Yeah, hate when that happens. Especially when you get some Sca, Fi, Ri, Ti, and Co, it makes it to where you can't see squat. You have to guesstimate where your dude is off of the enemies.
I think my high score was level 21, and I usually die at 12 or 13, usually due to having to close cuz school, or distractions.
it is a little better but if at all possible, could you make overlapping bullets not build up into an intense white glow? if not the game is great either way, it just helps how I like to destroy my computer (;
there is invincibility frames but they are weird, if an enemy attacks you, that enemy cannot hurt you for a small amount of time, stuff also cant hurt you the second they spawn in/ when they are created
That was supposed to happen, since they never stop spawning even after the game is over. But not anymore, I changed it.
No, I'll just leave the weapon test mode the way it is. I'll probably add a freeplay mode, which will let you use cheats, but you'll have to unlock it by beating level 50.
Great game. I have a few suggestions though: it would be nice if the player could go immune/ghost mode for a bit after taking impact damage. so many runs have been ended by getting ping ponged between enemies.
It would also be nice if there was a sandbox mode to test different combinations and their effectiveness against different enemies.
I really like the game, but I really miss the information what the modifiers are doing. Many of them have no effect on numbers, or the effect is contradictory to the description.
For example "Pi" should decrease damage, but it randomly increase or decrease "Approximate damage per bullet".
Also I appreciate the fact that you made this prototype, and I agree that displaying exact changes that a modifier applies is useful, but in general I think that showing all these stats is an overkill, it'll make the UI even more cluttered than it is right now. Stats used to be hidden and only displayed when a button was pressed, but I watched people play the game and they never pressed it.
Also, "Pi" decreases damage per hit, but since it allows you to get multiple hits with a single bullet, total damage increases.
Well decreases by how much? And how many targets it can then hit? And if combined with explosion will it explode on every enemy hit, or only of first one, or only on last one? If last one what if it will hit only one, will that decrease the damage, because no explosion happen?
> I watched people play the game and they never pressed it. There can be another explanation for that, that they did not know about the button.
I can ask about practically every modifier I seen what exactly it does. "Pi" was just random example probably because it was last one behaving weird at the time I wrote it. > Also, "Pi" decreases damage per hit, but since it allows you to get multiple hits with a single bullet, total damage increases. Well total damage is not shown, only "Approximate damage per bullet" and that can both decrease and increase by applying "Pi", so I do not know what "Approximate damage per bullet" exactly means.
Not knowing the stats killed my run so many times. Upgrading from level 2 modifier to level 3 changed damage from something like 300 to 30000 but then in level it was not killing enemies at all.
the approximate damage per bullet (ADPB) is, if you were to fire a singular bullet at an enemy(s) with near infinite health how much damage would it do after a near infinite amount of time. you can see this if you ever get 'brn'; if you put 'brn' on a gun the ADPB will go up, the damage of your bullet never changes, but now you do damage over time, ADPB tells you that after infinite amount of time you will do ((damage + burn dmg x burn time) + damage x how many enemies you can hit - 1).
If you get 'brn' on a gun and then add 'ti' the ADPB will change a lot because 'ti' increases how long 'brn' lasts. if you want to know your true damage output, go test your weapon, he made a button for doing said action for a reason. if you get 'sca' your ADPB does not go up because it is about a singular bullet. The weapon mod 'fra' seems to be weird and chooses whether or not it gets added to the ADPB because its multiple bullets from a singular, same with 'tra', but that's all a topic for another time. i hope this has cleared things up. ( @kurt_c0caine, please correct me if i'm wrong about any of this, and pleas confirm if i am right! Great game, just wish there was a sandbox to play around in! )
Thanks for the answer, but it does not really help :( it is just another example of the presented numbers being totally useless.
