Trying something new...

Posted by RetroVortex on July 14, 2007, 11:25 p.m.

Yes folks!

I'm actually using game maker again!

But this time I decided to do a completely different type of game.

I decided to work on a…

SHMUP!

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of shumps. I've only liked a few of them, (Twinbee, parodius, mars matrix, and DoDonPachi to be exact!)

But this time I decided to give it a go..

Haven't done much.

I've made the main GUI(uses GM drawing functions) and done a few sprites, and I've made the movement and shooting part of the engine.

I've decided to do a static scrolling method to making a shmup

That means the ship stays still, horizontally, but the stage moves against the ship.

i could even make it even simpler, by making the background scroll, and a single object which generates the enemies in waves.

and another which generates items to help you.

This would be good because there would be less objects created in the room, possibly making the game take up less memory ingame,

giving more room for special effect such as particles, and bosses.

The only problem with doing this, is that the object would have to use alot of variables, and alarms, which could make this process more complicated than it should be…

(but this could be avoided by creating a different version of this object for each level, as well as a matching item generator)

The project is early days yet, (I gottan make a few sprites, get some ideas, find some good music ect…)

I want my game to follow the roots of the shmup series.

Enemies that have patterns, generic powerups, ect..

But I'm not going to make it like recent Japanese shmups

(which are primarily dodge thousands of bullets and super rapid fire)

So I'm keeping it simple.

I also hope this will be the first game I actually finish. (as i have the ability to make a good game, but not the motivation..)

Sorry I don't have any screenies but the game doesn't look so good at the moment, but the graphics style will probably be quite colourful and cartoony (not really cartoony like twinbee, but not serious either)

i hope I can get some good ideas for this game (as this is what usually halts my progress…) and keep working on it, so it will be good for you!

Comments

Kairos 17 years, 4 months ago

Congratulations for choosing this nearly dead genre that seriously needs to be revived. If you're stuck on some part of the general idea, give me a shout.

Real men don't play FPS games; they play DoDonPachi through without a single death.

s 17 years, 4 months ago

Ya,good GUIs don't just use a giant image with some text inserted

RetroVortex 17 years, 4 months ago

My Gui is quite simple at the moment, but it is the least of my worries now…

(anyway, the gui would be the last thing I should concentrate on)

I'm also going to give the player missiles, and possibly charged shots to add a bit of tactics to the game, (for example say boss 1 has armour that can only be broken by missiles and exposes a core, which you must shoot while avoiding its turrets (which try to lock on to you so you have to avoid the crosshairs, or move them away from the core))

stampede 17 years, 4 months ago

First the gameplay, then the GUI.