This game’s premise was largely inspired by games like Ikaruga and Giga Wing – I’ve always found the ability to turn your enemy’s attacks against them to be very satisfying in games, and so I decided to make a game that revolved centrally around that concept. Given the time constraint (and the amount of time taken coding the engine), it seemed best to go with a procedural difficulty curve rather than trying to orchestrate proper levels.
Sound effects were made with sfxr (except for the 1up jingle, which I did in PXTone). Code-wise, this game’s a bit cleaner than the last one, but there’s still some things that are rather boneheaded in retrospect.
Join us next week, when NMcCoy attempts to make art assets out of something other than ellipses! Until then… Go play Stargrazing!
Game 02: Stargrazing,
Wow… just wow. Maybe it’s just that scrolling shooters are really addictive, but I really enjoyed this game. There are a few minor issues to sort out (can’t hold down enough keys at once on my keyboard, for instance, and was it really necessary to un-charge your weapon as soon as you collect a different power type?), but that doesn’t detract from the fact that this is a great game.
I agree with you about the graphics, though – does Processing allow bitmaps, or what? This is an honest question, not sarcasm.
Processing does allow bitmaps – the background in Wavespark, for example – but so far I’ve been using only assets that I’ve created myself, and pixel art is generally not my forte. And sometimes it’s more fun to try to do things procedurally anyway, like the invaders in Spaceout. Thanks for the feedback!
The boss rush on this game is all I play. And I play it over and over again. Seriously, I have lost whole word days to this game’s bosses. Can’t beat level 6, can only rarely beat level 5.
I would love to see that aspect of this game developed and fleshed out a bit. It’d be nice if the moment you saw the bosses their 3 firing ports were already colored based on what they were going to shoot, give you some idea of what you’re against. Also, have you played rRootage? Just Google that and you’ll find it. It’s a boss rush game. Imagine this game where every permutation of boss was laid out in a matrix like that and it kept score of what level you made it to with that particular boss (perhaps by coloring the square so a screen shot could tell the story of your accomplishments?). I mean really there’s only a couple of different variations. Hold on, lemme work this out:
Let’s see, there’s spread shot, spray shot, and stream shot, there’s white, red, and blue, and there’s 3 slots. Combinatorics says that’s 27 different bosses, right? Easy to fit in a brid. This has possibilities to me.
Those blue homing projectiles move WAY too fast…
I am a bullet hell gamer, and this has an interesting mechanic to it, but the bullets move to quickly (at least on my PC..?) to have any hope of dodging the faster ones, unfortunately they don’t aim until they fire so preemptive dodging is difficult.
The capture is interesting, but as soon as you absorb a different bullet type (usually accidentally), the power returns to the first level, which is a little annoying.
But I must say I really like the capture mechanism. I made something a bit like this a long time ago, but it wasn’t a compete game, and it made use of a shield instead which reflected the bullets off its surface while active, well except for the fast shield breakers rounds, etc.
The link is broken!
(btw, I love your games, especially wavespark)
Fixed, thanks.
The link is broken again ;o
Fixed again. Not sure what happened there.
I made it to Level 26 on Boss Rush! I started to keep a folder of ridiculous bullet hell pictures from Stargrazing but after Level 20 or so pretty much every life qualifies. This is seriously one of the top 5 internet games ever.
I know you’re probably not planning on fixing this year-old game based on gameplay at Level 26, but stuff gets really weird. Only 1 in 10 bosses is even worth trying to fight. Starting around 23 or so, if the middle turret is anything except a single burst (any color!), it lasts longer than it takes for the boss to traverse the screen, so you automatically die. It’s pretty much impossible to absorb any large bullets (exception: if you get spread yellow from the first pair of turrets, you can sometimes absorb it by flying right up the center… red is too random). Spread blue from the outermost turrets is impossible to avoid. The weirdest thing is how only the center of the bullets will actually do damage–it’s strange to absorb enough yellow to create a stream of yellow bullets bigger than the entire screen (this happens all the time after Level 20) and have some of it miss the boss because you weren’t lined up perfectly.
Anyway I have spent way too much time playing this game.
okay now I’m at Level 31. you can beat basically any boss if it fires a yellow spread shot from the inner set of two turrets. it’s the first thing that is fired, so just fly right up the middle absorbing. you will absorb a crazy number of bullets while veering right a little for some reason, but as long as you hold up+absorb you won’t die. then release it. the screen will fill with yellow laser. as long as you can avoid the shots from the middle and outer turrets for a few seconds the boss is pretty much dead.
Okay Level 36 now and I quit. I think Level 37, maybe 38, will be the point when it is impossible to dodge anything except for a burst/spread shot, because all other shots last longer than it takes for the boss to cross the entire screen, so you can start dodging on one side but it will still smash you on the other side. On 36 if you start on one side, you can just barely do it. Anyway, the only way to win is how I described in my last comment, and you get the right ship 1/9 times–only the first shot matters, the boss will be dead after your first attack.
I think I have played this game longer than any other person, maybe longer than all other people put together.
Wow. I am blown away by your skill at the game, and the discoveries you’ve made. The fact that you’ve got that much gameplay value out of one of my first games is mind-boggling. I’ll definitely give this game a second look, when considering my Android-port project. =)
heh, yeah, I don’t know what it is, maybe that it’s like Ikaruga but without memorizing and neverending. something just resonates with me though! I could play it for hours nonstop I think.
One issue if you tried to remake it though–slowdown. I was confused by all these old comments about the bullets going too fast and then I went back to Level 1 and yeah, those are some pretty fast bullets. The game is completely different between Level 1 and Level 7 even, and it wouldn’t be the same at the higher levels if you fixed all the slowdown–some of the things you have to do you really have to process one frame at a time to have any chance. I think only someone raised on NES could truly love it!
If anybody is completely insane, I posted as my website a link to some pictures of random levels from 15-36.