And about the option to test it, well there isn't really an option to test actual damage. How you can compare shooting to (almost) stationary targets that have 700+ HP to real enemies where you need to move, so some of the shoots will miss, so how you can compare that? I just started new one to get actual numbers and at level 1 you comparing 100 HP targets and I did 5-50 DMG per hit to them, in match enemies have 20 HP, so what is probability of one hit on kill, and what is probability of 4 hits per kill? Before level 2 test enemies have 125 HP, and all 3 of them take same 5-50 DMG per hit, while in match shooters have 0.1 armor and 25 HP, so there is no way to compare that either, without explanation how armor works, because 0.1 seems to do nothing. I really do not know if I can get much further without seeing actual numbers, what the modifiers do. If there would at least be actual numbers available somewhere I could calculate it myself.
No, it's inspired by SNKRX, I started developing before Vampire Survivors was released.
You can dismantle first weapon, but only if you have at least two of them, cause it also removes the weapon. But I guess I could make it so that if you have only one, it just removes all of its mods and puts them back into the inventory.
Is there a bug with the bullets fired by spinners? They appear to orbit around a moving central point, making them very hard to avoid, especially when there are multiples. If there are a lot of them on the screen, it's basically a run finisher unless you have Bre.
Three wish list items:
First, make the player's burning bullets more visually distinct from red/orange enemy bullets.
Second, let all enemy bullets damage other enemies. It's fun and satisfying when you can blow up a bomber and lead a crowd of chasers through the shrapnel. More friendly fire would open up more similar tactics.
Third, it would be cool if there was a death screen showing your final level, gun stats, number of enemies killed etc.
Whoa, no. I've never seen that happen. I'm talking about the bullets the spinners fire. Instead of going in a straight line like every other bullet, they orbit around a center point that moves around the screen and ricochets.
No, that's not a bug, that's by design, they're meant to be hard to dodge. Although ricochet is probably a bit too much, better leave it for a dedicated shooting enemy.
Also, making all enemy bullets damage all enemies will reduce the challenge, cause most enemies rely on their bullets flying through the level freely. But I can add more enemies that have friendly fire.
i've bean playing for a few days now and here are a few things that i thought of.
the wepon testing area needs a singular enemy that increases it's health every time it respawns that way you can test single shot weapons for instance frafrafraexpptiicoo or something like that. the DPS counter doesn't work well for weapons using dubble or triple fra.
it's hard to go into a round and get a specific gun here are two ways thought of fixing that.
> have an option in the menu that allows you to changes the chance of getting each individual modifyer or changes the chance of getting each group: common, rare ect
>have an option in the menu that allows you to change the defalt weapon's modifiers.
it would be great if you could increase the max cost you gun can hold. one way i thought to do this is to add a button called the (Forge) next to each gun that has the number 25 in the it. When you put a modifier in the forge it destroys the modifier and decreases the number by the cost of the modifier. When the number gets to zero it adds 5 extra points to the max number that the gun can hold. The forge number increases to 50 and the cycle repeats.
Add a bullet speed indicater and a piercing indicater.
-It's easy to lose track of exactly where your ship is when you have to aim at the same time. Maybe have a large, faint circle around the ship that shrinks when holding Shift.
-Make enemy projectiles oblong to make it easier to see which direction they're going at a glance.
-Make the projectiles of different enemies different colors to make them easier to predict.
-Inventory menu needs keyboard shortcuts.
-Not a fan of absorbers. They're tedious to kill but aren't much of a threat.
-Add some kind of health indicator for stronger enemies, like a particle effect or a sound effect when they take damage at low health.
-Stacking pierce modifers increases damage instead of lowering it.
I don't think it would help to add a glowing circle around the ship would help. Also, when I really need to avoid enemy bullets, I kinda disregard aiming whatsoever. I guess that's why bullet hells are usually SHMUPs with fixed aiming direction.
I could make them oblong and different colours, but I also can't see how it would help. Also, I'd rather keep them the same red/orange colour, cause this differentiates them from player's bullets.
It could be useful, yes, as long as the player knows which keys to hold to move modifiers around, but I actually had to add keyboard controls to UI elements of a web app at work, and, surprisingly enough, it turned out to be a pain in the ass, so I'd rather keep it as it is.
Actually, I agree. If you have a weapon that will make the absorber create tons of mini chasers, you can also use it to dispatch them.
