The VG Resource

Hi. I have a mega man fan game I'm working on making in game maker, and I'd like to get some feedback on it.
Now, this one's a tad unique as far as I know... Mostly in that it is (well intended to be at least) a complete re imagining of classic mega man as a shoot em up.

Now while the plot may vary from classic mega man, I'm playing it closer to classic mega man than mega man battle network did.
For example: you'll see the MM1 RMs all in a set, and for the most part you'll find counter parts for the same enemies they had in their stages (unless they really need more variety, in which case I'll throw in some from their gameboy stages and even some from later/previous games that REALLY should have been there in the first place)

Screen shots:





Newest Demo:
Newest version 0.6.0.1 here
Old Playable Demo:
0.6.0.1
Working demo 01 here
Controls:
movement=arrow keys.
fire=z
pause = spacebar
Force fire/option formation= x

Current features as of the latest version:
-Fully (Possibly overly) functional customizable controls scheme.
-Power-up system allows you to gain extra basic firepower
-Megaman's signature weapon select system for even more variety
-2 full stage, 1 playable but boss-less stages.
-E-tanks that will give the ship a health meter for those that have trouble with the one hit defeat shoot em ups tend to have.

Reasonable planned features:
These are what I'd be happy with having in the game
-Every megaman 1(Well Powered up) stage reimagined as a shoot em up + tutorial and secret stage
-13 weapons to select from
-Multiple playable ships each with different playstyles, several inspired by multiple shumps.
-Example: While Megaman is clearly inspired by R-Type, Roll will be more Gradius.

The FULL ambition features:
If I had my way, and can actually put it off, what I'd REALLY want to do with this project:
-MM1-10 reimagined and grouped into Wily wars-esque chapters as well as Megaman V.
-Nearly every RM and all three Doctors as a playable ship.

I tried it.
I found it hard, but everything seems to work well. I think you can make the waves of enemy patterns work better together.
Perhaps you could put some screenshots up, or some gifs?

Oh, cool, a SHMUP!
I didn't get all that far, but I did think the fact that the power-ups were all spiky was a little misleading and I was dodging them at first.
That said, those enemies had an especially annoying attack pattern...

(04-01-2014, 04:13 PM)Chris2Balls [:B] Wrote: [ -> ]I tried it.
I found it hard, but everything seems to work well. I think you can make the waves of enemy patterns work better together.
Perhaps you could put some screenshots up, or some gifs?

Yeah, sorry about the lack of extra information. My idea of an april fools joke is to try to give people something unexpected (and hopefully enjoyable/interesting) in the guise of something cookie cutter and common. Thus:

(04-01-2014, 07:48 AM)Terminal Devastation Wrote: [ -> ]Hi. I have a megaman fan game I'm working on making in game maker, and I'd like to get some feedback on it.
Working demo here
Controls:
movement=arrow keys.
fire=z
pause = spacebar
other= x

Time to update the first post with proper information.
Anyways, can I get some more detail on how to they could work better?
Or whats not working well at least? I think I can do better too, but I'm not entirely sure on what makes fun shoot em up enemy placement.

(04-02-2014, 12:03 PM)Iocus Wrote: [ -> ]Oh, cool, a SHMUP!
I didn't get all that far, but I did think the fact that the power-ups were all spiky was a little misleading and I was dodging them at first.
That said, those enemies had an especially annoying attack pattern...

Okay, need to adjust the power ups to look less threatening. I was trying to go off the gradius power ups (the shoot em up I'm most familiar with is Gradius III so I'm taking a lot of what I know from that).
Could you be more specific on which enemy's had the annoying attack pattern?
I suspect it was the orange ones that came in a line since, I've seen how threatening they can get, but I'd rather make sure incase I have to adjust another one.

During the actual gameplay, the shooting delay seems too long. It might be that you only shoot on key release instead of press.

I can see that this is early in dev, but when you get to it. How about some collision effects/response. The boss could also be a bit a more involved, or atleast seem more involved than just "Move up, down, go towards player, go back, repeat.". One way without making the boss seem more "smarter" (i.e. no additional programmer really) would be to just telegraph the attack with an animation + sfx...+ gfx or w/e ykno haha. The shy boss does a better job of this.

Also after getting out of the tutorial and going to a level, whatever I had during the tutorial carried over.

-Have the walls show that they're preparing to come out before they actually do.

