[Prototype] DeathSmashers
This is the game that we started at 7DFPS 2013. It's had a little more love since then. It needs some more love, but I don't know when we'll find the time (and Broforce feels quicker to improve on despite this being a much smaller project).
It's a running backwards first person shooter with jetpacks and a biblically accurate theme. We put all of our biblical knowledge into this game.
@raithza might find some time on weekends.
I think the experience might be a little confusing at the moment. We'd like to at least get the game to make sense (even if we don't add more content to it).
You can download it here:
http://www.broforcegame.com/DeathSmashers/Death_Smashers_The_Smashening_Windows_October_4.zip
The music was done by Orchestrata. They're a local team of composers, and they're fantastic people to work with. They do do orchestral work as well, and you can hear some of their metal skills in the game. (The music was done in a jam as well, they can certainly do better than this)
It's a running backwards first person shooter with jetpacks and a biblically accurate theme. We put all of our biblical knowledge into this game.
@raithza might find some time on weekends.
I think the experience might be a little confusing at the moment. We'd like to at least get the game to make sense (even if we don't add more content to it).
You can download it here:
http://www.broforcegame.com/DeathSmashers/Death_Smashers_The_Smashening_Windows_October_4.zip
The music was done by Orchestrata. They're a local team of composers, and they're fantastic people to work with. They do do orchestral work as well, and you can hear some of their metal skills in the game. (The music was done in a jam as well, they can certainly do better than this)
Comments
Gospel Turrets ftw. Was wondering though, do the attack speed upgrades also improve accuracy? It seemed as if it got horribly inaccurate after a couple seconds of non-stop shooting, whereas after the speed upgrades it didn't so much.
(Also am I right in thinking that upgrades for Gospel Cannons also apply to the turret?)
And yes upgrades to apply to the cannon too.
We're going to have to make it more difficult then (a task which @raithza enjoys rather too much).
How about if each fat floating demon spewed three fat plasma balls instead of one...
Oh wait! That's in now!
http://www.broforcegame.com/DeathSmashers/Death_Smashers_The_Smashening_Windows_October_3.zip
I was playing a bit now, and there are some problems with being able to bunny hop so fast that jumping through walls happens. Also I played through the entire game with the gospel cannot and never got offered a right-click option.
how many tries did it take you more or less?
and yeah fire rate shouldn't affect accuracy, but it does affect the camera shake which makes it feel more accurate :) Gospel cannon upgrades do carry over to the sermonator (though that may be OP?)
@BlackShipsFilltheSky yes...3 plasma balls definitely makes it harder. Also having a maxed out level right next to the start one >_< For debugging I assume.
Played through again, finished it first time (yay now there's some kind of indication that you've won!...I'm assuming you put that music in on this version because it didn't play last time) once again with the Gospel cannon. I too didn't get any right-click offers...and significantly fewer offers of max HP increase, which alone helped to make it harder. Not to mention that there seemed to be a drastic decrease in the number of golden-observer-demon-free-hp-things.
If I were to suggest things to make the game harder, I suppose you could stop the death explosions from killing other demons, and maybe make them hurt you if you're close enough (which would probably make it really hard). Faster turning rollipedes, maybe have some of the creepers sometimes leap at you if they get close enough (I seem to remember there was a zergling upgrade like that in one of the SC2 campaigns)
<Mid-post playthrough>
Ok I also just played through with the shotgun (took me a couple tries to get used to it). While the triple-shot observers certainly make dodging harder, those projectiles also conveniently kill other demons if they hit them before they hit you. The shotgun's rail-slug definitely needs some kind of nerf as well, I think (a higher smash cost or something) because its a bit ridiculous that you can insta-kill 2-5 observers (depending on how well you line things up) 3+ shots in a row. This also makes life easier in that if you kill them soon enough after they spawn and the other spawns are walrus demons or rollipedes, then those all die as well (when the observers land). Not to mention how much it helps in the final room where you can have multiple cyber-demons lined up and just stand in front of them (the front one wasn't shooting me at the time) and fire of all of your rail-slugs (4? 5?) through all of them while the shots from the back ones just hit the front one :P
Speaking of the last level, is it just me or do all the cyber demons always spawn from the one spawner (on the lighter side of the room)? Surely it would be harder if they were more spread out?
Edit: And you can rocket jump with the shotgun? :O
Also the rollipedes appear to have an issue where they roll forwards and then just disappear (I think they jump to somewhere else or something).
Also it is a little frustrating the way you cannot always see the demon specification for the later levels because the camera tilts too far away from the text =/
Chain-killing is too much fun to take out - I think what we'll do is find a way for the monsters to get off the spawn area faster so you can't just spawncamp them.
The cyber demon spawns are random, but it would be better if they always spawned on opposite sides.
