Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Derakon]

Y'all love beta tests, right? Fusillade's a fun little game I've been working on that's heavily inspired by "bullet hell" scrolling shmups. Fly ships! Dodge bullets! Inflect! Don't shoot anything because your ship has no weaponry! The game pits you against an endless series of progressively harder bullet patterns, with the goal being simply to survive as long as possible. Here's a sample screenshot:



The game's currently in open beta, so you can download a copy (Windows and Mac only -- sorry, Linux users, I'll be working on the Linux version when I get the time) here. And if you want to help support my game development habit, preorders are open, so you can get a registration code, which lets you play extra courses and make your own, for $2.50. Alternatively, if you're the first to report a bug on the forum, you get a code for free!

Really, though, I just wanted to share my project with you all. I hope you enjoy it!

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Hmm? Inspired by Touhou, I guess?

Let's see, I may be able to test this game...

[Pandarsenic]

I'll help too, I think.

[JoshuaFH]

I played it, and I think it's a really good game. I'm am inexperienced with bullet hell type games, so I can't say alot about it, unfortunately.

What I can say though, is that I'm put off by the fact that the game screen doesn't fit in my 800x600 resolution. I don't like having to change resolutions to play anything. Is their a pre-existing feature that will help? If not, then there should be one.

[Karlito]

Well I played it.  Touhou and similar bullet hell operate at a slightly slower pace than this one, making the skill and reflexes of the player count more.  At the speed that Fusillade operates, it seems to me that the player's sense of space and timing don't really matter as much as dumb luck.

[Derakon]

ChaoticJosh: I'm afraid the game is hardcoded to uses a wider screen than 800x600. Changing that would require reworking all of the UI elements. That said, you can play in fullscreen mode and the game should resize itself to fit. The only problem will be reaching the config page so you can toggle fullscreen...

Karlito: are you sure you didn't have turbo mode on? The patterns in Fusillade should be survivable by skill until you reach loop 3 or 4 or so without turbo. With turbo I'll grant they get ridiculous very quickly. Which course were you playing?

Thanks for the feedback, both of you! It's always valuable to hear what people think of my work, good or bad.

[Karlito]

Yes, I wasn't playing with turbo.  Actually I think if there was a way to reduce the sensitivity (make your ship go slower), it would make me very happy.  I just don't feel in control the way the ship moves now.

[Shades]

Can you let me know when a Linux version is done, happy to give you my thoughts on it then

[Derakon]

Karlito: your ship has four speeds. Check the options page for the controls.

Shades: will do. Right now I'm working on getting all of the various website features running.

[Derakon]

I'm bumping this to note that I've released beta 5, which has a bunch of small changes. Have fun!

[Pandarsenic]

Which parts of the ship are okay for skimming and which parts are vulnerable to death should be better defined....

[Derakon]

How would you recommend I better define them?

The bright red dot is vulnerable; everything else is safe. This is stated in the help page.

[Pandarsenic]

Mmm. Well, the main things I've played which allow your ship to skim are:

1) Warning Forever
2) Fuzetsu

Warning Forever uses Vector Art stuff, so most of the ship is transparent, save for its lines - you can tell where something is as it passes through.
Fuzetsu gives you a simple pixel with a circle around it; anything within the circle that isn't the pixel is good for skimming. Again, you can see where something passing through is.

Perhaps if the bullets were on a higher layer than the ship or the ship was semitransparent as bullets pass through...? I dunno, it just bugs me when I can't see the bullet passing through the ship. Er, assuming it's not already like that, but I'm pretty sure it isn't....

[Derakon]

As of beta 4, the bullets are drawn above the ship instead of below, so I doubt that's the problem. Making the ship semitransparent when bullets are already drawn on top of it would just make the ship as a whole darker, including the vulnerable portion. As of beta 5, I did change the ship graphic so that everything except the vulnerable portion is a bit darker, to help increase contrast.

[Pandarsenic]

As of beta 4, the bullets are drawn above the ship instead of below, so I doubt that's the problem. Making the ship semitransparent when bullets are already drawn on top of it would just make the ship as a whole darker, including the vulnerable portion. As of beta 5, I did change the ship graphic so that everything except the vulnerable portion is a bit darker, to help increase contrast.

Ah, okay. I'll DL that and give it a shot some time today or tomorrow, then.