Post: #1

Hello,

I’ve alluded to it a couple of times around the forum over the past few weeks, but now I think it’s finally time for it. It’s finally time for me to get working on that VC/CN-dedicated shoot’em’up game that DoN and I have been discussing, and I figured that this thread could serve as an introduction to the idea and as a place for general input & feedback from both me and all of you guys as well.

Introduction

For starters I’d like to clear up a common misconception about the shoot’em’up genre – it’s not the same as First Person Shooters with titles such as Call of Duty and Halo, no, a shoot’em’up (or shooter) game is one where you’re in control of a highly mobile object and where you’re expected to dodge and weave through hailstorms of incoming projectiles and bullets while trying to shoot back at your enemy. At the core, the focus in these games is based on memorizing patterns and executing very precise movements.

So yes, a shooter game themed to Carpe Noctem and the Vampire Counts in general. The application which I’m using (named “Danmakufu”) offers a vast amount of customizability options – it is very possible to include enemies appearing as bats, zombies, skeletons and such, provided that you can make or find images of them to use. The field basically starts as a blank canvas but it can be decorated with enormous amounts of detail.

Size

When I first mentioned the idea to DoN we both got a little carried away and started imagining a full-blown game with stages where every boss was a member of the staff here at Carpe Noctem. However, after having played around with Danmakufu for a little while and examining scripts created by other, more experienced writers I’ve come to the conclusion that this is hard. I’m still very much a beginner at creating my own things, and, since I’d like to produce things that are more than basic sequences without any detailing, it is a given that I’ll be running into a lot of walls with many ???’s on how to proceed. I am quite determined to stick through with it though, but it can potentially require a lot of time and effort.

So anyway, I figured that it would be best to start off small with perhaps a single boss and a short stage leading up to it. That should be a more manageable project that won’t leave me standing in front of a mountain of tricksy code to write, and the game could always be expanded to include more things afterwards.

Difficulty

Games of this genre are usually seen as of the more difficult kind due to the sheer amount of things that they tend to throw at you to dodge and evade. I’m myself a Lunatic player of the Touhou series of shooters (where the difficulties go from Easy, Normal, Hard to Lunatic) and even when I was a completely fresh to the genre of shoot’em’up’s I launched myself straight into the Lunatic difficulty. However, after some mild probing around Carpe Noctem I’ve come to the conclusion that these kind of games do not have a very large following here. I can also appreciate that not everyone is a sucker for punishment like me and would enjoy facing off against a seemingly impossible boss fight, so my goal here is to produce a script that is available to anyone with the interest to try it out. I don’t think I can rely on myself to be a good judge of whether something is adequately difficult or manageable enough though, so someone here on CN might have to perform some kind of playtesting duty.

To give you some examples of what Danmakufu can do, here are a couple of videos of my own adventures where I play through scripts that have been written by others. All of these videos depict sequences far above the bar of difficulty that I’m aiming for, by the way, and for the completely uninitiated - the player character is the little witch-girl usually near the bottom of the playing field~

Touhou Dance Contest! (Lunatic)

• Complementary video, watch after the first one~
  

Sikieiki ~ Extra Mode (Hard)

Conclusion

So yeah, I hope I’ve been able to present you the idea in an understandable way. I can’t give you a final date of release, or even a promise of regular updates due to the difficulty of creating the stuff coupled with other things that want my attention (such as Warhammer ). I might also request some help and assistance from members on here about artistic things such as background pictures, graphics and sprites (do we have any pixel artists here on Carpe Noctem? I’ve been dying to have a go at that as well).

I’ll return to this thread later with some ideas about bullet patterns and so on, this opening post doesn’t need to become any longer than it already is. Hopefully, with effort on my part and input/feedback from you, we can together produce a game worthy of Carpe Noctem.

Post: #2

Wow, sounds good Master Spark. I'm assuming that this will be in 2-D. I've had some, albiet brief, experience in coding and general game making (I actually learned something in Computer Science) Also attempting to learn coding through several different softwares. By the sounds of this it'll go a whole lot easier if you had a small team consisting of several members. Namely someone for coding, artist, level design, etc etc. Let me know what you think of this so far.

