Glue Time - SHMUP with physics and slow mo

So, this is my first kind-of-playable game prototype on Defold

Vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzSriAP8oH0

Game itself https://baturinsky.github.io/GlueTime

It was not the game I was going to make on Defold initially, but when I have started to learn Defold, I have felt that it wants me to make a SHMUP on it.

With physics.

And so I did. Though I have found soon that Defold is not that good with some advanced stuff like dynamically changing shapes, so I had to do it myself. It’s not that hard, actually, Defold still does collision detection, I had only count the forces. This article http://chrishecker.com/images/e/e7/Gdmphys3.pdf was very helpful.

Here is a screenshot

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So, any feedback? Is it too hard, too easy, too confusing, too boring, too buggy, too laggy, too primitive, too complex etc?

Hi baturinsky!

It’s nice, but a little complex for me :smirk:

I have to use both hands :sweat:

Do you plan to keep on going with this game? Or is it only a test? Are you going to update your graphics?

I like all the stuff you added to the UI, how did you do the text scenes?

Cheers!

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Err, of cause you use both hands, because you need a mouse to shoot.You have one auto-shoot module attached from the start, but it’s not the main weapon. Probably it’s somewhat confusing. I’ll remove it.

“Text scenes” are simply text field in GUI. I have a global variable game_stage that is switching between INTRO_STAGE, MAIN_STAGE and GAME_OVER_STAGE, and I show/hide this field and change it’s text depending on this variable. Also, I switch off enemy spawning and some other functions when not in MAIN_STAGE.

baturinsky :grin:

I am sorry, I have never been good at SHMUPs :disappointed_relieved: that’s why I said “I have to use both hands…”, but that doesn’t mean your game is not good! :grinning:

Please, don’t make any design changes depending on my feedback :pray:

On the other subject, I am only starting to fiddle around GUI elements in Defold, but I think I get your point, thanks! :thumbsup: :wink:

Hi Baturinski! I played your game a few times, and I decided to leave some feedback! The mechanics, while needing some tweaking, were pretty intuitive, and once I understood the mechanics of the balls, I found I was having a lot of fun! I liked the cracking effect as a clear indication of a ball’s hp, and the unique roles that the balls play made the game a lot more complex.

Small nitpicks -

Some enemy projectiles are the same color as your own, and it is difficult to differentiate.
***Scratch that, just realized those were my projectiles bouncing off the enemies

The roles of the balls are not very clear, even after having read the details on the death screen. I suggest adding effects to each ball depending on their properties, such as an aura around the magnetic ball, or something to indicate when balls are boosted and which ball is doing the boosting, to make the game a little less confusing.

Bigger Issues -

The game became very difficult pretty quickly. Because of the nature of a side-scrolling shmup, it becomes increasingly harder to dodge the bullets, and because enemy firing behavior is pretty evenly spaced and either random or homing, the sluggish speed of your ship and its ever-increasing size leads to the inevitability of losing the fringe balls of your ship. Thus, you kind of hit peak ship size after a couple of minutes. This aspect confuses me on the idea/ general theme of this game. Is it intended to be a classic shmup, with the player skillfully dodging bullets and returning fire, or more of a ship-composition-builder strategy type of game, where one tries to balance their ship to best handle encounters?

The current state of the game seems to be a muddy compromise between the two, and it might become a problem as you are less likely to take such a compromise as far as you might take a game with a clearer theme. For example, I think that this type of game would fit perfectly in an open-world kind of environment. Look at Captain Forever. This game has a similar basic idea as yours, but with more of a ship-compositional focus. This game would have been choked in a side-scroller environment, and not nearly as fun. The ships are somewhat difficult to handle, and would end up chewed to pieces with the continual onslaught of balls. Glue Time would be awesome if the world was a little more open and maneuverable, with time to think about what you are sticking to your ship.

On the other end of the spectrum, look at any classic SHMUP. The player is quick and agile, and the success is dependent on the player’s skill. The aspect of skill=success is very rewarding for the player, and there is a reason why side-scroller SHMUPS have lasted for so long. Investing time to develop skill to finish a game, then actually beating the game, whereas before you were unable to pass the first level, is extremely gratifying. If you follow this path, then try to either speed up the player or give them more control over the situation. Dying of a lack of skill is frustrating, but you are frustrated at yourself, rather than the game. Dying of poor, random game mechanics causes the player to become frustrated with the game, instead, and are less likely to continue playing, so be careful.

Lastly, I would tweak the balance of the balls. Some balls were ridiculously overpowered, compared to the other balls, and because of the glue-count mechanic, I had to limit my choices for balls pretty heavily. I ended up stacking a whole bunch of 5’s (homing missile balls) and burned through most of the first five minutes, until the returning fire was too much, and I succumbed. The effects of the other balls were often ineffectual or too finicky to be useful. The game would be much more engaging if the balls had a larger impact on the gameplay, or even synergized.

Anyways, thanks for posting this. I hope my criticisms were of some help, but remember, I’m just some random person on the internet, so take my suggestions with a grain of salt. Good luck!

5 Likes

WOW! :open_mouth:

Astonishing feedback BitZoid!

I would love to have such a thorough review of my game when I post it for tests! :relaxed: :thumbsup:

Very nice!

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Thanks for a great feedback, you have risen a lot of right questions. One thing I want to point is that current game mode is not supposed to be winnable and I did not want to drag it for a long time, so opposition is increasing at very fast rate to kill you before you’ll get a chance bored:)

It will have proper levels with more sane pacing and variance if it will survive to be a real game, and, of cause, it will need a lot of balancing. Also, I will likely make balls smaller, so there is a space for dogfight even with some mid-size ships.

