Sky Raider Redux preview for the Atari Lynx

[Songbird]

Thought you all might enjoy this collage...

 

[JagChris]

This will probably be the next thing I grab. 

 

There's no review of this on YT. 

 

There's not much on Lynx on YT overall. Even now with the VGA out and emulation etc the Lynx videos are minimal. 

[Songbird]

 

 

I agree it's tough to both get good video capture on a real Lynx as well as find the right YTers who want to dig into new Lynx games. Fortunately JH and MJR have been very supportive. I suppose I should link these onto the Sky Raider product page!

Edited April 24, 2022 by Songbird

[BrianC]

I bought it and I like it quite a bit. Only made it to the sub boss, which was awesome. Definitely has that classic shmup feel to it. 

[Songbird]

That's cool to hear! I had a lot of fun collaborating with James to enhance the game from its original form. I wrote all the music for the game and designed the boss graphics too. I felt that the classic "runner" game would really benefit from some boss fights to spice things up, and we're both thrilled with the final product.

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

On 4/23/2022 at 4:41 PM, JagChris said:

There's not much on Lynx on YT overall. Even now with the VGA out and emulation etc the Lynx videos are minimal. 

I hope to remedy that and start covering Atari Lynx Homebrew soon.

 

My ElCheapoSD Lynx Cart is on its way I and will be buying a video modded Lynx to play on the ZPH stream! I also just bought an Atari Jaguar and did the first Jaguar homebrew stream the other day!

 

- James

[Songbird]

Happy Independence Day weekend for the USA! Have you reached the victory screen yet in Sky Raider?

 

[JagChris]

If I read my instructions right the slower I go the faster I burn fuel? Not a typo?

[Songbird]

That is correct! Think of all the energy consumed to make a biplane hover.

 

Really it's just a way to encourage fast and furious gameplay, while still giving the player some tactical choices on how to fly.

[PFG 9000]

On 9/20/2022 at 11:39 AM, JagChris said:

If I read my instructions right the slower I go the faster I burn fuel? Not a typo?

Keep in mind this game is a spiritual successor/upgrade to River Raid, and the speed tradeoff is a classic risk vs. reward mechanic.  Fly faster to save fuel at the risk of crashing or missing targets, or fly more slowly to avoid obstacles more easily, at the risk of running out of fuel.  Sure it's not realistic, but it makes for some tight gameplay.

[JagChris]

32 minutes ago, PFG 9000 said:

Keep in mind this game is a spiritual successor/upgrade to River Raid, and the speed tradeoff is a classic risk vs. reward mechanic.  Fly faster to save fuel at the risk of crashing or missing targets, or fly more slowly to avoid obstacles more easily, at the risk of running out of fuel.  Sure it's not realistic, but it makes for some tight gameplay.

The original behaved similarly? Been a long time I can't remember.

[sirlynxalot]

I think River raid just had the meter continuously go down at a steady rate, so if you flew slowly this added fuel risk because then you would not be close to the next fuel tank. 

[Songbird]

During our testing with constant fuel burn, we found it was too easy to just go slow and make it a much more mellow game. Tweaking the procedural generation could end up causing more problems, so we settled on the 2x fuel burn when flying slow to encourage players to use it judiciously.

[xhul]

On 7/2/2022 at 2:41 PM, Songbird said:

Have you reached the victory screen yet in Sky Raider?

Have you?

I recently started to really focus on the "highest level" mode (starting from 21), and managed to reach 28 so far, but i'm sure i can do better.

Anyway, a bit of late feedback from a shmup lover on my way:

SRR is a masterpiece.

The only complain i would have would be the kamikazes, when they occasionally spawn from the lowest entry point.

Fortunately, there are ways to dodge them, for me it's all about paranoia, and trying not to focus too much on things, so that your brain treats them faster when they pop.

I haven't spotted any real bug so far, but i managed to catch one exploit, which allows to actually fly out of the screen.

I won't disclose the method here, all i can say is that fortunately, it can't be used to get better scores, or reach higher levels, than on regular gameplays =]

Edited April 7, 2023 by xhul

[Songbird]

Yes, I have reached level 20. But not in one try from level 1.  Nice progress making it to level 28! That's tough to do.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'm thrilled to learn you're enjoying it so much. We went back-and-forth quite a bit on game balance during beta test and tried to play the game different ways to ensure it wasn't super-easy or overwhelmingly hard. Even the boss fights were designed to be relatively short encounters, which makes sense given you only have one life per game. We talked about multiple lives, temporary shields, hit points, etc. but eventually decided the saved "best level" from 1-20 was enough to justify a single life. That means you can play:

• From level 1 to get high score
• From any saved level to eventually reach level 20 and experience all the content
• From level 21 to see how far you can go

If the "off the screen method" is what I think it is, yes, we are aware of that and had fun experimenting with it. I wasn't sure if we left that in for the final ROM, but it's harmless so I'm glad it's still there.