Post: #3

That sounds like a really good idea actually. If there are others who have the skills perhaps you can work together with MS as the lead. With combined knowledge and input it should hopefully make the process easier.

I would be happy to help out in anyway I can, but unfortunately my knowledge in that areas is limited – I could however put an announcement out if you want MS?

Post: #4

Make me the first Boss! Then once you get the hang of it, you can throw in DoN to be the guy that's like,

"You beat Oni? He's a pushover! Feel my POOOOWWWWEEEERRR!....rod!"

And this is where the player goes, "Wtf?" as they get slapped around by bullets shot from DoN's power rod.


Unfortunately, I've got nothing concrete to offer. My only, meager coding skills are in Java and HTML. Good luck, and I'll be a playtester!

Post: #5

Mmmmm, although my coding skills are non-existant, I think I have a reasonably good skill level at these games (too much time online I tell you), so I can playtest it for you at a more hmmm, shall we say average skill level. Were not all as good as you MS

Post: #6

lol I haven't played many shoot'em'ups for a while, my old favourite though was raptor, the old jet based one where you load up on all sorts of funky guns and blast things as the level scrolls on. Also done a few side-scroller style shooters, but again, not for a long time.

I'd be happy to playtest at a "somewhat lower" experience level... aww hell, alright, I just wanna play the game! lol

Post: #7

I think that's a great idea Chaos, and yes, it's going to be in 2D. The artistry in particular is what I reckon I'll need the most help with (background(s), the frame, custom enemies and bullets, design and so on). I'd like to remain in chief position for both coding and level design though (with feedback from the community, of course) since I view this as a gateway project to learn much from.

And having a small-but-varied group of playtesters is certainly a good thing. I doubt I'd make an absolutely fair observer for judging anything that isn't a mindless storm of randomized, high-speed bullets. I don't know what has happened to my poor, addled brain but it has come to the point where I tend to view something as "not difficult enough" if I beat it - how difficult can it be if I actually manage to pull through, right?

So anyway, an announcement to round up interested people could be a good idea indeed, DoN. Thanks!

Post: #8

No problem MS. I would be quite gutted anyway if you announced this then just passed it off onto some random to do. I'll check out Danmakufu and, hopefully, can be of some help. Be interesting to see how this turns out

Post: #9

Announcement made MS

Post: #10

Thanks DoN.

Post: #11

Hey MS,

I got some free time coming up next month and I could help out. I'm basically constantly making game prototypes at school and have quite some experience in planning the workflow. I even get workshops level design and User Interfacing.
I'm also good at making spritesheets for 2D games.

Also, In case Danmakafu doesn't work out, I've used the Unity engine quite a lot and is really user friendly (and free). It's also perfect for making 2D games.

Anyway, if you need any help, just let me know.

Cheers, Wolfie

Also, I've done some pixel art.

Post: #12

Hi Wolfie,

I really appreciate your offer to help. I reckon that illustration and artistry will be the areas where I'll need the most asisstance. Since you have some time off during the next month I just might have a little request to make from you. With planning the workflow, did you mean the flow in-game or the flow surrounding its creation?

I have complete confidence in Danmakufu being able to deliver what we want it to - it was made for building shooter games after all, and the options for customizability really are huge. There's also the nifty feature of saving exportable replays of your own playthroughs which could help if we might be holding some sort of competition or something.

Anyway, I have a first request to put up and I'd appreciate the help no matter where it'd come from. I currently need a background picture to use with the game, something dark and moody to fit the bill of Vampires - a graveyard or indeed any terrain at night could work out pretty well I imagine. The big thing here is that I want to make sure that we have permission from the original creator to actually use it in the game.

If possible, the image should be 512x512 in size and be free of anything pitch black (000,000,000) since Danmakufu treats that as transparent. If the colour is even just with a 1 at the end it'll be left alone. Fixing the colours can be done manually by me without too much issue, I'm just speaking out of preferability.

