[Silly Venture 2024SE] - Gotcha Gun Demo - a new release from OCEO Team

[Nop90]

OCEO presents: 

Gotcha Gun Demo version

 

In this release there is only the first level and the first boss. Coded in few weeks for Silly Venture 2024SE. There will be a full version one day? Who knows... 😉

 

Lnx file attached!!!!!! Post here your high scores and don't miss to write your feedbacks to improve the game.

Original idea: Doctor_Succubus 
Binary guy: Nop90
Pixel guy: Marss
Music man: Miker
Controls
 Shoot: A
 Steal: B - when meter is full

Enjoy!!!

 

  

 

  

  

 

In the many cityscapes of Neo Skies, a young girl named Zia, known for her funky style and signature red cap, zips through the air. The mechanical authorities, dubbed "Mechs," are relentless, but Zia is ffffaaasTer. She weaves between towering skyscrapers, her red cap flapping in the wind, as she targets the Mechs' precious cargo.
With each successful heist, Zia's skills sharpen, but so do the Mechs' defenses. One day, in the bustling metropolis of Aurum, she spots a heavily guarded vault atop a robotic sentinel. With a sly grin, Zia swoops down, dodging laser beams and automated drones. She cracks the vault with ease, her hands a blur of practiced movements.
As she grabs the treasure, alarms blare, and the Mechs' eyes glow a menacing red. The chase is on. With newfound strength, Zia rockets into the day, her red cap a beacon of rebellion against the mechanical tyranny.

 

Gotcha-gun - SV2020SE Demo.lnx

[agradeneu]

21 hours ago, Nop90 said:

OCEO presents: 

Gotcha Gun Demo version

 

In this release there is only the first level and the first boss. Coded in few weeks for Silly Venture 2024SE. There will be a full version one day? Who knows... 😉

 

Lnx file attached!!!!!! Post here your high scores and don't miss to write your feedbacks to improve the game.

Original idea: Doctor_Succubus 
Binary guy: Nop90
Pixel guy: Marss
Music man: Miker
Controls
 Shoot: A
 Steal: B - when meter is full

Enjoy!!!

 

  

 

  

  

 

In the many cityscapes of Neo Skies, a young girl named Zia, known for her funky style and signature red cap, zips through the air. The mechanical authorities, dubbed "Mechs," are relentless, but Zia is ffffaaasTer. She weaves between towering skyscrapers, her red cap flapping in the wind, as she targets the Mechs' precious cargo.
With each successful heist, Zia's skills sharpen, but so do the Mechs' defenses. One day, in the bustling metropolis of Aurum, she spots a heavily guarded vault atop a robotic sentinel. With a sly grin, Zia swoops down, dodging laser beams and automated drones. She cracks the vault with ease, her hands a blur of practiced movements.
As she grabs the treasure, alarms blare, and the Mechs' eyes glow a menacing red. The chase is on. With newfound strength, Zia rockets into the day, her red cap a beacon of rebellion against the mechanical tyranny.

 

Gotcha-gun - SV2020SE Demo.lnx 153.57 kB · 13 downloads

Gorgeous stuff, congrats!

[Ninjabba]

Great bullet hell!

 

Tough as nails, few tries only got me 173 points, but looks and plays amazing. We should definitely add this to the Lynx High Score Club, thanks!

[Nop90]

6 minutes ago, Ninjabba said:

Great bullet hell!

 

Tough as nails, few tries only got me 173 points, but looks and plays amazing. We should definitely add this to the Lynx High Score Club, thanks!

the gfx for other 3 levels are ready, wait a little more and there will be more levels

[marss]

Feel free to share your suggestions

[Ninjabba]

An easy mode 😅

[Nop90]

@Ninjabba where are you playing it? On Felix it's too easy because with a keyboard the player can be controlled well. On a real lynx it's more challenging.

 

On mednafen it's too fast to be playable.

[Ninjabba]

Playing it on mednafen, that explains 😄

 

Thought you guys went for the hardcore definition of a bullet hell.

 

Edit: trying it now on Argon

Edited August 19 by Ninjabba

[agradeneu]

Excellent game choice, Iam impressed by the performance on the Lynx. Nop90, you have made great improvements!

 

Its great these modern indie games are ported to the Lynx!

