In response to many comments, I spent a few hours to improve Wall Girl and have released the results.

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/Wall_Girl_PR1.zip

Edit: If you have yet to rate Wall Girl, the older version is available at:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/04/19/wall-girl-final/

If you intend to rate the game, please do so before playing the new PR1 version.

Changes:

- Most of my respondents observed that the game was too hard for them. In response, this new version comes with an Easy mode. Press X at the title screen to start Easy mode.

- The Normal mode has seen several balance changes. On the whole, the game is easier, but a couple of parts have actually been made more difficult.

- There is now music! Still no sound effects, though. I was really bummed that I couldn’t finish the music in time for the entry, but here it is. Not great, but it’s my first shot (in a very long while) at composing something from scratch.

- Several cosmetic enhancements have been made to the boss fight.

- This version has a readme! It’s actually more like a full-on manual…

I think this is really very close to how I envisioned the game when I first started work on it, apart from the lack of a tutorial mode. If you have a bit of time to spare, reviews and/or comments would be appreciated.

Hey, everyone who commented on my entry! Thanks so much for playing and commenting!

I felt it would be good to respond, so here’s some quick answers to the comments.

(1) Sorry, I was too busy making fancy-looking graphics to do the reset button ><

(2) Sorry, I couldn’t finish the music in time, so there’s no sound! Once I regain some energy I will release a new version with sound. I think this game has legs.

(3) Yeah, the wall-switching is a bit cumbersome. I guess this is where memorization comes in – if you know the pattern beforehand or can read it quickly, then you know which wall colours to use and can set it up pretty quick. Not sure if that’s bad design… You can actually just hold down a shot button and move laterally across the wall to change all the circles at once, by the way.

(4) Sorry, there wasn’t a help screen, or it would be more obvious that there are three weapons (Z, X, and Z+X), and that each corresponds to a different colour for wall-switching. Edit: I haven’t encountered any problems with the wall-switching – maybe my explanation was unclear? An animated tutorial might help.

(5) shrt, it seems you have one of Those Keyboards. I’m not sure what the exact reason is, but some keyboards (like the one on a laptop I once used) seem to not want to register a combination of a letter and certain arrow keys at the same time. So you can’t press Z, Down and Left together. Best I can do is to put in 360 pad support, and possibly other pad support too, in the remake.

(6) All told, if you actually use all the bombs, you have 12 shots of the superweapon. This is (in theory) enough to clear the Horrible Rush Of Enemies before the boss, and kill the boss, without firing a single conventional shot, and being invincible about 90% of the time. (Edit: Assuming you don’t die before the Horrible Enemy Rush, that is.) C launches the superweapon when your wall is up, and re-summons the wall when it is offline. I was actually worried that it would be a game-breaker, but it seems it… well, wasn’t. If you’re having trouble, use more superweapon!

(7) There’s a semi-hidden trick to the game. You can operate either the spread shots or the laser simultaneously with the missiles. To do so, hold either the Z or the X key to fire the spread or laser, and simultaneously tap the other key (X or Z). This increases your firepower very substantially, but also makes your movement speed erratic, so threading a path through bullets gets a bit tougher.

(8) Have you ever encountered flying monks that *weren’t* attacking you?

Edit: (9) Muku, your comments were completely spot-on. I wonder if you were reading my mind! Yes, I realized a couple of days ago that I should have added a readme with instructions – will try to remember to do so next time. Yes, I am actually considering a more extensive remake/expanded edition with SNES-style blocky sprites (after I finish solving the more obvious issues). Yes, I did think about adding one or two ticks of acceleration, but my experience in the past has been that adding excessive acceleration to a shmup causes the player’s movement to feel sluggish – that’s probably something that can be solved with tuning though, so if I do a more extensive remake I will seriously consider it (thanks to your feedback!). Finally, the wall mechanic currently relies heavily on memorization (you switch the wall between waves to prepare for the upcoming wave); in the remake I am thinking of giving the player the choice of 2 different “wall modes” – manual and semi-automatic – where the former is the same as the current wall, and the latter is easier and more responsive but also far less flexible.

Dinner last night was Chinese.

Clockwise from upper left: cold dish platter (chicken, roast pork, char siew and jellyfish), diced duck in lettuce wrap, roast chicken, tofu mock-meat with veggies, dessert (hard to explain unless you live in Asia), fried shrimp in wasabi sauce, steamed fish, and noodles in the centre. Not pictured: Peking duck and one other dish which I forget – probably veggies of some description, if memory serves.

