[MOD] Operation Delta - Space Attack 0.2

Jan 28, 2013 at 2:26 PM
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Download version 0.2

OPERATION DELTA - SPACE ATTACK
current version - 0.2 - 06.04.2013
a Cave Story mod by Randolf, also known as Mixer8421 or Wayne
P.Meyers, a pilot of Delta Station, has to research the base of the enemies. He must fight his way through the entire space to get to the Mothership of Evil.
In this mod you will:
*experience multiple types of weapons
*fight with lots of different enemies
*explore vast, empty areas along with bases full of asteroids and UFOs
*feel the difference between classic mods and this one
Credits:
- Pixel - for making Cave Story
- Wistil - for making Cave Editor
- Shane - for giving me ideas, and for making outlines for asteroids
- Buuka99 - for giving me ideas
- others, who helped in other ways
Enjoy!
 
Jan 28, 2013 at 6:44 PM
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Wow. That must have been a lot of hacking.

Make a different icon, that will make it look better.
 
Jan 28, 2013 at 8:00 PM
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Nice!
 
Jan 28, 2013 at 8:04 PM
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Anuken said:
Wow. That must have been a lot of hacking.

Make a different icon, that will make it look better.
Every NPC is hacked.
The icon, the Resource Hacker doesn't work for me.
 
Jan 28, 2013 at 8:10 PM
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I can try and do it for you if you give me the .ico...
 
Jan 28, 2013 at 8:21 PM
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No, thanks, I will try to do some hex editing and I will get around it.
 
Jan 28, 2013 at 10:26 PM
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Whoa, you turned the Cave Story engine into a scrolling game. In a way, this game was fun, and actualy pretty good for a very first demo. But as such, there are some things that you could change:

- Both the asteroids and the enemies take too many shots to kill in my opinion. I suggest either raising the amount of damage your bullets do, or lower the amount of HP they have. In addition, I think it would make more sense if the enemies had more health than the asteroids.

- Your guns really don't have as much range as I think they should. I have to get kinda close to enemies and asteroids in order to shoot them, and have to shoot them pretty quickly if I don't want them to either corner me (so to speak) back to the left of the screen, or collide with me when I felt like I've done enough hits. That, or I simply have to move on and get out of the way and not destroy it. And this also makes those green enemies really frustrating, making me have to get that close to them, since I have to kill them quickly or else they'll kill me. The lack of range really bites in the cube gun, considering it was an upgrade, and appears to have even less range. This was a disappointment for me as I was hoping to be able to kill enemies faster, but if anything it made me get killed faster since it made me more reckless about getting closer to enemies since it required me to in order to even hit anything. Bottom line: I think you should give the weapons more range.

- When you get hurt, I think that you should flash or something so that you have a few seconds of invincibility like in a lot of games. It started getting frustrating for me by the third level that it was just about impossible to dodge all of these bullets, and they kept draining my health almost instantly.

- It would be nice if weapon upgrades carried over between levels. When I got my regular gun upgraded into a triple shot, I was hoping it would help me out in the level to come, only to find it leveled down by the next level.


Anyway, nice work you've done. I may have sounded a bit critical, but that's just me being a nit-picker. I enjoyed playing this, and keep up the good work. Really my only current complaint summed up into a few words is that I feel it's a bit too hard.
 
Jan 28, 2013 at 10:51 PM
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How about you make the ship faster, the shots more colorful, the ships more plentiful, and the scrolling faster? It would be a lot more action packed...
 
Jan 29, 2013 at 5:25 AM
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@Hayden: Ok, I'll lower the HP of enemies and I will give more range. As for the invinciblity, no. I was thinking about lowering amount of enemies in third level. Also, max HP will be higher later.

Upgrades over the levels... Hm, OK, but to avoid playing with flags, I'll make it necessary to take a gun, or something. Or maybe I will play with the flags?

@Anuken: I'd like to keep the current speed. Maybe I will make some special levels faster. Other things, we'll see.
 
Jan 29, 2013 at 8:33 AM
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I'm done, thoughts.

Make it faster. I don't feel like I'm in some ship fliying through caves, I feel like a snail that has a cape shaped like flames flowing behind me.

Also add more to the tiles and bachgrounds. It's just borring and the same thing.

Most enemies should take only 1 or 2 hits to kill, otherwise it's tedious. Stronger ones even should at max be 4-5. You've already proven that you can hit the enemy, why should you have to do it 12 times?

The bullet firing enemies should be more delibirate, like firing a sweep of bullets instead of just randomly.

increase the range please. >:

Music is bleh, art is acceptable enough.

Gun should make a different type of sound. It's a lzaer and should sound more like one, just don't pick something that would hurt your ears after listening to it alot.

Can you make enemies that aren't just attached to a tile? You could probably make ones that, when you activate them, will stay at the edge of the screen and shoot you.

Story is a bunch of military/space jargen, improve it or just be rid of it like guxt.

Enemies should drop things, not just health, something to collect. Maybe sub weapon ammo or parts of an extra life. IDK

A charge function might be cool to try out? You do have the spur code.

Too much health in general, put it down to like, 3 hits or something. It's more challenging and easier for a player to calculate.

Okay! Now things I like.

The weapon upgrades are a nice touch, but again, too little firing range makes it hard to tell.

I'll admit I was surprised and this was refreshing. If you can improve upon the mechanics I'll contribute some art to this.

Asteroids are neat. If you can, animate them to be spinning or something. They are a nice physical obstacle.

Dedication is nice here, glad to see you stick to this concept.

Please continue.
 
Jan 29, 2013 at 1:24 PM
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Ok. Thanks for playing, and for suggestions.

Remember it's the first demo, I have only tested what I can do (woot finally totally custom NPCs) and I was hoping for suggestions.