 

In fact, there is one more secret yet to be discovered in Sky Raider that I don't think anyone mentioned yet. It's a small feature, but looks cool... especially on an unmodded Lynx.

 

[xhul]

1 hour ago, Songbird said:

Yes, I have reached level 20. But not in one try from level 1.

Oh, so that screen displays at level 20?
My bad, i don't even remember, it shows how long it's been since i played from the beginning.

 

1 hour ago, Songbird said:

If the "off the screen method" is what I think it is, yes, we are aware of that and had fun experimenting with it. I wasn't sure if we left that in for the final ROM, but it's harmless so I'm glad it's still there.

Yes, it's most probably what you think, since i doubt there are other ways to do it.
I originally thought it could only be done at the very first level, but i just realised you can actually use it to unlock all the levels until 21, if you're really bad at the game.

But that only works for levels without bosses, of course.

 

1 hour ago, Songbird said:

In fact, there is one more secret yet to be discovered in Sky Raider that I don't think anyone mentioned yet. It's a small feature, but looks cool... especially on an unmodded Lynx.

You caught my attention...

 

Oh, and i just found my first audio glitch.
At the title screen, press option 2 to mute the music, pause, and unpause =]
I would assume it's because the game tries to play the SFX for the plane engine, except that it's not loaded yet.

Edited April 8, 2023 by xhul

[Songbird]

6 hours ago, xhul said:

Oh, so that screen displays at level 20?

Correct. Even though it's not the end of the gameplay (since it's an endless runner), we wanted to give players a treat for beating 20 levels and all four bosses.

 

6 hours ago, xhul said:

I originally thought it could only be done at the very first level, but i just realised you can actually use it to unlock all the levels until 21, if you're really bad at the game. But that only works for levels without bosses, of course.

Hah, interesting.

 

6 hours ago, xhul said:

Oh, and i just found my first audio glitch.
At the title screen, press option 2 to mute the music, pause, and unpause =]
I would assume it's because the game tries to play the SFX for the plane engine, except that it's not loaded yet.

Ugh, I could totally see that happening. 😕

 

[PFG 9000]

I still play Sky Raider Redux pretty often.  I haven't made it past level 25, and the farthest I can make it from the beginning is level 8.  It's really solid and is in my top 5 homebrew Lynx games.  My only complaint is the single life, because a Gane Over screen is a huge punishment for one mistake.  But I understand the reasoning behind it.

 

I haven't run across either the exploit or the secret mentioned above...

[Songbird]

I just realized the other visual easter egg I alluded to is actually described in the manual: press Opt 1 on the title screen to toggle fuel gauge transparency. We did that by displaying it every other frame. You can see the difference on a modded screen, but I think it looks best on original. Sorry, no more secrets!

 

37 minutes ago, PFG 9000 said:

My only complaint is the single life, because a Game Over screen is a huge punishment for one mistake.  But I understand the reasoning behind it.

Yep, James and I had that conversation many times. Old school games often gave you several lives, but had no continue option. Then continues became a thing. Also health bars. Eventually we compromised on just the one life since the EEPROM saves your last level (up to 20), so in essence you can continue as many times as you want.

[xhul]

I'm curious, how endless is it exactly?

Is it like, only limited by the memory location used to store the current level?

Edited April 8, 2023 by xhul

[Songbird]

I can't remember if we defined an actual number for the upper level limit. I know we designed it to at least get to level 40, so players could in theory encounter all the bosses twice. But really, playing from level 21 is meant to be a "push your luck" style where you just endure for as long as you can.

[xhul]

40 was my original bet before i asked, made sense to have a second full set of levels.

 

I'm gonna try to reach 30, but i must say, increasing my D-pad diagonal sensitivity really helped so far when it comes to crazy last second manoeuvres.

[PFG 9000]

11 hours ago, Songbird said:

I just realized the other visual easter egg I alluded to is actually described in the manual: press Opt 1 on the title screen to toggle fuel gauge transparency. We did that by displaying it every other frame. You can see the difference on a modded screen, but I think it looks best on original. Sorry, no more secrets!

That one I did know about!  I usually play with the transparency activated.  I think it looks just fine on my McWill.  I'll compare it to an original screen one of these days.

[Songbird]

Cool. We decided not to always force it on, in case some newer displays or emulation had flicker. But I do like the transparency effect.

[xhul]

Managed to reach 21410 points, died at the last boss on his angry phase, unfortunately.

I think i'm done with highscores, i'll focus on trying to get past level 40 now, though i doubt i'll ever get there =]

Edited April 11, 2023 by xhul