Hooray for crappy photography skills and almost-as-crappy cellphone camera.

Actually, this was my grandmother’s birthday. Dinner took 4 hours, which kind of put a ding in my development time. Food was good if somewhat “innovative” (roast chicken on top of fruit salad?).

Well, on to the post-mortem.

What I did right:

- I was using very familiar tools.

- Tools were mostly in place before development began.

- I deliberately left out 3D skeletal animation from my toolset. Integrating it would have tempted me to make animated 3D characters, which would have killed the project due to the time required.

- Character sketches at the start gave me a very clear direction.

- Chose to hard-code my level rather than making a more open framework.

- Froze development half an hour before the end of the compo, to avoid running out of time.

What I did wrong:

- Not enough practice with composing music. The first song took 2 and a half hours. The second was half-done in about half an hour. In the end I scrapped music because I couldn’t finish the boss fight theme in time.

- Didn’t build my toolset with quick development in mind. Some features which would have been useful were left out, like sprite animation and object state-management.

- Included toolset features, like lighting, which pushed the game’s specs to a point where some people couldn’t run it.

- Edit: Made the game too hard. I forgot that most people are not shmupfans.

- Attended the birthday dinner. I kid, I kid – making Grandma happy is usually a good thing, and I got a nice meal out of it too.

I’m calling this one done. Will post a post-mortem (and food!) later.

Download:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/5parrowhawk_LD14_WallGirl.zip

Instructions:

(1) You’ll need at least the XNA redistributable to run it. Also, a decent 3D card (anything from the last 4-5 years. Technically Intel GMA should work too!)

Download: XNA redist

(2) During gameplay, Z fires spread shots, X fires laser, Z+X fire missiles.

(3) The wall circles block enemy bullets of the same colour. Move into the circles and shoot to change the colours.

(4) When the wall is up and running, C uses your super attack (+ temporary invincibility). When it is offline, C summons it at the cost of one bomb.

(5) When the game finishes, please press Esc to exit. Didn’t have time to test and debug go-back-to-main-menu, even though the code is half-finished.

Troubleshooting:

If it doesn’t run even after installing the XNA redistributable, please consult my contest page:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/ludumdare14

All graphics done.

I’m gonna see if I can finish that music track I was working on…

Finally!

I will need to do the title screen, game over screen, and so on, but not just yet. It’s 5 am and I need to catch a quick nap first.

Hopefully there will be time for music (I have a track almost complete) and possibly even sound.

Back in a couple of hours.

All the gameplay’s done except the boss. Gonna see how much of it I can implement in 8 hours.

The difficulty is pretty tough. I guess it’s about on the same level as the Extra mode in “Perfect Cherry Blossom”. If I have the time to implement scoring, I’ll start an unofficial highscore board here after the final submission is done!

The above screenshot says it all. I wanted to have more enemies and bullets on screen for the picture, but they were gone before I could take it *grin* All the player’s abilities are now complete – after this I’ll be doing the level design.

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/WallGirlAlpha3.zip

Please test if you have the time and energy. I really do appreciate the feedback.

The controls are: any key to begin, then arrow keys to move, Z for firebolts, X for laser, Z+X for missiles. When the wall is up and running, C launches the super attack (which consumes the wall). When the wall is not up and running, C will expend one bomb to summon it. You have 3 bombs.

The circles that make up the wall will absorb same-coloured enemy bullets. If you move into the circle and shoot, it will reappear (after a brief period) as the colour of the shot you used.

Enemies who hit the wall are immediately killed, but the circle they hit will be pushed back towards you! If the circle is pushed back too far, there is a chance that it will disappear. After three circles are gone, the entire wall disintegrates. This is a good time to use the superweapon (before it disintegrates, that is).

Esc exits the game when you’re done (sorry, it still doesn’t return to title screen).

For troubleshooting, etc., please see my previous entry:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/04/18/wall-girl-all-player-weapons-complete/

Finally.

The circles that make up the wall will absorb same-coloured enemy bullets. If you move into the circle and shoot, it will reappear (after a brief period) as the colour of the shot you used.

Enemies who hit the wall are immediately killed, but the circle they hit will be pushed back towards you! If the circle is pushed back too far, there is a chance that it will disappear. After three circles are gone, the entire wall disintegrates.

Currently there’s no way to regenerate the wall other than dying. However, once I implement the bomb/super attack (the next item on my agenda), the player will have a way to regenerate the wall.

Also, have an advancing wall of sickeningly cute.