Thanks for playing & feedback!
http://www.broforcegame.com/DeathSmashers/Death_Smashers_The_Smashening_Windows_October_4.zip (mostly just the Gospel Cannon right click options fixed)
@D3zmodos Thanks for the feedback bro!
Things we are definitely going to do:
Make the rollipedes turn faster. This might make them a little more dangerous, but will also mean that they'll stay closer to the creepers and so be more potentially useful in clearing groups of them. We'll see how it goes.
Make the game more difficult. I think the best way to make it more difficult is to introduce another enemy that is really tank-like. Maybe a big bull demon charger thing (like in Serious Sam). Having a more regular tougher enemy might make some of the weapon damages easier to balance (because since we made the enemies have less health making a grenade or rocket do 40% more damage helps you with the cyberdemons and nothing else).
Make some better levels. Raising terrain or having some blocks that are higher up might allow for some interesting situations.
I'm hoping we'll add more perks to the weapons.
Right now Broforce is the priority of course.
Out of interest @D3zmodos, as someone who appreciates Broforce, do you think its worth pursuing Death Smashers now and then? Or maybe we should get a bunch more into Broforce and then re-evaluate how much time we can spare on weekends etc for Death Smashers.
Waiting For Horus has scatter missile jumping. Which is fricken cool in it's own right. But it ain't the same thing.
Reasons for this distinction:
- Projectiles in Waiting for Horus have trails. As if they were self propelled.
- Projectiles in Waiting for Horus can home. The way a shotgun works is a single pellet gets exploded into multiple bits of shrapnel. Naturally those bits of shrapnel wouldn't be able to home as they are shrapnel.
- Projectiles in Waiting aren't instant hit (they are fast, but not shotgun pellet fast).
- Firing in Waiting for Horus sounds like a pop of air. Not a shotgun blast.
- Firing in Waiting for Horus produces no chick-chick reload sound.
- Projectiles in Waiting for Horus can be fired rapid fire, not unlike a machine gun. This doesn't preclude automatic shotguns, but it is firing faster than any existing shotgun armaments.
In case you are still confused:Plus in Death Smashers you can shotgun jump purely through the recoil on your weapon (which isn't in Waiting for Horus in any form).
It took me about 8 tries and I had to have 7 health to do it...but it's been done. :)
I used the gospel cannon, with basically no upgrades except for the health and the weapon upgrades(speed+damage). I'll try again tomorrow or something with the shotgun, I really want to do it with the shotgun.
That probably means he's never done it.
Also, it sounds like @raithza owes you his t-shirt.
(This feedback is obviously from the initial first impressions, as i played through i am discovering things and working it out)
I think the maze part is clever as well.
First thing, you seem to be quite low to the ground, not sure if its the FOV that gives you that illusion but i felt it could be raised a bit more. But then i also realised you probably want to force the player to jump a lot.
Some kind of story or reason for being there would be nice as well. Even if its simple like doom or painkiller.
Sometimes its wasnt clear what were explosions and what were the monsters etc. Not sure if adding even more glows in the solution :P It just got a bit busy with monsters, Particles, Weapons, Souls etc.
If you were to continue with the biblical theme, how about taking some weapons from the bible:
staff of moses sends wave through enemies (parts them) . The 10 commandments tablet, drop tablet or throw stones etc. Also this ties to the story point, are you an angel? Whats your purpose?
I think the game has a lot of potential and you should work more on it :) The potential for extra monster, different weapon parts and upgrades etc is endless.
Lastly, can you make me a special RIFT build i can test :)
Perhaps a counter that tells you how many enemies are left to kill? 6/12 Creepers or is that a conscious choice to keep the GUI to a minimum? Maybe then some other way to show it? Another bar on the screen that drops to 0% ? I see in the minimap you do have ticks that show the number, only noticed it after 4th game :) maybe those ticks in the game as well? or even dots on the bottom of the screen?
Anyway, really like the hub system, perhaps the mini map can also show what level you will be playing on and how many portals and their positions.
As you said, definitely changing the height of the terrain or having ledges will change the gameplay and create interesting situations. The levels could definatly be more interesting, perhaps chasms that you can leap over and lead the creepers to their death for example.
Jumppads would just be crazy chaotic and if they affects weapons..then...wow.
The reason for the rapid fire is that the tachikoma has two guns: a machine gun on the left and a shotgun on the right, which has a spread fire shot pattern, much like a shotgun. Though I'm really not going to sit here and discuss the technical accuracies of a shotgun.
I am here to tell you that DeathSmashers went down super well at rAge. There was one guy who played it at least 4 or 5 times. And like really intense plays which was magnificent to see. Also had a blast with the game myself. (I'm far too fond of the shuriken, when rocket chainsaws are just FTW)
And I would like to give you some more in depth analysis of the game except it is late and I have to get up for rAge and watch more people have fun with deathsmashers.