-I'm fighting the ice/shy girl atm. Her attacks seem pretty boring and movement random. Aren't these types of games known for the cool bullet patterns or something? How about that?...............And I accidentally exited the level. How about a warning or something? Or instead name it "Exit To Menu" instead of Exit which I thought it meant "Exit back to Level" the first time I played.

-..So I moved onto the second level. I noticed the hurtbox on those enemies that shoot thunder was a bit too big...Is everything a one hit death? Those blue frogs sure are annoying...They're too fast...And come from left off screen during the boss fight....And kill me in one hit too... Hahaaa.........I'm done with this level lol.

I'm done playing. I don't have to proofread the above to know its probably seriously incoherent, but I hope something up there helps. -In case it helps, I've never played Parodius or really these type of games often.

(04-02-2014, 08:37 PM)TheShyGuy Wrote: [ -> ]During the actual gameplay, the shooting delay seems too long. It might be that you only shoot on key release instead of press.

I can see that this is early in dev, but when you get to it. How about some collision effects/response.

Yeah, I think I need this too. It's difficult for me to know if I'm dealing damage or not, and I know what its supposed to be doing. I can only imagine what that's like for others. I'm not entirely sure on what the effect should actually be yet though.

Quote:The boss could also be a bit a more involved, or atleast seem more involved than just "Move up, down, go towards player, go back, repeat.".
One way without making the boss seem more "smarter" (i.e. no additional programmer really) would be to just telegraph the attack with an animation + sfx...+ gfx or w/e ykno haha. The shy boss does a better job of this.

It took me a moment to realize you were talking about the mini-boss big eye.
I'll see what I can do about this.

Quote:Also after getting out of the tutorial and going to a level, whatever I had during the tutorial carried over.

This is currently intentional. I think keeping it like that for now will be useful for testing purposes.

Quote:-Have the walls show that they're preparing to come out before they actually do.

Okay.

Quote:-I'm fighting the ice/shy girl atm. Her attacks seem pretty boring and movement random. Aren't these types of games known for the cool bullet patterns or something? How about that?...............

I should explain what I want from the main bosses, well other than making it fun and enjoyable. Phase one is supposed to be like the typical Shump boss, while phase two is a shump ship duel.

In ice man's case, Phase one is pretty much big core MkII (who was labeled as Ice Ice in some US manual or something), I might have gotten the AI wrong though. Phase two... I'm not sure what to do with at the moment. I dislike it when games allow you to unlock former boss and you can't do what that boss did yourself.
So I have to figure out what to do with Ice man's powerup sequence.
Once I do that, there will probably be some more interesting things going on in that fight. (She's not random by the way, she just reacts to player positioning)
I'm welcome to suggestions here. And anywhere else for that matter.

Quote:And I accidentally exited the level. How about a warning or something? Or instead name it "Exit To Menu" instead of Exit which I thought it meant "Exit back to Level" the first time I played.

Okay. Would "Escape" work better?

Quote:-..So I moved onto the second level. I noticed the hurtbox on those enemies that shoot thunder was a bit too big...Is everything a one hit death?

Okay. Most Shumps have one hit player death, so that's default for this game as well. I get that its frustrating for players that aren't used to them so, the E-tank item in the menu suddenly provides a healthbar to change that when used.
Unless you're referring to their hit box, in which case I just went and fixed it.

Quote:Those blue frogs sure are annoying...They're too fast...And come from left off screen during the boss fight....And kill me in one hit too... Hahaaa.........I'm done with this level lol.

Okay. Need to stop frogs from being active far off screen. I'll consider slowing them down as well.

Quote:I'm done playing. I don't have to proofread the above to know its probably seriously incoherent, but I hope something up there helps. -In case it helps, I've never played Parodius or really these type of games often.

Any testing from anyone helps.

New Version

-New features:
Elec man is now fully fightable.

Ice man's first form is a bit faster.
Ice man is a bit more interesting of a fight. A lot harder too.

Changed powerup appearance to look less harmful.

Ice slasher has particles for when it hits things it can't harm.

Exit command on menu now says Escape. Hopely that makes it a bit more clear that it leaves the level.

The silence was killing me, so I played it with this the Background.

Had the same problem as Ran Master. Music makes the player comfortable, or stressed given the situation in which the player is in. It gives the game ambiance and feeling.

