I've released a small very early development version of Totally Shmup on itch.io

https://eldthezombie.itch.io/totally-shmup

The idea behind Totally Shmup is to create a Shmup where you travel from planet to planet saving the inhabitants. The game will switch between vertical (space travel), multi-directional (above planet) and horizontal (flying across the planet). The aim is to make each playthrough different by having enemies appear in randomly chosen waves.

Currently I'm working on finishing the Vertical stages

All feedback / suggestions / constructive criticism welcome please :-)

18 days later

Version 0.1.2 Update

3 Bosses added Tutorial now separate Colour changes Bug Fix - Certain text scaled incorrectly (changing window to 4x fixed it)

I don't know if it's my system but the audio doesn't work, if isn't implemented you should, help a lot with the user feedback, and also adding some explosions and effects.

There’s no audio yet - coming soon. I probably should have put some simple effects in for now, but just wanted to get feedback on the gameplay before I think about sound :-) I’m starting learning about animations and particles today. Once I’ve got 0.1.3 released I’ll look into sound.

12 days later

Version 0.1.3 Update

Sound finally added! Animations too - particle explosions. Coming Soon: Balancing, Checkpoints, Scoring and Scrolling Backgrounds.

22 days later

Version 0.1.4 Update

Code hopefully more efficient and changed scene loading in preparation for adding horizontal levels in 0.1.6 Groups are now split into 60s chunks so should be more random and have less gaps. XP and Boss tweaks Fade in and out of background animations

11 days later

I have a few problems with the controls: I'd like to remap my buttons I have an idea for a controls style that would be much better for me: Instead of having Two Buttons for Shooting, I'd like to have a button for switching fire type and a button for shooting There should also be a button for toggling auto-fire I can move diagonally, but not Left-Up

What I like about the game: Steady difficulty increase Shooting Demons in Hell with a Spaceship * Smiple but effective visuals

Possible Improvements unrelated to the controls (Should be lower-priority than fixing the problems I have with the controls, from Paragraph 1): Game could be longer By Default, the Game shouldn't have Black Bars in Windowed Mode The mouse shouldn't be trapped in the Window unless i'm actually playing the game. This way, I could resize the window in the Main Menu and Pause Menu. Add Volume Controls (Player Shots, Other Sounds, Music) Making the Player faster when ze doesn't shoot would make the game more interesting, as the player then needs to consider 3 fire modes instead of just 2, with the 3rd fire mode being ,,Not Shooting". Accessibility Options for Visuals: Fixed High-Contrast Color Palette, Background Visibility from 0 to 10

Big thanks for the feedback :-) I’m just working on this on weekends so I’ve got to heavily prioritise but more content will finally be coming soon (0.1.6-0.1.8 is all about content with new horizontal and vertical stages)

So you can’t move left-up? So left then up, rather than diagonally? But just left or up is fine? Bit puzzled as I haven’t changed any movement code lately and it hasn’t been reported before but will look into it this weekend.

I’ll add Remapping in 0.1.6 when I add persistence. Just need to do a quick 0.1.5 update with scrolling backgrounds first.

With the black bars I’m not a big fan of stretching a 4:3 to 16:9 myself but would like to add the option to. I hoped to have a look at window scaling again down the line and can try some options for scaling the window ie 4x,6x etc and keeping the ratio intact.

I’ll change it so the mouse isn’t confined when in menus - also hopefully 0.1.6.

I’ve made a note of everything on my Trello board so if it’s not in 0.1.6 then I will look into it for the feature requests for 0.1.9 :-) As you mentioned, I really need to focus on more content first then hopefully if there’s a quite period in my regular job I can book some time off to work through the ever growing 0.1.9 list :-)

Thanks again

@EldTheZombie said: With the black bars I’m not a big fan of stretching a 4:3 to 16:9 myself but would like to add the option to. I hoped to have a look at window scaling again down the line and can try some options for scaling the window ie 4x,6x etc and keeping the ratio intact.

It seems you misinterpreted what I said about black bars. I also don't like stretching the image. What I meant is, that the Window should only gain black bars after it's been resized. It should not start out with black bars.

If you download my current Godot Project ,,Flinkimaus" (a completely different kind of game, by the way) on GitHub, and then start the game in the Godot Engine (because the game is not yet ready to be exported after every update), the Window doesn't start with Black Bars. The Window only gets Black Bars after the player chooses to resize it.

Ah yes I did misunderstand, will take a look at your project too this weekend.

I thought when I run my game the window is a set size (4x base 320x240 resolution if I remember correctly) I don’t see any black bars unless I resize it. So is your window maximised when it’s first run?

I haven’t done much with window scaling yet, so much to learn and do :-)

@EldTheZombie said: So is your window maximised when it’s first run?

No, my Window does not start out maximized. It takes up the available screen height, but not the entire screen width.

So, I can't really understand why it starts with Pillarboxing. My project doesn't start with any black bars.

@EldTheZombie said: Strange. What resolution are you running?

I've been using 1600 × 900 pixels lately.

If this pillarboxing doesn't happen to you, assuming you're using 1920 × 1080 pixels, maybe it has something to do with the default game resolution being higher than 840 pixels (i've approximately subtracted the Taskbar and Titlebar Heights from 900 to get this number), and then my OS having to shrink the height (but not the width) of the window, so that it fits.

Thanks! If this is true, now I understand why the game starts Pillarboxed in Windowed Mode for me.

That explains it. I’ll add some resolution options in the next update to fix it.

I'd recommend 720p as the default resolution if your game starts out in windowed mode.

If I remember right I tried scaling 4:3 320 x 240 3x to 960x720 but the text didn’t look great. Seems only multiples of 2 scaled well. Guess I could look into having the game window inside the main window, have an image / black bar either side option. Or just the option of window with no border. Will have a look into it.

Yeah, power of two scaling is ideal for pixel art games. Perhaps 480p as the default then? it would be 2x 240p.

Makes sense, I’ll change to 480p This weekend with an option for 720p also.

Ideally if all gpus supported it for all api's then integer scaling would make odd scalars viable. But outside that scaling by (multiples of) 2 is probably best as mentioned before.

22 days later

Version 0.1.5 Update

Scrolling Backgrounds Checkpoints Particles load more efficiently Small increase in difficulty Resolution Changes + Resize window in main menu