Microvaders for Atari Lynx

[xhul]

1 hour ago, Songbird said:

@WesleyrpgAust Ooooo, same universe?!? Maybe the Microverse? Or the Cyberverse? So many choices!

 

@xhul Thanks for all the feedback and glad you are enjoying the demo! Some notes:

1. The game is hard-coded to only allow two bullets. It's possible to boost this to 3 or 4, but it would ripple through a lot of ROM hacks. Getting the rapid fire powerup helps mitigate this quite a bit.

2. Yes, it's possible for an enemy bullet to be at the same coordinates as a powerup. I have considered giving the player 1 second of invincibility when acquiring a powerup, so I'll keep that on my to-do list and see how it affects the gameplay.

1. Yeah, i believe it's fine as it is, as long as you take it into account if you decide to add extra levels with higher difficulty.

2. That would be a decent compromise.

[PFG 9000]

On 1/20/2023 at 10:54 AM, Songbird said:

How are you enjoying the beta (or PE cart) so far? Any feedback is appreicated!

The feedback I have is probably not terribly helpful.  It's a challenging game!  I should have expected that, as it's right about on par with the difficulty of Space Invaders or Galaga.  But the two bullet on-screen limit makes it a little harder than it needs to be.  Once you get the power-up that speeds up your shots, it becomes quite a bit more fun.  Would you consider adding an "easy mode" that starts you off with a faster shot speed?  Maybe also including a "reticle" to help line up your shots, which could be as simple as one pixel near the top of the screen?  

 

Microvaders really fits in well with the Lynx's retail library.  Considering how much of its original titles are high-quality ports of classic arcade games, Microvaders just feels like it belongs.

 

So far my highest score is an embarrassing 16,000.  I've only cleared the first wave a handful of times.  But I also see progress the more I play, and I haven't put as much time as I'd like into Microvaders so far.

 

EDIT:  I forgot to mention - when the enemies are initially entering the screen, and they're scaling in from the background, it's not entirely clear at what point your shots can first hit them.  That's totally fine, but it might be an improvement to provide a quick visual indicator (like having them flash all white for one frame, or something) of when they're first vulnerable.

Edited January 30, 2023 by PFG 9000

[Songbird]

Thanks for the feedback!

 

The 2-bullet limit is unlikely to change. It's possible I could add an easy mode, however. Another thing I am considering is a set powerup progression instead of pseudo-random like it is now. That would make it easier for a player to acquire rapid fire after losing a ship.

 

The enemies are always collideable as soon as they are visible. It's just very hard to hit them when they are tiny. 😉

 

Keep the feedback coming! Definitely helps me tweak the game.

[agradeneu]

I think the fast shot power up should be the standard shot - game would be a lot more  fun then! The current standard shot feels too slow and the two shot limit makes it hard to time shots and get some game flow.

When the invaders attack you mostly evade them as they are moving too fast for the slow shots and overwhelm the player quickly.

 

The shot power could do something more interesting then, e.g. wider shot or bigger bullets.

 

Would be cool if the exploding bombs would damage/kill the invaders for some interesting chain reactions.

 

Another suggestion: I wonder if it was possible to scale the invaders from big to normal, as if they were coming from above/foreground.

 

As the sprites are already very small, this would make the scaling effects stand out a bit more?

 

 

Edited February 5, 2023 by agradeneu

[Songbird]

You can get some good flow when shooting the enemies as they enter the screen,  even with slower shots. I do agree however that if many enemies are on-screen and diving at you, you spend a lot of time dodging shots. That's why I might switch to a fixed powerup progression, where rapid fire is the first or second powerup you acquire. 

 

It's always a balancing act in a shooter like this; it's fun to make the player more powerful, but then the game difficulty has to be scaled to match.

 

The bombs from the bigger invader do not currently damage any invader ships, but yes I've thought about doing something like that. I'd need to modify the collision value of the invader bomb explosion sprite, plus modify the collision handling of course. That intersects with the player shot limit, as right now the code only checks for shot #1 or shot #2. I'll have to see if there is a way to add the invader bomb explosion as a third collision without messing up the player shot logic.

[agradeneu]

Thanks! Played MV for the high score club quite extensively. As soon as I adapted to the shot mechanic it became quite fun to play, despite some shortcomings which could be fixed for the final game IMO. 

Power ups are time limited in the Beta? 

[Songbird]

Rapid fire is limited to 50 shots in the beta. The shield is of course time-limited. Movement speed boost (plus sign) is not limited.

[agradeneu]

4 hours ago, Songbird said:

 

 

It's always a balancing act in a shooter like this; it's fun to make the player more powerful, but then the game difficulty has to be scaled to match.

 

 

Fun factor should be more important than making the game difficult to play for most players. 

 

For shmups, the shooting must feel right, that is essential. 

[+jgkspsx]

The shooting feels great when I’m taking them out on the way in, but if I get out of sync I am in trouble. I wonder if just speeding up player shots a bit would improve that?

 

Usually what happens in my bad games is that I miss a few too many enemies in the moth stage and then I am just dead because the normal enemies combined with the minibosses cover two thirds or more of the movement range with objects once they get going.

[Songbird]

10 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Fun factor should be more important than making the game difficult to play for most players. 

Hopefully we all agree fun is the #1 priority in all games! It's still tricky to hit that sweet spot but we'll see what I can do about that.  

 

9 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

The shooting feels great when I’m taking them out on the way in, but if I get out of sync I am in trouble. I wonder if just speeding up player shots a bit would improve that?