Post: #13

I meant the flow surrounding it's creation. First thing I learnt while making games is that you really need to follow a strict pattern while making it.
Although it can differ slightly, it's mostly in this order:

- Concept: What game do you wanna make (we allready know that), What do you want the mood to be (make a collage of pictures that show the mood you want to achieve in the game),
Do you want the main character to be a flyer or someone on foot? What ennemies do you want?

This may seem like something you can do very quickly, but if you take some time for it, it'll really help later on in development.

- Make a prototype: We can really skip this one as you probably allready know how you want the gameplay to be.

- Make a planning: Make sure you have a basic idea of where you want to be at certain points in the production. This game can be finished by the end of august (even considering having to learn to use the engine), so make sure you have some deadlines in between to make sure the programmers can keep on working.

- After that's been done you can start working on the game. It's a lot easier to plan things when you know what has to be done. If you skip the concept fase or don't really put in an effort, you'll have some nasty surprises here as people will have different ideas about what the game should look like or even play like. Better get those things sorted first to save time during the actual production.


Usually there's a lot more to it than this, but as this is a fairly small production that doesn't need to be funded, this should cover anything that can come up.

Of, I'll see if I can whip up a small matte painting to use as a background.

Cheers, Wolfie

Post: #14

I'll lend a hand with artwork, if I can.

Let me know what you'd like me to do.

Yay carnage!

Post: #15

Alright Wolfie, that sounds like a sensible starting point.

The basic idea I have at the moment is that we should start with a rather simple, sample boss fight. It could consist of a starting phase, about 3 major attack sequences, 3 minor ones to go in between and a finale. That should be material for roughly 4-5 minutes of gameplay. We could also include a short stage leading up to the boss fight, just to give it a better sense of completeness.

The mood will obviously be centered around the Vampire Counts, and the scenes and enemies will be themed to reflect that. Minor stage and boss enemies can be in the guise of Zombies, Skeletons, Bats and so on, and the boss' attack sequences can be made to represent spells from the Lore of Vampires (Gaze of Nagash, Curse of Years and Wind of Undeath should be particularily well-suited).

The player character will be a flier. It is fully possible for us to create a custom player character ("Carpe Noctem User"? ) but for the time being we can use one of the stock characters.

As for deadlines and the like, I'd rather see that we avoid those. This is a project purely for fun and should be furthered only when one feels like doing it. I don't mind if this turns out to take a longer time to finish than it "ought" to do.

I've begun work on a few sequences and I'll be able to get some video footage to share with those of you who are interested~

So anyway, how does the above sound to you all? The game can of course be expanded upon after this first sample has been created, but I think it would be best to start out small.

And yes Fodderboy, all artists are welcome to lend a hand.

Post: #16

Ok, sounds good. I'm guessing you want the style of the game to reflect the artwork in the VC book. I'll wip up some small thumbnails in the next couple of days to be used as ideas for the look of the ennemies.

Cheers, Wolfie

Post: #17

Lots of blood splatter and gore would be fantastic. Try to avoid making the enemies look too comical.

Post: #18

Tried a quick matte paint for the floor in the levels. Not quite finished yet. Needs more decoration.
If you have any suggestion (or good pictures of tombstones and crypts), let me know. Scaled down for forum purposes.



Cheers, Wolfie

Post: #19

Ooh now that looks like it could be quite something, Wolfie. With the length it currently has (and given some added decoration as you mentioned) it should be enough to create an animated/moving background.

I might actually have the enemy sprites covered already, so there's no need to tinker around with those just yet. I'll look into providing you all with a decent update here soon..

Post: #20

Alright, I apologise for the lack of anything at all in this thread. The project is running along at a very merry pace, with me adding and implementing ideas when the inspiration strikes. There's also this whole ordeal with it being summer outside which, along with other things, is keeping me pretty occupied. I still don't have much of substantiality to show you, but I figured I'd let you all know that this is all still very much alive and well. I'll begin contacting/hassling you all once it becomes a necessity.

Oh and DoN, I've swiped the emoticon for use in the game. I hope that you won't mind me doing so.