I just received my Ludum Dare Christmas gift ! The sender is Polm23 who doesn’t know what to send me so He looked at my LD21 submission which is Pastagus Fantasy. A crazy shoot’em up that is a tribute to Parodius and other amazing shmups. So He decided to offer me Gokujo Parodius on Super Famicom ! He also adds a weekly manga pre-publication magazine and some flyers of the mythic retro game shop the well named Super Potato.

His gift is just AWESOME ! Obviously like a lot of people here I’m a retro gamer and so a fan of Parodius games and I love receiving Japanese stuffs ! Fortunately I didn’t have this one and can’t wait any more to play it !

So once again a big thanks to Polm23 ! You are the best ! And here is a photo of what was inside the package.

Merry Christmas Everyone !

Check it out here! (Plays in browser, opens in new tab/window)

Here’s a screenie:

Now you can shoot!

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.

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

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!

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…

Downloads (both have windows exe + source code and Linux makefile):

• Compo version
• Post-compo: Smaller zip, sound latency fix (no code or data changes) (new)

Uses SDL, SDL_mixer and SDL_image. I used kate for code/text, gimp for graphics, sfxr for sound effects (thanks DrPetter!), and pxtone to make music.

If the Linux version crashes when you run it on 32-bit x86, use this SDL library (contains a fix for a bug in SDL_SoftStretch)

Edit: Figured out the Windows sound latency issue! Seems the SDL.dll I used was buggy. Replacing it with one from libsdl.org fixes things.

Theme Swarm. I did a shoot em up, sidescrolling thing. Play the game online

Ingame screenshot