Bullet-Point - A Typography Inspired Bullet Hell for Ludum Dare October Challenge! - Games

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NftETQ7eI1U[/media] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vOz3a7Vafg[/media] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgI_6oCL1jA[/media] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUJrxIFdhUQ[/media] Hello everyone! This is a game I'm working on for the Ludum Dare October Challenge! It's in very early stages, but I have the game in its current state upload for playtesting, and I wanted to see what you guys thought of it. The music was created by Pitfall! You can find his SoundCloud [b][url="http://www.soundcloud.com/pitfall-3"]here![/url][/b] [b]Download the game here: [url]http://phobos001.itch.io/bullet-point?secret=v7JwaiEvKpiaAAj31drwj8ec[/url][/b] Questions and advice are also welcome :happy: [editline]WOW[/editline] Fixed the link from total destruction :ohno:

I love the latest level you've shown off, i love how the messages get angrier and angrier as the level goes on. The colors are a bit weird, I dont know what to suggest besides a red or blue with no pinks or greens. The concept of the game seems really cool, and try spicing up those dialog boxes a bit. Im assuming each level is with a different character, so maybe alongside the font changes, give them little quirks to the way they speak. Excited to see what you do with this!

[QUOTE=Zombie_2371;48896032]I love the latest level you've shown off, i love how the messages get angrier and angrier as the level goes on. The colors are a bit weird, I dont know what to suggest besides a red or blue with no pinks or greens. The concept of the game seems really cool, and try spicing up those dialog boxes a bit. Im assuming each level is with a different character, so maybe alongside the font changes, give them little quirks to the way they speak. Excited to see what you do with this![/QUOTE] Thanks for the feedback :toot: [quote]The colors are a bit weird, I dont know what to suggest besides a red or blue with no pinks or greens. [/quote] Which level do you mean? Each level has a different color theme, and even different phases change it up a bit. If you mean Level 3, then I've just been picking random colors every half a second. :v: [quote]and try spicing up those dialog boxes a bit. Im assuming each level is with a different character, so maybe alongside the font changes, give them little quirks to the way they speak. [/quote] I'll see what I can do about differences in dialog. Maybe I could even change the way they move around? Problem is that most of the time the player will be dodging crazy shit like the start of Phase 2 in Level 3, so I don't want to add anything to exquisite to those parts :excited:

[QUOTE=Phobos001;48897093]Thanks for the feedback :toot: Which level do you mean? Each level has a different color theme, and even different phases change it up a bit. If you mean Level 3, then I've just been picking random colors every half a second. :v: I'll see what I can do about differences in dialog. Maybe I could even change the way they move around? Problem is that most of the time the player will be dodging crazy shit like the start of Phase 2 in Level 3, so I don't want to add anything to exquisite to those parts :excited:[/QUOTE] For the feedback: No problem! For the colour: Yeah, I was talking about the third level. Maybe even if you keep it black and white but have the brightness of the background fade in and out a bit as it gets more frantic it might be better? The only reason I say that is because having greens and pinks being randomly tossed in there is kinda off putting, visually. For the dialog: Subtle wording and punctuation really adds a lot to how the 'characters' sound in your mental voice, and while I realize that the player is not going to be focusing on that during elements of gameplay, its still a nice touch! The way you move the text around and the font/size/weight of the text can also be manipulated to make each 'character' unique.

[QUOTE=Zombie_2371;48902433]For the feedback: No problem! For the colour: Yeah, I was talking about the third level. Maybe even if you keep it black and white but have the brightness of the background fade in and out a bit as it gets more frantic it might be better? The only reason I say that is because having greens and pinks being randomly tossed in there is kinda off putting, visually. For the dialog: Subtle wording and punctuation really adds a lot to how the 'characters' sound in your mental voice, and while I realize that the player is not going to be focusing on that during elements of gameplay, its still a nice touch! The way you move the text around and the font/size/weight of the text can also be manipulated to make each 'character' unique.[/QUOTE] To add on to this, changing the color of the "character"''s font to match the theme of the level makes it that much better, I'm anyway.

Alright, I just played it and have some things: 1. There seems to be no anti-aliasing. Not a big issue, but makes everything prettier. 2. I ran into a bug where I played all the levels and after I got to the third level the screen was so bright I couldn't see the white objects. Reloading the game and clicking on level 3 seems to have fixed that. 3. On level 3 again, the part where its the side to side one with the killzones and the vertical block, its hard to know which side of the screen is going to damage you, and the block comes up so fast from the bottom of the screen with no indicator its coming managed to get me a lot. Thats all I have for now, I think!

Sorry for the delay! Been busy with real life [quote]1. There seems to be no anti-aliasing. Not a big issue, but makes everything prettier.[/quote] I agree, it does look a lot nicer, but using it (linear sampling) makes the bitmap fonts include a pixel-thin line of the letter next to it. Point sampling (AKA nearest neighbor filtering) doesn't do this, which is why I was using it. When I find out how to fix it I'll make Linear sampling the default! :smile: [quote]2. I ran into a bug where I played all the levels and after I got to the third level the screen was so bright I couldn't see the white objects. Reloading the game and clicking on level 3 seems to have fixed that.[/quote] Fixed that; the black sprite that overlapped it wasn't rendering and thus didn't darken the background. (The fancy mode7 shader doesn't work with opacity for some reason :v:), so I just made it pop in suddenly instead. [quote]3. On level 3 again, the part where its the side to side one with the killzones and the vertical block, its hard to know which side of the screen is going to damage you, and the block comes up so fast from the bottom of the screen with no indicator its coming managed to get me a lot.[/quote] I've reduced the speed of the vertical block, but the alternating killzones is supposed to be kind of a rhythmic thing. When on the opposite side of the activating killzone, and you hear the little "bzzzt", it's time to go to the other side. I think it's cool because it requires constant movement, but maybe there's a better way to telegraph what you're supposed to do better. Maybe make the first one delayed to give you time to react, and have them gradually increase in speed? [b]TIME TO EXPERIMENT![/b] Thank you so much for the information! When I get this working right I'll upload the new stuff and see how it goes. :excited:

I've noticed that it's possible to get hit by overlapping bullets and take the damage from both.

[QUOTE=9487;48925689]I've noticed that it's possible to get hit by overlapping bullets and take the damage from both.[/QUOTE] Yes, and if you're moving along with a bullet but near the very edge of it, it's possible to trigger several hits in an extremely short amount of time, making it seem like you took 5 hits from one. Gonna add invincibility frames of some sort, but short ones. Hopefully this will solve both issues!

Alright, so I'm not gonna make the October Challenge deadline (life stuff), but I thought maybe I could use that to my advantage? I learned about Unity's animation system, and I thought that perhaps I could make better animated/designed patterns and such with it. The problem is that I'm inexperienced with it and it's going to take longer to make because of that. It also runs much faster than Construct 2's engine does (680 FPS vs 3200 FPS) and would be more responsive, along with running better on older machines. So what do you guys think I should do? [img]https://facepunch.com/fp/ratings/tick.png[/img] - Learn and Use Unity [img]https://facepunch.com/fp/ratings/cross.png[/img] - Keep using Construct 2