It must be a thing. Like a thing in the game and not just debug :)
I have bullet time in Bear Chuck, well, ok the facilities for it, but haven't figured out where to put it in yet :P
I'm having a sad, though. I click on the menu option to start playing and the game screen just freezes on that glorious spiky ball, starts playing music and doesn't go much elsewhere. ;_;
I AM playing the second-to-most-recent version, if that makes any difference at all
What I didn't expect was all the extra work and SMART that's been put into this since I last investigated. Holy shit guys, this feels like a really solid design and I'm soooooo glad you've continued development! You've taken something that started as a chaotic romp and given it the right checks and balances to afford it that awesome lite-RPG-dareIsayroguelike feeling of actual decision making and resource management. It's like a first-person Binding of Isaac or some shit. The limited monster types, the focus on one weapon at a time, the absolute importance of upgrades and the actual feeling of sacrifice when you have to drop one upgrade tree in favour of another oisd and the absolute precision of everything involved jabshdfbohavds and it's like absolutely EVERYTHING has its place in this game, not even ONE CREEPER SPAWN feels superfluous or laissez-faire, which is how these games usually go and actually builds asdhvaeshfhha abd every session so far feels really really different BECAUSE THATS JUST HOW IT WORKS MAN.
Dudes, for something that's so blatantly a run-backwards-and-shoot festival of killing simple mook waves, this game has an astounding amount of character and interesting-ness and depth.
Faaaaaak.
Bonus story: my mouse battery died near the very end of a wave with Walruses (Walrii?) and Observers. Ran around staring at the floor at a weird angle while trying to dodge potential shots and multitask a battery location/switch job with my other hand. There were like one or two enemies left. After about half a minute, I get nailed by a Walrus blast and GUESS WHAT, I had the retaliatory explosion ability AND THAT FINISHED THE WAVE FOR ME. I was so happy that I instantly woke up my flatmate to ask for batteries and relate my experience which he had absolutely no context for. It was great. For me.
We'd like to make it feel even more decision-y and resource-managementy and make it feel more like everything has its place. I have a suspicion that you had a this-is-the-most-interesting-scenario-DeathSmashers-can-produce couple of runs.
I'm glad your flatmate now knows about Death Smashers and fears loss of motor control whilst around Walrii.
(I don't want to spend much time off Broforce this month...)
But we've got some ideas about what we might try to improve it. Maybe you can give a little feedback on this idea (because you're particularly good at decision-y and resource-managementy design).
Among other things, we want the choice of rooms to become more meaningful. At the moment clearing all the rooms is pretty optimal. Entering any room has a chance of a cost to health which might under certain circumstance make a one room better than another room. But every room offers an upgrade, so generally every room is worth entering, and the order doesn't matter all that much besides choosing easier rooms first.
We want to improve this, though hopefully not convolute it. One idea is adding a resource that is earned that can be spent at shop rooms. Another idea is making certain rooms have a hard cost to enter (like 1 health), but offering better rewards. Another idea is implementing some kind of pressure to move forward (like having 9 rooms until the end of the world) so that players have to leave some rooms unplayed in order to reach the boss (who is summoning the end of the world).
I made a picture:
The layout will probably try to still look like a building layout (so not as lattice-like as the above diagram). The layout above was more to illustrate the flow and choices that we want.
The changes to the macromap screen I feel fairly confident about. But introducing a shop and a resource (like Favour) that can be traded at the shop worries me. I feel like sticking to health and days-until-the-end (if that is implemented) might be as many resources as we need. When we have time, we'll try some things independently (like putting in just the shop system) and post some tests to try get feedback.
Meta-games are hard to prototype. But I feel like we've got a relatively solid backbone to mess around with.
@Karuji I was never questioning you Waiting For Horus experience, just your understanding of the what a "shotgun" means. You were disagreeing with @raithza's use of the term remember, and the proof you offered was flawed by your lazy use of the term. I'm glad you've chosen not to discuss what constitutes a shotgun (because I feel like the difference between a shot gun and other spread firing weaponry should be obvious to a game designer and using "shotgun" to denote any weapon with a spray of projectiles is daft).
Future weapons are cool, and I don't mean to diminish them.
I think we've taken some strides into that direction (i.e. really hard choices to make between different resources) but we're not quite there yet. I feel we have some issues:
- the choice between which room to visit is not nearly significant enough
- it's never a tradeoff between upgrade A and B, it's more like, which one do I want now and which do I want later
- in the later stages all the builds converge
We're tossing around some ideas to improve the strategy layer so I'm quite interested on hearing some thoughts on that!