Well, that's what the rapid fire powerup does. So the way I am envisioning this is the player starts with slow shots, but after a certain time limit or number of enemies destroyed, then powerups appear. First would be rapid fire, then the speed boost. After that, there would be some kind of alternating sequence of shield, bomb, and (very sparingly) extra life. If you die, then the sequence starts over.

 

Right now, the game is structured as a pseudo-random sequence of powerups, with frequency enforced so (for example) you can only get extra life I think either one or zero times in the beta. The sequence does not restart when you die.

[+jgkspsx]

I am wondering if the basic shot could be sped up just a tinge. Or is it clocked the same as enemy shots?

[+jgkspsx]

Here are a few other things I noticed:

 

The enemy hitboxes are very small and the player hitbox seems large. I am pretty sure I have exploded when an enemy shot collided with my exhaust. Shrinking the player hitbox slightly, and maybe leaving the bottom few pixels out of it, help even the odds a bit.

 

The second wave of minibosses seems like a really significant escalation in difficulty. Not only are they dropping bombs that move at a different speed than the shots, but the spread distance of the explosion is extremely wide. With all of the shots flying I have not been able to see if exploding the bombs midair is possible.

 

Having the minibosses loop de loop might be a little more challenge than is needed, given how large they are.

[Songbird]

Speeding up the shots beyond the current regular and rapid fire isn't really an option, but I'll take another look. Also I can't make the shots any faster than rapid fire, because then you run the risk of missing the sprite collision altogether given how small the enemies are.

 

For fun, I just played two games of the beta ROM and intentionally missed all powerups. My scores were 15K and and 18K. In the second game, I made it all the way to second "big invader" wave. Granted, I've played the game way more than anyone else at this point, but honestly I think the first few waves are pretty easy to defeat right now without rapid fire.

 

Having said that, I do realize the game can be punishing when either you allow too many enemies on screen, or when you die at a bad spot in the powerup sequence. You might have had rapid fire and speed boost, but then the next few powerups are bomb and shield which help you a little bit but not persistently. That's why I think I will switch to a fixed powerup progression, to help players "get back in the saddle" after each death.

 

The hitboxes are all hardware sprite collision-based. In practical terms, that means whatever pixels are part of the sprite are what gets checked for collisions. Thus the player ship exhaust could hit an enemy shot. I'll have to think about that some more.

 

Yes, the second wave of big invaders is a significant difficulty increase. This will be spaced out in the final game (and also was spaced out in the Preview Edition cartridge) so you have several small invader waves before the second big invader wave. All the logic for enemy movement patterns, bomb dropping, and enemy shots is straight from the original ROM. I can modify it, but it's slow and takes a lot of study since I don't have the original source code.

[+jgkspsx]

I am pretty sure that the powerup chain all of my games this evening started with a bomb, sometimes dropped by the first enemy I shot. So it ended up just killing part of the first group of invaders. Then I think I got rapid fire then shield.

[Songbird]

That sounds right regarding the first three powerups. Also I just remembered that I patched out the speed boost and the extra life in the beta, since it's a pretty short game overall. Those powerups do exist in the PE cart however.

[Rick Dangerous]

Had a lot of fun playing the Beta, I only feel that the shot rate needs to be higher.  Maybe 1-2 special weapons would be cool to have available at times also. 

 

I'll pick up the final product as soon as my budget allows! 

[Songbird]

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback!

[Rick Dangerous]

I was playing today, and I would love the ability to flip the screen in this layout.  For whatever reason I think I'd just be more comfortable shooting with my right and moving with my left.  Call me crazy! 

[Songbird]

Since the Lynx is held vertically for Microvaders, you can already play with either your left or right hand on the joypad without screen flip. So are you actually saying you'd like to play with the joypad at the top and the buttons at the bottom? That's just odd.  

 

I disabled screen flip because there's a bug in the flip screen code going all the way back to the original ROM. I'll consider it as a low-priority to-do item.

 

[+jgkspsx]

I have definitely played vert shmups with d pad at the top.

[PFG 9000]

I'm also one of those weirdos who likes the D-Pad at the top for vertical games. 

[Songbird]

Haha, I never knew that was a thing! Kind of like 20 years ago I thought everyone likes the y-axis inverted when doing a flying / spaceship cockpit game, so why make an option to not invert?

[+bhall408]

Thanks to @Songbird, you can now enjoy the MicroVaders BETA in Argon!

 

Congrats on the nomination!

 

Find Argon on Google Play (Android phone/tablet/TV/Chromebook), Amazon AppStore (Amazon Fire TV/Stick/Tablet) and Microsoft App Store (Win11)

 

[WesleyrpgAust]

If anyone missed out the first time and wants a preview cart.....Songbird's website is showing 7 in stock.

 

https://songbird-productions.com/product/microvaders-pe/

 

However I do find it incredibly dubious that 6 months AFTER they sell out that suddenly more are found.

 

Why would you limit the run to only 50 units, to then go about making more of them 6 months later.

 

I'm sorry, but that's sneaky....and now you know why i wanted the MicroVaders Preview individually numbered....

Edited April 4, 2023 by WesleyrpgAust
spelling

[+madman]

You might be overreacting a bit here, the listing clearly says they had extra stickers and carts. Let's say Songbird only made 50 of them and 2 were lost in the mail. Or a sticker was damaged, a cart was bad, whatever. Should those buyers just be out of luck? Spoiler alert: Generally when you see something limited to X amount, the seller had more than that made for exactly these types of circumstances.