Princess Fantasy Catventure [game, finished]

[NICKtendo DS]

Download it here, I know you want to.

It's finally finished!

Princess Fantasy Catventure is a cheerful shoot-em-up where you play as Princess Princess, the princess of Yum Yum Kingdom.
Princess' castle was raided! As Princess was hurrying to check what was going on, she sees her brother being kidnapped by shadow creatures. Before she could give chase they were gone.
She now travels Fantasy World hoping to learn more about the shadow creatures, where they are, so she can rescue her brother! What she doesn't know is that Yum Yum Kingdom isn't the only land that suffered the attack...

Controls are in the Read Me file. What's cool is that it supports a controller! What's not so cool is that when the controller is plugged in, the keyboard controls are f'd up. If you want to play with a keyboard, make sure the controller is unplugged when booting the game.

Enjoy!

[Virt]

I think the "new game" button should be above the "continue" button.

[NICKtendo DS]

I did that on purpose, because starting a New Game automatically creates a save (auto-save) and overwrites the old savedata. It's to prevent people accidentally deleting their savefiles.

[TomGuycott]

I found a misspelling in Chapter 6, I think. Rather is spelled rahter, or something to that effect.

Otherwise FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFf this game is so fun.

[NICKtendo DS]

ohmygodwhy! Why do small errors like these show up too late o__o

[Gors]

Either I am dumb as a door or this game doesn't function properly, as moving is really handicapped in this game. My jumps aren't tall enough to avoid the rolling enemies and pressing the down button makes the character flick from standing to crouching instead of acting as it should.

Also moving sideways is severely limited, it reads the input only after 2 seconds, which is really aggravating. In fact I couldn't even beat the first level.

[Kami]

My computer is crappy as hell, and I didn't have any of those issues gors said, actually the jumps seemed too high for me.

[Garamonde]

Either I am dumb as a door

[7:27:00 PM] Gors: dors

I'm sorry.

[Phaze]

Small nitpick: "apoligies" should be "apologies".

I'll give the game itself a try tomorrow. Looks good!

[NICKtendo DS]

Either I am dumb as a door or this game doesn't function properly, as moving is really handicapped in this game. My jumps aren't tall enough to avoid the rolling enemies and pressing the down button makes the character flick from standing to crouching instead of acting as it should.

Also moving sideways is severely limited, it reads the input only after 2 seconds, which is really aggravating. In fact I couldn't even beat the first level.

Chances are you have a controller plugged in.
Either play with a controller or unplug it before you boot the game and you should be fine. It's in the warning.

I had to code to add controller support. Code, damnit! But this problem couldn't be fixed unless I removed the controller support altogether. I thought adding an 'If controller_exists(1)=true" was a decent enough middleground.

[Gors]

that's funny because



I have no controllers plugged (in fact I don't even have controllers!!)

otherwise I'd have stated it

[NICKtendo DS]

That's... troublesome.
Somehow your PC must think a player 1 controller is plugged in. There's no other explaination for that, because the issues you stated are caused by a P1 controller being detected.

[Gors]

don't worry, I'll see if I can get a controller soon. Then I'll test it properly.

[TomGuycott]

Finished everything I think. So much fun, and I love the characters. I'm sad it's over (even though I've just been replaying it anyway)

[Gors]

I have tinkered with my comp's drivers and deleted all the ones related to past controllers I had. Somehow this fixed the problem.

I've played through a good part of the game. It's very solid and well made, but there are things that could be better:

Spoiler

>Sound effects for some actions would be good. Some actions missed them and it felt incomplete. I can't test it now as I'm at work but I believe there were no effets for reflected bullets/hurt animations? Due to that, it was hard to notice your bullets were being reflected and were hitting you.
>There should be an invincible moment after taking multiple hits in a row. Right now, every damage stacks up quickly, which can be really unfair.
>Sideways moving is really slow. Adding actions such as rolling/sliding could make gameplay more lively.
>A way to 'control' your friend would be nice, as this way he wouldn't be that useless at some enemies. For example, his attacks could be assigned to a button and act like secondary weapon, much like Gradius' missile button. This way the player can plan when to use it, instead of being activated at a fixed time.

music

The music was better this time around, compared to the MID files you sent me of Bouncy Cat. Still, some of the tracks were still weird and dissonant. I don't know how to teach you composing, as not even I know how to compose. Still, I'll try my best explaining it. Please note that I am NOT a musician, thus I don't know the proper terms for some of the effects or techniques.

It's good to work on your instrumentation. Some tracks were filled of 'twangy' synth leads and while they aren't bad if used moderately, they get kinda boring after a long time. Imagine your music as an orchestra: there are several instruments to choose from, don't be limited to a handful of instruments only. Another way to make it better is to rewrite the chorus part with different instruments to give it a different flavor and making the loop bigger.

Also, the lack of harmony in the melody is kinda off-putting. As you might know, some notes combine better with others. You can use this note combination to create interesting 'bridges' and 'chorus' within the music. For starters, notes that are too close together tend to sound bad while notes that are apart tend to sound good. It's good to have a music keyboard to play those notes when writing music (sometimes I use my Melodica to playtest the notes before writing them in the program), this way you'll save time when composing.

Another musical tip is to set the bassline first. While this isn't obligatory, writing it first helps setting the mood of the entire song. With a physical music keyboard, you can find a good bassline more easily, and you'll be able to test chords. Chord is a group of two or more notes that play together. If the chords don't combine with the bassline, then you'll have a dissonant music and might not be what you intended.

Finally, I'll say that there isn't a right way of composing, at least, not with my method. I simply hum and playtest my songs and write down what sounds good, so it's hard for me to explain it in a concise way. What helped me, though, was to cover some songs. Covering songs is good for practicing, as they have a well-formed chord/bassline progression which you can use in your future original works. You'll notice that a lot of songs tend to group the same notes together (for example, C (do) with E (mi) (which is part of the C Major chord)), and composing will be more logical and faster.