 

I still hope someone would port "Super Crate Box", that was an addictive little shmup!

[marss]

ported....>converted

[xhul]

Just tried it on a physical machine.

That's impressive, though i really wish there was something to do regarding the frame rate drops =[

 

I'm a bit confused about the circumstances in which you can get weapon upgrades.

From what i understood, you have to kill monsters using the shield in close combat.

But then, the upgrades seem to pop pretty rarely, making the risk not exactly worth it.

Is there some randomness involved, or am i completely wrong about that mechanic?

EDIT: You have to do it on the special green enemies, i get it now.

Quadruple shot is fun, score 1253 =]

 

EDIT 2:

What's the point of that big circle here?

At first i thought it could damage the player, but it doesn't.

Is that just ambiance?

Edited August 20 by xhul

[Nop90]

The big circle should kill, I Introduced a bug just before releasing the game.

 

For the frame drop I think I can reduce it, I made great improvements in the last week, with note time I can reach constant framerate in the final version.

[xhul]

29 minutes ago, Nop90 said:

The big circle should kill, I Introduced a bug just before releasing the game.

 

For the frame drop I think I can reduce it, I made great improvements in the last week, with note time I can reach constant framerate in the final version.

Sounds very great about the frame drop reduction =]

 

Regarding the scoring system, i might have an interesting suggestion.

The whole idea is to give significantly more points when killing a green enemy with regular bullets, instead of capturing him.

Why?

Well, not capturing a green enemy means no weapon upgrade opportunity, which means a harder gameplay.

That way, the player can sorta customise the game difficulty by himself, while being rewarded for the risk.

That would increase the replayability as well when it comes to scoring.

Of course, such system would probably only make sense if weapon upgrades are automatically reset at each level.

Edited August 20 by xhul

[Nop90]

Enemy bullet bug fixed, it wasn't only the big one to be not active.

 

Gotcha-gun.lnx

[agradeneu]

First stage completed, a lot easier after i figured out the Power ups. You can use B as a shield too.

[Nop90]

3 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

You can use B as a shield too.

Correct and it raises your score.

 

[xhul]

Just tested the updated demo, 2 things to report so far:

 

THE "NO DANGER" EXPLOIT

 

It's possible to complete the level without touching any button.
Once the level just started, all you have to do is to go up until to reach maximum Y coordinates, and wait there as long as you want.
When you're there, you can move left or right, and still be immune to any danger.
That happens because there's no collision detection with the enemies themselves, but also because all projectiles start to appear below a certain height (and they all move downward).

 

COLLISION DETECTION ISSUE

 

It seems the algorithm only checks for collisions when the player unit is below projectiles.
So if you're above a projectile, then go down, you can completely overlap a projectile without being hit.
Of course, if you manage to go past the projectile, you'll be below it enough to be hit again.
That's obviously only an issue with slow-type projectile, that you can actually catch coming from above.
Note: i haven't checked if that applies to the big fat projectile, the algorithm might be different.

[Nop90]

Well, it's only a demo made in few weeks.

 

For the first issue, you can complete the level but making no points, if you think this is funny, why not? Anyway when I'll add the other projectiles moving toward the player this will be less easy.

The collision with enemies should work, maybe I broke something.

 

For the second isuue, the collision area is only a circle in the center of the head (smaller than the head). This works like in the original game. I'll discuss with the team if to change this a little.

[xhul]

1 hour ago, Nop90 said:

Well, it's only a demo made in few weeks.

And it's already awesome.

Keep in mind what i report is always to be considered just in case that wasn't intended, that's important.

In the end, you keep what you want =]

1 hour ago, Nop90 said:

For the first issue, you can complete the level but making no points, if you think this is funny, why not? Anyway when I'll add the other projectiles moving toward the player this will be less easy.

The collision with enemies should work, maybe I broke something.

Homing projectiles, sounds juicy =]

I haven't checked the first demo again, but i'm pretty sure the collision with enemies was working back then.

If true, you would have to examine the changes made between the 2 demos, hoping you kept track of them.

1 hour ago, Nop90 said:

For the second isuue, the collision area is only a circle in the center of the head (smaller than the head). This works like in the original game. I'll discuss with the team if to change this a little.