Bombers already do change their sprites to a cracked one when their health falls below a certain threshold, cause I thought that it was important for the player to know that they' about to explode, but I didn't think about adding a similar thing to other enemies. Yeah, I could see use in that.
You're right, I fixed it.
I'm going to add a settings menu with key bindings, so this won't be an issue.
>I could make them oblong and different colours, but I also can't see how it would help
It makes a huge difference in helping you predict bullets. When the sprite of the bullet tells you in which direction it's going, you don't have to spend those milliseconds looking at them to figure it out yourself and can focus entirely on mapping out a path. Here's an example off of the top of my head (go to 10:45; Itch won't let me link timestamps):
A pattern like that would be much harder with circular bullets. And just having different shades of orange would help with differentiating bullets with different behaviors so you can focus on the more immediate threat.
Really fun game! Explosive modifiers seem to be the best overall!
Also, no clue if it's a sanctioned bug or not, but switching weapons resets the rate of fire cooldown, basically giving you a machinegun of all your weapons.
Yes, I am still planning to implement a preview of gun's stats, but there are some complications. When you add an "Exp" modifier, you're essentially giving the bullet a gun, that it will fire when it dies. This allows the player to change the behaviour of this explosion, by for example, adding a "Ho" modifier, which will make shrapnel home onto enemies.
Whereas "Spi" makes your original bullet invisible and "untouchable", while creating a new bullet, that spins around the original one. Guns and bullet are stored in two separate and I have no idea how to track which bullet belongs to which gun... Although, now that I think of it, every gun has a bullet template inside of it, but on the other hand while building a gun from modifiers, I don't store guns, I only store their properties... Anyway, I don't know how to implement it yet.
Also, it will involve changing the UI and I hate the UI.
I don't know about how to solve that besides bullet having a property that names its "parent", but I know it will end up being "why didn't I see this solution that was infront of me all this time" kind of thing :)
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I beat lvl 27 but died because I couldn't see where I was with this build
I don't know if you can see it but, the gun was Scaacoocoocoofra apeetiidaaho
Yeah, hate when that happens. Especially when you get some Sca, Fi, Ri, Ti, and Co, it makes it to where you can't see squat. You have to guesstimate where your dude is off of the enemies.
I think my high score was level 21, and I usually die at 12 or 13, usually due to having to close cuz school, or distractions.
I found another op build but it takes a while and some luck
Scaaafiiicooocooofra tiiiacccdaaa creates instant lagg after shooting for 2 sec
I tweaked the layers the entities are rendered on and added a laser beam, maybe it'll be better now.
it is a little better but if at all possible, could you make overlapping bullets not build up into an intense white glow? if not the game is great either way, it just helps how I like to destroy my computer (;
this game barley laggs and its amazing at keeping high fps so good luck destroying your computer
is this supposed to happen?
Also could we get a sandbox like mode so we can test the modifiers without having to rely on luck.
great game though
My best modifier combo got to 27: Hodaascaascaafiiiacctii
side note, is there invincibility frames or if there is are they super short? I keep getting killed cause im trapped by 3 enemy's in a corner
there is invincibility frames but they are weird, if an enemy attacks you, that enemy cannot hurt you for a small amount of time, stuff also cant hurt you the second they spawn in/ when they are created
No, there are no invincibility frames.
That was supposed to happen, since they never stop spawning even after the game is over. But not anymore, I changed it.
No, I'll just leave the weapon test mode the way it is. I'll probably add a freeplay mode, which will let you use cheats, but you'll have to unlock it by beating level 50.
Great game.
I have a few suggestions though: it would be nice if the player could go immune/ghost mode for a bit after taking impact damage. so many runs have been ended by getting ping ponged between enemies.
It would also be nice if there was a sandbox mode to test different combinations and their effectiveness against different enemies.
but mainly, great game
I added temporary invincibility now.
Hello Kurt.
I really like the game, but I really miss the information what the modifiers are doing. Many of them have no effect on numbers, or the effect is contradictory to the description.
For example "Pi" should decrease damage, but it randomly increase or decrease "Approximate damage per bullet".