Any technical problems? Bugs?
 
Jan 29, 2013 at 2:16 PM
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You made an actual shmup mod :pignon2: I have glads, and a lot to say.

-Regarding the weapons, having to mash as many as three buttons at once is awkward, and for some (like me) it might not even register all the inputs. On the last stage, I had to ignore the Star shot in order to get the concentrated power I needed to blast through the rocks in my way. If there's going to be no reason not to fire them all at once, you may as well attach them to the same button, or one of two, if that's possible. A common system is to have multiple main and/or sub-weapons appearing semi-regularly, allowing the player to choose what they want.
-Enemy health should be lowered somewhat, but if it's too low it may be too easy to nullify them, particularly in an environment so dependent on mashing speed. One option could be to set the weapons to autofire (with a frame delay), and adjust enemy health accordingly. Higher health on those rocks might not be so bad if there weren't so many all over the place, or if there were large boulders in addition to small rocks.
-The player-damage-based-on-contact system is interesting, I don't mind it, although it might make it awkward to balance damage potential. I'd suggest making the player damage sound different to the enemy one, because at the moment it makes it difficult to tell them apart.
-All the alien ships fire the exact same pattern. While it does give the screen a decent bullet count, it'd be nice to have some more variety.
-Note that if you do change the ship speed, hazard density should also be adjusted accordingly.
-Your music composition is definitely improving! Some of this could almost be listenable, even :D

I will always want to see more of this :orangebell:
 
Feb 5, 2013 at 10:55 PM
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Finally got around to trying this. Great work on reinventing the gameplay :)


- Both the asteroids and the enemies take too many shots to kill in my opinion. I suggest either raising the amount of damage your bullets do, or lower the amount of HP they have.
Agreed.
If you can ASM hack, implementing an autofire feature would also help immensely.


In addition, I think it would make more sense if the enemies had more health than the asteroids.
Actually I think it makes sense for the asteroids to be tough. What's more delicate, a huge mass of rock or a complex space fighter?

Your guns really don't have as much range as I think they should. I have to get kinda close to enemies and asteroids in order to shoot them
VERY agreed.


- When you get hurt, I think that you should flash or something so that you have a few seconds of invincibility like in a lot of games.
Or even just half a second, yes. Though I can see why it was made that way: makes collisions with assteroids much more deadly. If the half-sec invincibility could be triggered only by bullets that'd be perfect.

- It would be nice if weapon upgrades carried over between levels. When I got my regular gun upgraded into a triple shot, I was hoping it would help me out in the level to come, only to find it leveled down by the next level.
That surprised me too... and even more so when I did get to keep my other weapon.

HyMyNameIsMatt said:
Make it faster. I don't feel like I'm in some ship fliying through caves, I feel like a snail that has a cape shaped like flames flowing behind me.
Agreed to this too.

DoubleThink said:
-Regarding the weapons, having to mash as many as three buttons at once is awkward, and for some (like me) it might not even register all the inputs.
Yeah, two weapons at once is enough. Any additional weapons should be switched around like in Cave Story. You may also want to employ the same weapon empowering system (I see no reason why not).
 
Apr 8, 2013 at 2:53 PM
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Ok, thanks for playing.
I'll get to work as soon as winter holidays begin.

BTW, I've implemented the autofire a couple days ago, and it works fine.

Update. Look in the OP.
 
Apr 8, 2013 at 8:59 PM
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Ooh, an update appears! I'll have to try it. :3
 
Apr 9, 2013 at 11:19 PM
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Wow! Huge improvement over the last version! I got just four things to reccomend:

- in the last section of chapter 1, it's a little unfair that enemy the bullets roll down the walls of such narrow passages (especially since there's so many of them). They can literally fill it up before you even have a chance of shooting the enemies.

- I just realized that bullets keep damaging you as they fly through you (which is particularly deadly if you're moving in the same direction as the bullet). Shouldn't they disappear upon hitting you?

- I understand taking away the power ups between chapters, but isn't it a little strange to get us another boss fight before we can pick up any? (Especially this early in the game)

- MOAR!
 
Apr 10, 2013 at 5:40 AM
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1. To fix
2. I'll look into that
3. I can put a p-up to Basic Weapon here, or a Square Shot
4. OK
 
Apr 10, 2013 at 1:58 PM
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Basic weapon power up would probably be perfect, yeah.
 
Apr 11, 2013 at 4:21 AM
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I played through it today! I recorded it just in case you find it useful.

http://youtu.be/VU1X_izpt-M

This was my third playthrough, I recorded the first in which I was much more cautious, but something went wrong during recording and it's unwatchable...



I found the game much easier than the last demo! Probably thanks to autofire... <3

In my first playthrough today, I avoided getting the powerups after getting the one I wanted because I thought it might switch my weapon D:

Also, I avoided touching walls and found it a little difficult to decern the background shapes from obstacles I had to avoid. I actually beat the final boss with my first attempt! [Though in my subsequent playthroughs it didn't go nearly as well for me as you can see D:]



Anyway, I had fun! I was wondering if the story dialogue will make a return for the final game?? :D Though it's nice to be able to skip it entirely for replaying...



Oh and I love the fact that you can hold down "A" to fire the star missiles, instead of having to manually time it~ xD



EDIT: It would be neat if there was a level at some point that allows you to scroll up and down while being forced to the right, or even a level which makes you move much faster than normal... D: ;D
 
Apr 11, 2013 at 5:50 AM
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First, thanks for playing.

Second...
Maybe I'll just switch the background color to darker... Would that work? Or does it need redrawing the tiles completely?

Third...
If I allowed to move up and down, there would be problems with my Camera Npc, and the invisible walls that keep you on screen. But if I made a new Camera Npc that flies up and down as you do so, it would be possible.
So, it may be in 0.3.
 
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