That could explain what i noticed, though i think the entire head was overlapping with the bullets during my tests.
I'll check again just in case.

 

I noticed something else:
Opt1+pause turns off the background music.
I'm not sure why not having chosen Opt1 alone, since it's unused.
Anyway, it's worth noting that pressing it again doesn't turn the background music back on.
But more importantly, once Opt1+pause is pressed, pause and flip no longer work.

[Nop90]

24 minutes ago, xhul said:

And it's already awesome.

Keep in mind what i report is always to be considered just in case that wasn't intended, that's important.

In the end, you keep what you want =]

I'm sorry if my words sounded too rude. Every feedback is always welcome.

 

25 minutes ago, xhul said:

I noticed something else:
Opt1+pause turns off the background music.
I'm not sure why not having chosen Opt1 alone, since it's unused.
Anyway, it's worth noting that pressing it again doesn't turn the background music back on.
But more importantly, once Opt1+pause is pressed, pause and flip no longer work.

Thank you for reporting this. I started from a empy template with the standard function to pause the game and toggle on/off the sound, but disabled the pause and opt1 opt2 buttons for the demo; probably I missed something cleaning it. If I find the time I'll clean the demo and in the final version everything will be working.

 

19 minutes ago, xhul said:

I haven't checked the first demo again, but i'm pretty sure the collision with enemies was working back then.

If true, you would have to examine the changes made between the 2 demos, hoping you kept track of them.

Possible. I tried to add more and more things till the last available day for the compo, so some parts of the code are a little messy and every cange I do can introduce bugs. Before adding new levels I'll have to clean the code, and obviously gain some more speed 😉.

 

And thinking a little more about your previous feedacks, probably I'll limit the vertical movement of the player a little below of the top screen, so that the player can't go over the first line of enemies. The gameplay is not tuned at all yet.

[Nop90]

Fixed the enemy collision and removed the pause function.

 

Note that while the bullets can hit only the center of the head, the enemies hurts if they touch every part of the body.

Gotcha-gun.lnx

[xhul]

2 hours ago, Nop90 said:

Fixed the enemy collision and removed the pause function.

Good job =]

 

First of all, you were right, the immunity when colliding with a projectile from above wasn't one.

It was indeed because of the small collision spot on the player unit.

 

Other than that, i managed to semi-crash the game, not sure if it was introduced in demo 3 or not.

I'll do my best to explain:

It happens when capturing a green enemy, while the player unit comes from above.

I suspect it's because the player unit isn't supposed to be on the way of the fleeing captured enemy, so the game ends up with an unsupported collision detection.

When that happens, the current level background and all its sprites get replaced with the "girl with cap" background, and the level music keeps running in a loop.

It's not very hard to reproduce, i did it 3 times in a row, with the very first green enemy.

If you have some trouble reproducing it, don't hesitate to let me know, i'll try to find a way to record it on emulator.

EDIT: Involuntarily managed to do it while coming from below, but it's harder to trigger, since the enemy usually flees upward.

Edited August 23 by xhul

[Nop90]

Thank you, I'll check.

 

I suspect it's because two conflicting events (player hit and enemy catch) are triggered at the same moment.

 

Both the two stop the collision detection and load some additional data in the collision buffer, but if both are active at the same moment one of the two will call functions not loaded in memory causing a crash.

[Nop90]

Now this other bug should be fixed.

 

 

Gotcha-gun.lnx

[xhul]

Tested demo 4, and i must say it's pretty stable, good job.
Managed to score 1489 points so far.

A couple things i noticed, but that's some minor stuff.
It's about the sound indicator that plays when the grab meter is full:

 

Sometimes, it doesn't play at all, most probably because of the sound effect overload.
Because of that, when you think it should be full and the sound still hasn't played, it's required to check the meter visually, sometimes resulting in death by distraction.
Not sure if giving that sound effect some kind of priority is easy to code or not, but that would be a great QOL modification.

If it's really too much trouble, adding an obvious temporary|permanent effect on the character itself would do the job i think.

 

Also, that sound effect is sometimes played twice.

It can happen anywhere, but it does quite a lot against the final boss, like around 50% of the time.
Just a theory, but i suspect the code is executed twice because the target is hit by multiple projectiles simultaneously.

Edited August 25 by xhul