Two suggestions I will make are that you should make it to where when you hold the fire key, it shoots at an interval instead of having to pressing it constantly. Also slow down the scrolling speed of the level. These are two things that I feel would help with the game play as I remember them from gradius 3 on the snes.

I agree about the scrolling speed, however the faster pace would be a decent speed for a high-speed level like in some Gradius games.

Okay. Normally, I'd wait until I have fixed any issues brought up to respond, or at least a few update... but I feel I need to address a few things.

Regarding music and audio in general:
The current lack of audio is because I can't make audio resources myself yet, even though I have a decently clear idea of what I want the music to sound like. Progress towards asking/finding someone (or more) to make a few tunes has been slow.
If anyones curious, I was planing on mostly MM1 tunes remixed to sound more space shooter like, with a few mash ups between a space shooter tune and a MM stage tune. Not sure what to do about the boss music though.

SFX I'm not sure what to do about. Might end up just using Gradius and megaman sound rips.

So it's an issue I'd like fix, but am currently unable to.

As for the scrolling:
To be honest, I REALLY hope you are either refering just to the faster sections, or misremembering Gradius' scroll speed.. .because a few sections are already as slow as possible.

The current scroll coding just stops scrolling if I try a lower number, and recoding it so it can accept a lower numbers and still scroll results in jerky scrolling.
It's not surprising though, since going slower is trying to scroll at fractional pixel speeds.

Side note: I now know how to implement screen shaking as a result.

As for continuious fire:
I'd have to think about this some more.
It's not a hard thing to implement and I know its something space shooters do in fact have.
Even still, I'm not sure I want it.

At least for the "Megaman" ship. Other ships I might.

The issue is how well it would work with the weapons and a possible later implementation of a charge shot.
(The current fire coding is built with charge shot in mind)

what the next demo should have added at the very least
-Speed down button (already implemented!)
-Parts of Guts man's stage.

How long this has been under development? I'm also doing a SHMUP on Game Maker but it's more than difficult because I just jumped on whole Game Maker-train in a whim to develop things.

I'd love to provide SFX though through rips from the ARC Gradius-games and beyond though, if you want them.

I think if you're gonna do a Megaman SHMUP, you should put more Megaman in than just dialog icons. Maybe have him flying one of the vehicles from the games or on the Rush Jet.

(04-29-2014, 01:28 PM)IndyGo Wrote: [ -> ]How long this has been under development? I'm also doing a SHMUP on Game Maker but it's more than difficult because I just jumped on whole Game Maker-train in a whim to develop things.

I'd love to provide SFX though through rips from the ARC Gradius-games and beyond though, if you want them.

It's hard to say with this, since I technically started this in C++ back in 2012, put it on hold for a while and then started over the programing when I got my hands on gamemaker about a month ago. Its mostly due to not being able to deal with the lag in the C++, and GM is just easier to use. Still use mostly code for this though.

Some gradius sound rips would be really nice.

(04-29-2014, 04:58 PM)Midi Wrote: [ -> ]I think if you're gonna do a Megaman SHMUP, you should put more Megaman in than just dialog icons. Maybe have him flying one of the vehicles from the games or on the Rush Jet.

I do agree that if I WAS making a game where classic megaman fights things in space, I would use Rush spaceship (from MMII), but that isn't what this is.

I think you've misunderstood what I'm trying to do, so I'll try to clarify.
Hopefully you're aware of both Megaman classic and Megaman battle network, because they're good examples of the sort of thing I'm trying to do.

Anyways, you know how Megaman Battle network is a reimagining of Megaman classic, where instead of robot masters you have a digital beings running around in a virtual world and instead of platformer, its more an action RPG?

I'm trying to to do much the same thing with my SHmuP. Instead of robot masters, I have space ships, and instead of a platformer its a Shmup. It's not a bunch of robot masters in space ships.

The Robot masters equivalent of the game ARE the spaceships and are piloted by humans (in other words, that NOT Rock in the dialog box, just megaman's pilot that I decided to make look a lot like Rock). In Megaman's,Roll's, and Iceman's case the pilot looks much like the original RM, but I'm pretty sure ice man isn't really a goth-loli, and that Roll's name isn't really Arcy.

The ships themselves should at least look a bit like their RM counterpart. In megaman's case, it takes elements from megaman's helmet and his gun.