the proposed setup: the player starts the game with Repel mode, working through a few mini-bosses to get the hang of the controls, then the game will present the player with a Megaman-style opponent select screen. You can replay the previous level for practice, or dive right into a new boss fight with one of the other characters (Be, Ghost, Punch, etc). As boss fights they use the same moves you would if you were playing them; since you're effectively immortal when fighting them you'll basically given free reign to study their moves and patterns; in other words the boss fights are glorified tutorials. Beating a boss lets you unlock their scenario, and the format changes depending on the character - some characters get a mixture of puzzles and fighting (Ghost), others get more conventional level layouts (Shoot, Be) or boss rush scenarios (Punch) or specialised scenarios (Shunt, which is a revised Pac-Man Attack). It's a lot like Live-A-Live. The narrative justification is that a man gets brought back from the dead and can't seem to kill himself permanently afterwards. Our hero tries to take advantage of that by learning the condemned art of Amon (a practice few students survive since the training involves, you know, dodging bullets), and then picking fights with people across the globe. There's more to it than that (actually a shitload more) but I don't want to spoil too much.
Would lefties really want that, though? The problem with having keys in that area is that lifting a finger keeps you from moving in one or more directions, which is pretty fatal for any duration in a SHMUP. If you really need to map an action key over there, I'd stick with Q and E- making the downward motion for ZXC feels really unnatural to me, mostly because I'm a hunt-and-peck scrub and never needed to, but then my palm obscures the keys and I wind up hitting the wrong key, multiple keys, etc. etc. Made me avoid warping backwards in Be altogether. I mean, I'm just picking nits here, I could just use joy2key or something if I can't configure the controls in later builds. All of this sounds good. Excellent, perhaps. Carry on! EDIT: Wait, if you can't die, what's the major deterrent for not getting hit here?
Losing any energy you've stored so far, also annoying sound effects. UPDATE! So I've pretty much finished the main layout of the first level for this demo. There's 17 rooms, 2 of which are boss-related and 3 of which contain puzzles (though only one cleared puzzle is mandatory to beat the level, the others just unlock a weapon upgrade). Basically what I need to do now is set up the 'boss creation' routine (enter room, doors locked, spawn boss, beat him to advance) and finish the animation for the active sprites. The torches need revamping, the fireball needs animation, the player needs charging/slashing/hurt/waiting/win animations, those skeletons are static sprites and there are other placeholder monsters that need new sprites and walking/firing/dying animations. Test video of the first level so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVztYYe4V-Q
I've set up a website. It contains development materials for the game and other prototypes (sprites, concept art, etc), as well as unfinished comics and designs and shit. http://stevenart.co.uk/