I quickly build a prototype to show that accurate weapon info might be easy to add: https://jakub.bandola.cz/wa/ship_shooter you can check the source code at https://jakub.bandola.cz/wa/ship_shooter/gun.rs, I did not try to polish the mechanic, or implement them all, just to be an example.
Kurt any chance that we will get correct gun info any time soon?
I don't know, I'm kinda busy right now.
Also I appreciate the fact that you made this prototype, and I agree that displaying exact changes that a modifier applies is useful, but in general I think that showing all these stats is an overkill, it'll make the UI even more cluttered than it is right now. Stats used to be hidden and only displayed when a button was pressed, but I watched people play the game and they never pressed it.
Also, "Pi" decreases damage per hit, but since it allows you to get multiple hits with a single bullet, total damage increases.
Well decreases by how much? And how many targets it can then hit? And if combined with explosion will it explode on every enemy hit, or only of first one, or only on last one? If last one what if it will hit only one, will that decrease the damage, because no explosion happen?
> I watched people play the game and they never pressed it.
There can be another explanation for that, that they did not know about the button.
I can ask about practically every modifier I seen what exactly it does. "Pi" was just random example probably because it was last one behaving weird at the time I wrote it.
> Also, "Pi" decreases damage per hit, but since it allows you to get multiple hits with a single bullet, total damage increases.
Well total damage is not shown, only "Approximate damage per bullet" and that can both decrease and increase by applying "Pi", so I do not know what "Approximate damage per bullet" exactly means.
Not knowing the stats killed my run so many times. Upgrading from level 2 modifier to level 3 changed damage from something like 300 to 30000 but then in level it was not killing enemies at all.
the approximate damage per bullet (ADPB) is, if you were to fire a singular bullet at an enemy(s) with near infinite health how much damage would it do after a near infinite amount of time. you can see this if you ever get 'brn'; if you put 'brn' on a gun the ADPB will go up, the damage of your bullet never changes, but now you do damage over time, ADPB tells you that after infinite amount of time you will do ((damage + burn dmg x burn time) + damage x how many enemies you can hit - 1).
If you get 'brn' on a gun and then add 'ti' the ADPB will change a lot because 'ti' increases how long 'brn' lasts. if you want to know your true damage output, go test your weapon, he made a button for doing said action for a reason. if you get 'sca' your ADPB does not go up because it is about a singular bullet. The weapon mod 'fra' seems to be weird and chooses whether or not it gets added to the ADPB because its multiple bullets from a singular, same with 'tra', but that's all a topic for another time. i hope this has cleared things up. ( @kurt_c0caine, please correct me if i'm wrong about any of this, and pleas confirm if i am right! Great game, just wish there was a sandbox to play around in! )
Thanks for the answer, but it does not really help :( it is just another example of the presented numbers being totally useless.
And about the option to test it, well there isn't really an option to test actual damage. How you can compare shooting to (almost) stationary targets that have 700+ HP to real enemies where you need to move, so some of the shoots will miss, so how you can compare that?
I just started new one to get actual numbers and at level 1 you comparing 100 HP targets and I did 5-50 DMG per hit to them, in match enemies have 20 HP, so what is probability of one hit on kill, and what is probability of 4 hits per kill?
Before level 2 test enemies have 125 HP, and all 3 of them take same 5-50 DMG per hit, while in match shooters have 0.1 armor and 25 HP, so there is no way to compare that either, without explanation how armor works, because 0.1 seems to do nothing.
I really do not know if I can get much further without seeing actual numbers, what the modifiers do. If there would at least be actual numbers available somewhere I could calculate it myself.
is this vampire survivors inspired?
the gameplay gets fun when you get a lot of mods
but its off putting at the start, idk how that can be fixed tho, may the base stats are more tuned up and enemies aren't as slow.
but the menus could use a lot of work, I know that graphic design is a monumental task though.
very good job I think.
edit: I'd like to be able to dismantle the first weapon so I can sort the modifiers so I can see any duplicates more easily
No, it's inspired by SNKRX, I started developing before Vampire Survivors was released.
