Erebus : Shmup

[TheDogCatcher]

Hi folks,

For the last few weeks I've been working on an old school style Shoot 'em Up using playmaker (fantastic tool btw), and I now have a playable demo of the first level available.

Here's the download link for anyone who's interested :

LINK REMOVED project updated

and a couple of screenshots :





For more information on the project here's a link to the relevant thread on the shmups.com forums :

https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=61092

anyhow I hope you enjoy my work and big thanks to the playmaker devs for making such a great and easy to use tool.

regards,

-mark

[djaydino]

Hi,
Nice game.
I played it a little bit, the suspense music is very nice.

i find the movement of the player aircraft a bit slow tho.
Also i noticed some enemies keep shooting, even when they are off screen already.

Is this your 1st project?

[TheDogCatcher]

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback.

This is indeed my first project, I'm pretty much a total novice, I've made maps, mods and even total conversions for other games before but this my first attempt at making a full game. Virtually everything I know about using playmaker comes from watching these youtube tutorials :

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYYCDVRRWC7c3KawqPYeOMUDHm6soOcNo

I've already had some other people asking me to increase the ship speed so that's one of the first things I intend to fix, and I think I've already figured out a solution to the offscreen firing thing.

Btw the music is Mars The Bringer Of War from The Planets by Gustav Holst, one of my all time favourite classical tracks, it's also public domain so no copyright issues.

Thanks again for the feedback.

-mark

[djaydino]

Hi,
Happy to help, let me know when you have a new update
and feel free to ask anything on the forum if you get stuck.

[clandestine]

I also like it!
You can implement a 'speed' pickup and you're free from critique.
From my personal perspective you must do it more 'over the top' (again, this is a question of taste, not a rule). The explosions must be bigger, the projectiles and ships should be bigger then their hit-boxes... anyway, i got excited, thats why i'm suggesting things

Some of my all time favorites below:

[TheDogCatcher]

I also like it!
You can implement a 'speed' pickup and you're free from critique.
From my personal perspective you must do it more 'over the top' (again, this is a question of taste, not a rule). The explosions must be bigger, the projectiles and ships should be bigger then their hit-boxes... anyway, i got excited, thats why i'm suggesting things

Thanks for the feedback, I have speed pickups in the game already, in the latest build I've also increased the player ship's base speed.

Explosions still need some work as there is only one type of explosion at the moment and I'm looking into that.

I'll also be tweaking weapon effects as I go .

anyway thanks for taking a look at my project I'm really glad you like it, hopefully things will only get better from here on.

I'll upload an updated demo in a few days time.

[...]

Can't wait to get home to try it out!

[TheDogCatcher]

If you want to wait a day or so I'll be updating the demo, I've made a lot of improvements so it might be worth the wait.

[...]

Sure, just let us know!

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

 do you have a twitter account so that I can tweet on this?

 Bye,

 Jean

[TheDogCatcher]

no, sorry I don't do twitter or any type of social media really.

[TheDogCatcher]

I've uploaded an updated version of the demo, here's the link :

LINK REMOVED - project updated

Here's a list of changes from the changelog:

Features:

- Player Ship now flashes during 1.5 second period of invulnerablitly after losing a life.

- Screen flashes red when the player loses a life.

- changed green weapon to piercing beam that travels through enemies and reduced weapon damage to compensate.

- changed red weapon to fire beams to the left and right aswell as forwards with the forward shot being slightly more powerful.

- Slightly increased blue weapon damage.

- doubled damage caused by the starting weapon.

- removed player health gauge and replaced it with a standard numerical display.

- removed player life cap.

- player ship starting speed and speed cap increased with bullet speed increased to compensate.

- added new type of explosion for when enemies are hit by bullets but are not killed.

- added option screen with volume sliders for explosion volume and global volume control.

- added Option to set the number of lives that the player starts with.

- added enemy transport ships for carrying powerups.

- added camera fade in at the start of a level and camera fade out at the end.

- added new weapon for type C enemies.

- added new type D enemy.

- added Credits page.


Fixes:

- small enemies firing while Offscreen fixed.

- Changed gravity setting for keyboard controls to eliminate momentum.

- Lowered Volume of pickup sound for powerups.

- removed ability to select non 16:9 aspect ratios.

- health pickup colour changed to orange.


Optimisation:

- reduced resolution of texture maps for terrain to 256 x 256 from 1024 x 1024.

- reduced Indirect Resolution of terrain lightmaps to 0.1 texels per unit from 0.5 texels per unit.

- reduced foliage texture resolution to 512 x 512 from 1024 x 1024.

I've also created a lite version of the demo for people with slower computers, link :

LINK REMOVED - project updated

in the Lite version I've included support for aspect ratios other than 16:9, removed the side panels and rearranged gui elements to better fit the screen.

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

not doing social media is a big mistake when you want to promote your game. I don't do social media for personal stuff, but I do have a twitter account for professional use. This is the way you put chances on your side for a post to go viral and attract players or be noticed by publishers, else your game has far less chance to become successful... I am not saying this is good, it's just how the market and people works unfortunatly.

Bye,

 Jean

[TheDogCatcher]

yeah, you make some good points there, I guess I'd never really given it much thought probably because I've never had a game to promote before, I'll look into it.

thanks,

-mark

[djaydino]

Hi,
I played a bit and the movement feels better now.

You might want to flash also to life counter when you lose a life (better visual for a player to see)
Also a health bar for the bigger enemies that needs to get hit more than once would be nice.

and a 'play again' button would be nice.
Now you can only come back to the main screen when the game is over.

Keep up the good work