You are right about “muddy compromise”. Supposedly, it should be a player’s choice of how he/she wants it, and also depend on what given level is throwing at you. But now there is only one level that is actually just a random soup of everything that is supposed to kill you in minutes, so there is not much space for strategy here.

It’s intended to be more like bullet dodge SHMUPs, than some Freespace kind of game. It should call for some quick thinking and reflexes, though not the pure bullet hell like Touhou. But again, it can depend on level. And on some levels there can be even role reversal, with a super-dodgy boss against the bullet hell that YOU are unleashing :slight_smile:

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Hmm, you know, I probably should make the demo/prototype winnable, with less difficulty ramp and a boss appearing after some time. So it ends on a positive node and a sense of accomplishment and desire for more:)

That’s a good idea! :wink:

New version. I consider it a feature-complete demo. It’s intended for a (Russian) Defold game jam here http://gamesjam.org/3010/ Btw, I would appreciate if you vote for it - red heart on the right of the page.

Vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzSriAP8oH0

Game itself https://baturinsky.itch.io/glue-time

It’s not a survival level now, it’s an example of what the level of the game will look like. It becomes challenging to the end, but not too much, and the boss appears and you can win by defeating it.

Also, balance changes (mostly nerfing 5-es and buffing everything else), bigger screen and goofy new graphics. All that’s left from original tutorial is the background - it’s surprisingly hard to find space background that is pretty, but not distracting.

2 Likes

I LOVE the concept!!!

Pilfer some sounds from somewhere…

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oops, better of collection sounds: http://www.zapsplat.com/sound-effect-category/snooker-and-pool/

Just go overboard with the sounds. And speed the game up a little. you’ve got slow motion! So make normal gameplay fast!!!

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Yep, game needs the sound eventually, though it’s not that easy to do right, considering how often something collides and explodes.

I’ll try how game feels with the higher speed.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljzdAWzZ3PI

New version. Change log:

  1. Sounds effects. Collisions, explosions, glue collection make noise, depending on how hard collision is etc. It was hard to make explosion right, I combined two sound effects to get acceptable result.
  2. Difficulty is adjustable.
  3. Dificulty and sound settings are persistent between sessions.
  4. Game is made faster - faster ships movement and MUСH faster primary cannon. It’s damage is weakened a bit, though.
  5. Added visual effects for ball destruction (debris flying out) and glue consumption.
  6. Screen is shaking when you are damaged.
  7. Pause on P and Shift, unpause on click or keypress, pause indication
  8. GUI reworked to draw more attention to important parts (namely glue).
  9. Enemies are now bounce off top and bottom of screen.
  10. Fixes and improvements for HTML version - splash screen, heap size etc. Still is not working well on Firefox, though.

Thanks to deeeds for feedback.

Game link is same as before - https://baturinsky.itch.io/glue-time

2 Likes

I’ve played the game a couple of times and I really enjoy the thought of the glue feature, though I haven’t been able to figure out how to trigger it. The improved UI should probably help with that.

This seems like the type of game I could invest some time in, especially if there is some sort of progression. Of course the glue is a type of progression, but it doesn’t really change my ability to kill the enemies. It doesn’t give me the feeling that I’ve gotten really far from my starting points in terms of strength.

If the strength of my ship would increase as I collected more balls of the same sort, making it a multiple or something, I think there would be something more to strive after. If the difficulty was steadily increasing so that I would have to make the right choices of which balls to collect in order push past the “next” step, that’d be awesome.

Just some thoughts,
Jakob

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Yes, I understand now that mechanics I use is unusual enough to strongly needing some kind of tutorial. Making one is my top priority.

Glue mode is switched on by Space, but you need to have Glue over threshold. This threshold grows with each ball you have attached, and different balls add different amount.

There is two kinds of in-level progression. Main one is balls you have attached. They serve as the shield against enemy, but also usually give some kind of bonus. Some fire by themselves, some buff other balls etc. and they all increase the damage of your main cannon a bit. Secondary progression is the glue you have. Even if you have lost a lot of balls, you still retain the glue, and you can use it to pick up some new balls instead of ones you lost.

Also, there will be trans-level progression. You will be able to acquire permanent bonuses. Some are just buffs - to damage dealt, damage absorbed, speed etc. Other will give you new types of main cannon and some other abilities. Such as launching a mini-black hole to suck and crack a big group of enemies, for example.

I have not abandoned this project with the end of Jam. Though I’m somewhat lot at where to take it. Maybe I really should just say to myself that it was an interesting and useful experiment (and it was) and can it. Maybe Defold is really not suited very well for physics-heavy projects, or the game concept itself is not really interesting.

In meanwhile, I’m experimenting.

Version 0.4: Over The Edge

https://baturinsky.github.io/GlueTime/index.html

I have changed the scale. Now it’s 1/2 what it was. In glue time it changes (with easing) to something in-between (2/3 of old, 3/2 of new). Also, there is no bounds - you can fly in any direction as far as you want, screen will follow you. I thing it’s an improvement - game was too claustrophobic before.

I’m not quite happy with how it works in browser, though.

In Firefox it just works very poorly, but about anything works poorly in Firefox for me lately. It chockes just from the big amount of gifs on itch.io front page.

In Chrome it works satisfactory, except one thing. Sometime some button got “stuck” - it works as been pressed even after it is released. so one have to press and release the key again for it to unstuck.

My related code is pretty straightforward, so I strongly suspect that it’s Defold thing.

local v = vmath.vector3(0, 0, 0)
....
elseif action_id == hash("up") then
	v.y = 1
elseif action_id == hash("down") then
	v.y = -1
elseif action_id == hash("right") then
	v.x = 1
elseif action_id == hash("left") then
	v.x = -1
....
self.tree:steer(v, rotate)
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