The rooms could show what power ups are available if you defeat the monsters in that room. Could be random as well every turn. So if you want powerup X in Room A, you probably should play it now. Another idea, to put pressure on, Is imagine the rooms are in a tower, and there is lava which is flowing up. So the bottom rooms could be consumed in 2 turns. In fact, you could have the lava play a part in the level as well. So if you play now, there is no lava in the room. If you play the room in turn 2, its more difficult with all the lava flowing in. By turn 3 the room has been consumed and you have to play rooms above anyway. But I also like the idea of having X days to finish as well, would work equally as well.
Im not convinced about the shop idea, because you already are choosing powerups every "turn" what benefit would a shop have and what currency would you use? There could be secret power ups though that unlock if you do something specific on a level. That could even be a powerup itself, maybe by default the map reveals 2 power ups and the other 2 are ? and ?. But if you have the Precognition powerup all the powerups could be revealed.
I do also like the Key/Chest idea better and adds another dimension to the game.
I don't like the idea of there being a hard cut off when you run out of time. In both FTL and Starcontrol you could theoretically fight your way out, so that's likely the first thing we'll try. Also, the time limit itself could be a resource, and probably a much more elegant one than a currency.
I think I might try the cutoff time before shops. I'm not sure how to make shops fit in thematically.
The only thing I'd say is the overview map / room selector breaks the immersion for me, I would have much rather preferred to physically walk between rooms via doors! (they're not so much rooms at the moment as mini arenas). You've already got a fully realised in-game weapon and upgrade selection system, seems a shame you need to break out to a 2D text screen just to select the next level.
HOWEVER!
I think that it would be far nicer to make the room pressure more organic, as in every step you take (every move you make, every smile you fake, every mook you rake, I'll be watching you) okay okay so every room cleared increases the global difficulty in some way (extra monsters spawned per wave, or a slight buff to enemy variables, something like that). All rooms effectively start off as "easy", and clearing one room makes every single other room more difficult.
The key here, however, is that the boss room has a fixed difficulty, meaning that you'll still want to clear as many rooms as possible *before* tackling it. It's just that at some point or other, clearing additional rooms will eventually put you in a *more dangerous* situation than simply facing off against the boss would. It takes an experienced player to figure out exactly when that danger tipping point would be, based on their current build and the enemies being promised by the remaining, uncleared rooms.
a) Would like to make a game that is randomly generated.
b)I think Paranautical activity leaves a lot to be desired (http://codeavarice.com/BuyParanauticalActivity)
What I have in mind is a bullet hell game with randomly generated voxel terrain. Like minecraft just with traingles added. Much bigger room than DS with more detail to the rooms. To sum it up would be The Binding of Isaac in 3d. Does that sound to similer. I mean I love DS so much I am pretty sure some of it will leak into my game.
Heavy Bullets and Tower Of Gun are the two best ones I've seen so far.
Being disappointed in Paranautical Activity, and liking Death Smashers, are two qualities I look for in a human being.
Seriously: We might also experiment with some random generation in Death Smashers in the future. It's an interesting space to experiment within and Death Smashers could use some.
Even more seriously: Yes, Paranautical Activity isn't a very good game.
Also: Have you seen Drunken Robot Pornography? It's a first person bullet hell game, and along with Tower of Guns is at the forefront of putting bullets on screen in FPS's.
As it is now I think Death Smashers is a much more solid game in terms of play and mechanics. Couldn't stop playing the last build :)
So Tower of Guns is good? The trailer looks like Army of Bullet Bills, which can't be a bad thing, and is on the humble bundle this week: https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly :D
But even with Tower of Guns I think there is still a lot of room for improvement. Mostly:
- The setpieces are very recognizable when they repeat. Both in the visuals and in the gameplay.
- The enemies aren't that satisfying to kill.
- There is at least one enemy type that is very annoying.
- The guns aren't nearly juicy enough.
- There is a item with one inventory slot. Some of the item choices are definitely better choices amongst the random choices on offer. Sometimes you can get screwed by the randomness, sometimes you get a big advantage early on and never choose again.
- The character progress within one game caps out, and at which point breaks the shoot-enemies-to-gather-resources loop.
- As per the previous point. Experienced play in Tower of Guns isn't as good as the play when you're still learning to play the game. The game starts of very strong and then gradually disappoints.
If you're interested in Yolo FPS's then Tower of Guns is an absolute must play. There are some interesting ideas in there. It isn't just a shoddy remake of Binding-of-Isaac in FPS (like Paranautical Activity).It's an okay game regardless, and the developer is a cool guy. It's his first game and it has that sometimes-inspired-sometimes unsuccessful debut thing going.
Also, if you do play it, don't kill the hug bots. That was my mistake and it wrecked a lot of my early plays.