Big milestone here. The other 2 player-weapons are finally done! Next update: THE WALL.

I’ve released a version with all 3 weapons:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/WallGirlAlpha2.zip

As always, I will be very grateful – not eternally so, I’m afraid, but very grateful nonetheless – to anyone who feels like testing it.

As with the previous version, controls are Up, Down, Left, Right (arrows) to move. Z launches firebolts (spread), X fires the laser, and Z+X launches magic missiles.

When the program starts you need to press any key to start the game. Esc exits.

You have 4 lives, and when all are gone, the game doesn’t return to the title screen (yet) – you have to exit and start again.

For those of you who are missing a redistributable, you can find it on my compo page:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/ludumdare14

And now I must sleep. Good night (or whatever the time is where you are).

Hint: The Malice Cannon technique is alive and well, for those of you who know what that is!

Hi all,

I’m running a quick stress test of my game (pre-alpha 1) to make sure it runs on as many machines as possible. (Min spec is a Geforce FX or equivalent – i.e. about 4-5 year old machine.) If you have the time, it would be a great help if you took a break to play it!

Here’s a direct download link to the file:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/WallGirlAlpha1.zip

Since it’s made using XNA, you’ll probably need to download the appropriate files. I’ve placed links to all the needed files on my contest page:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/ludumdare14

If nothing else, you can download the redistributables etc. in the background while working on your entry. (Pretty please?)

Controls are Up, Down, Left, Right (arrows) to move, hold Z to shoot. When the program starts you need to press any key to start the game. Esc exits.

You have 4 lives, and when all are gone, the game doesn’t return to the title screen (yet) – you have to exit and start again. Sorry about that – I’m planning to fix it up before I submit the final version.

Thanks in advance!

In case there’s any doubt, the blue bullets are going downwards.

Only one problem: I haven’t implemented collision detection yet, so no shooting enemies and no getting shot. And the framerate is already acting funny for some reason. -_-; I have to force myself to concentrate on making the gameplay work first…

I’ve got the basic thing up and running. There’s an attract mode which pretty much displays nothing (just the scrolling background), and the play mode. Player can move around and is stopped when she hits the edge of the playable area. Animation not in yet.

The funny thing is, the one theme I actually did plan out in my head was “Advancing Wall Of Doom”. So here’s my design (Kabe Shoujo).

It’s a vertical shmup where you’re a magician. You’ve got the usual 3 kinds of shots: red shotgun spread (shot button 1), blue laser (shot button 2) and purple homing bolts (hold both shot buttons down – makes you move slower).

In addition, you can summon a “wall” of 6 or so magic circles (the Advancing Wall Of Doom) which forms a line about 1/3 way up the screen. You start with the wall active.Each circle starts as a random colour – red, blue or purple.

Enemies who touch the wall are destroyed. Every time an enemy touches the wall, it moves back a bit.

Now there are 3 kinds of enemy bullets – you guessed it: red, blue and purple. The wall circles only absorb bullets of the same colour. However, if you fly into the circle and use one of the shots, the circle will change colour after a short duration. The trick is to change the circle colours to best absorb the massive barrage of oncoming fire.

Also, you can dispel the wall by using the Bomb button – doing so makes you briefly invincible and unleashes a super attack. You can re-summon the wall using the same button, but you only get 3 re-summons per life.

I’m planning to have 1 tutorial stage (really a mini-stage) and 1 real stage.

Good luck, y’all.

Well, I managed to do as much as I thought I could. Now with nice particle systems and a couple of other enhancements.

Source code: http://haitaka.googlepages.com/Booon.zip

Time to go find myself some food, and possibly a quick shower before the compo starts.

Not for the game, for your development work!

If you have a Nico Nico Douga account, go search for the tag 作業用BGM.

More music than you can shake a stick at. Also, the downtime when the current mix ends and you’re looking for a new one helps to clear your head.

This is a little library for XNA to help with game making. It wraps stuff like object management, asset loading, shaders, etc. into a compact package. The idea is to make it easy to bang out something double-quick.

The library is based on Mike Schuld’s tutorials (www.thehazymind.com).

It’s not complete, but I don’t have the energy to finish it right now. Will try to add more functionality before the compo begins. No documentation but there’s an example program.

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/Booon.zip

Also, I made a page for my compo entry, whatever it will be.

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/ludumdare14

Blah, must sleep now. It’s 1 am here.

Just wondering:

Do HLSL shaders count as “content” (in which case they must be written during the compo) or “part of a graphics library” (in which case they can be written before the compo)?