You can dismantle first weapon, but only if you have at least two of them, cause it also removes the weapon. But I guess I could make it so that if you have only one, it just removes all of its mods and puts them back into the inventory.
wow found another one.
i had died then it took me to this screen
i clicked "start next round" and went to this screen
I can still pause and unpause the game but I cant do anything else
It looks like you died right before managing to complete a level.
Big fan of this game!
Is there a bug with the bullets fired by spinners? They appear to orbit around a moving central point, making them very hard to avoid, especially when there are multiples. If there are a lot of them on the screen, it's basically a run finisher unless you have Bre.
Three wish list items:
First, make the player's burning bullets more visually distinct from red/orange enemy bullets.
Second, let all enemy bullets damage other enemies. It's fun and satisfying when you can blow up a bomber and lead a crowd of chasers through the shrapnel. More friendly fire would open up more similar tactics.
Third, it would be cool if there was a death screen showing your final level, gun stats, number of enemies killed etc.
Super fun and addictive game.
is this what you're talking about?
Where the shields stay between rounds?
Whoa, no. I've never seen that happen. I'm talking about the bullets the spinners fire. Instead of going in a straight line like every other bullet, they orbit around a center point that moves around the screen and ricochets.
No, that's not a bug, that's by design, they're meant to be hard to dodge. Although ricochet is probably a bit too much, better leave it for a dedicated shooting enemy.
Also, making all enemy bullets damage all enemies will reduce the challenge, cause most enemies rely on their bullets flying through the level freely. But I can add more enemies that have friendly fire.
Yeah, a death screen is a good idea.
I think i just found a bug i don't know how i did it but i have 30/25 points
I figured out how to do the bug this might be the best gun i have ever made
Kurt is there a way i can contact you? So i can show how to do the bug that way other people don't exploit it. Or are you ok with me posting it here?
Just post it here, people can exploit it if they want(until I fix it), it's a singleplayer game after all.
How do i post a screen recording ?
I dunno, upload it to youtube maybe and link it here?
i've bean playing for a few days now and here are a few things that i thought of.
the wepon testing area needs a singular enemy that increases it's health every time it respawns that way you can test single shot weapons for instance frafrafraexpptiicoo or something like that. the DPS counter doesn't work well for weapons using dubble or triple fra.
it's hard to go into a round and get a specific gun here are two ways thought of fixing that.
> have an option in the menu that allows you to changes the chance of getting each individual modifyer or changes the chance of getting each group: common, rare ect
>have an option in the menu that allows you to change the defalt weapon's modifiers.
it would be great if you could increase the max cost you gun can hold. one way i thought to do this is to add a button called the (Forge) next to each gun that has the number 25 in the it. When you put a modifier in the forge it destroys the modifier and decreases the number by the cost of the modifier. When the number gets to zero it adds 5 extra points to the max number that the gun can hold. The forge number increases to 50 and the cycle repeats.
Add a bullet speed indicater and a piercing indicater.
Over all a great game.
-It's easy to lose track of exactly where your ship is when you have to aim at the same time. Maybe have a large, faint circle around the ship that shrinks when holding Shift.
-Make enemy projectiles oblong to make it easier to see which direction they're going at a glance.
-Make the projectiles of different enemies different colors to make them easier to predict.
-Inventory menu needs keyboard shortcuts.
-Not a fan of absorbers. They're tedious to kill but aren't much of a threat.
-Add some kind of health indicator for stronger enemies, like a particle effect or a sound effect when they take damage at low health.
-Stacking pierce modifers increases damage instead of lowering it.
-Move the pause button closer to WASD.
I don't think it would help to add a glowing circle around the ship would help. Also, when I really need to avoid enemy bullets, I kinda disregard aiming whatsoever. I guess that's why bullet hells are usually SHMUPs with fixed aiming direction.
I could make them oblong and different colours, but I also can't see how it would help. Also, I'd rather keep them the same red/orange colour, cause this differentiates them from player's bullets.
It could be useful, yes, as long as the player knows which keys to hold to move modifiers around, but I actually had to add keyboard controls to UI elements of a web app at work, and, surprisingly enough, it turned out to be a pain in the ass, so I'd rather keep it as it is.
Actually, I agree. If you have a weapon that will make the absorber create tons of mini chasers, you can also use it to dispatch them.
Bombers already do change their sprites to a cracked one when their health falls below a certain threshold, cause I thought that it was important for the player to know that they' about to explode, but I didn't think about adding a similar thing to other enemies. Yeah, I could see use in that.
You're right, I fixed it.
I'm going to add a settings menu with key bindings, so this won't be an issue.
>I could make them oblong and different colours, but I also can't see how it would help
It makes a huge difference in helping you predict bullets. When the sprite of the bullet tells you in which direction it's going, you don't have to spend those milliseconds looking at them to figure it out yourself and can focus entirely on mapping out a path. Here's an example off of the top of my head (go to 10:45; Itch won't let me link timestamps):
A pattern like that would be much harder with circular bullets. And just having different shades of orange would help with differentiating bullets with different behaviors so you can focus on the more immediate threat.Ok, yeah, I can see that.
Nice polished and simple game, I really like how much chaos the bullets bouncing off the side of the screen creates
wave 43
I'd suggest combining Bre, Orb and Ti, it makes a shield of sorts around you, that protects you from bullets.
Tra works well with Ho, Fi and Spe: you get a bullet that fires homing missiles as it flies, just mind the modifier order.
Thank you for the tips.
My other gun was Fiiscaaacoooofraa Daaaapeeeeriiiispeeeetiii
very good game got to level 20
really like this game
Thanks!
This game is great. I love it.
One UX issue: I'm using TraTraHoRiiSpeeTiii, and I can no longer read the text popups on the screen.
I might be a robot, because it looks like a captcha. 😂
Thanks! Yes, Tra can be very overpowered, that's why it costs so much and has the highest rarity.
Really fun game! Explosive modifiers seem to be the best overall!
Also, no clue if it's a sanctioned bug or not, but switching weapons resets the rate of fire cooldown, basically giving you a machinegun of all your weapons.
Great work!
I present the best gun I've found (thus far). Death by spam:
TraTraHoRiiSpeeTiii
Thanks! No, that's working as intended, I wanted weapon switching to be instant.
Managed to freeze/crash the game with homing rockets that spawned bullet trails, whoops
Gun was "Scaascatra hoco"
Game is overall a lot of fun to play, nice work!
Thanks for the bug report.
can we get a preview for that I put explosives after spiral and it made the sharpnel go spiral, got smashed at wave 20+ something :D
Yes, I am still planning to implement a preview of gun's stats, but there are some complications. When you add an "Exp" modifier, you're essentially giving the bullet a gun, that it will fire when it dies. This allows the player to change the behaviour of this explosion, by for example, adding a "Ho" modifier, which will make shrapnel home onto enemies.
Whereas "Spi" makes your original bullet invisible and "untouchable", while creating a new bullet, that spins around the original one. Guns and bullet are stored in two separate and I have no idea how to track which bullet belongs to which gun... Although, now that I think of it, every gun has a bullet template inside of it, but on the other hand while building a gun from modifiers, I don't store guns, I only store their properties... Anyway, I don't know how to implement it yet.
Also, it will involve changing the UI and I hate the UI.
shouldn't a relative_x += cos(time *frequency)*magnitude work better for spiraling instead of orbiting?
I have this for my unity 3d game (posting because orbiting is exactly what I did before this dawned on me);
public static void clockrotator(GameObject obj, float _rotratex, float _rotratey, float _rotrad){ obj.transform.Translate((new Vector3( obj.transform.position.x - Mathf.Cos(Time.fixedTime * _rotratex) * _rotrad, obj.transform.position.y - Mathf.Sin(Time.fixedTime * _rotratey) * _rotrad, obj.transform.position.z) - obj.transform.position) * Time.deltaTime); }Maybe, maybe. But it still won't solve the underlying issue.
I don't know about how to solve that besides bullet having a property that names its "parent", but I know it will end up being "why didn't I see this solution that was infront of me all this time" kind of thing :)
Just let people fly around and test out guns in between waves. Throw in some dummy targets for bullets to hit. :)
Done.
I added a weapon test mode today.