FIMO: the Thread

[Shivers]

I've been working on a game called FIMO: the Revolution Begins. It's a Unity game, a top-down space shooter, a bit silly, and the first game I've created all on my own.

I did enter a fairly broken version in the 3DU contest in order to get the 9 month extension on the Unity license, but my interest in creating this game transcends the deadline :).

There is going to be a whole storyline and whatnot, but currently I want to just solidify some real class gameplay.

Download it here (http://www.flanastan.com/FIMO-theGAME.dmg). It's about 12 megs.

Use the arrow keys to move around, space to shoot and shift to use your shield.

I would love some feedback on the game and gameplay. Does it work? Is it fun? How could I improve it? What do you look for in a game like this? Et cetera.

I really want to make a fun game with this!

[Shivers]

I hate to pry, but plenty of people have downloaded this and I haven't gotten any feedback.

My interest right now is making the basic gameplay more fun. How can I make the simple gameplay more enjoyable?

[akb825]

I know how difficult it is to get feedback. I've wanted somebody with a NVidia card (5200 or higher) to test my water demo in this thread (http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12344) for a while, but nobody has bitten.

One thing you can do is to have more interesting patterns for the ships. Also, don't make them fire all the time. Have them fire intermittently so you can find holes to fly through and shoot at them. Also, you may want to make it so firing drains your energy as well as the shields, otherwise you can just hold space and go across the screen. More varied enemies and attacks would also help.

[bronxbomber92]

I can't seem to get to the gameplay... it just sits at the storyline page... :/

[Shivers]

Thank you, akb. I wish I had an NVidia card to repay the favour.

I like the idea of shooting draining the energy. As well, making the enemies fire in uneven spurts seems more fun and probably more believable.

I'm going to hold off on making more enemies until fighting the current ones is really fun, but there will certainly be much more variety in the future.

As for your experience Bronx Bomber, what kind of machine are you running on? What OS? I haven't done too much testing (only on my MacBook Pro (10.4) and the old 800mhz eMac (10.3)), so I'm not surprised that there are bugs.

There isn't a loading screen, so it could be that it gets caught up trying to load the level when you press "begin game" and appears to be frozen.

[igame3d]

Right now timing your ships and fire rate is a must.
Those enemies need to come in fast waves.

A bunch of them flew to the right side of the screen where there was no
way for me to get them without crashing into them, and they kind
of hung out there saying "nan nan nan" to me, in their rude alien way.

The player ship roll is neat, it should happen faster/more frequently, its cool.
It could make for addtional gameplay if the roll can provide a dodge
from an attack.

The enemies should maybe be towing those barrels the player needs, maybe stealing them from some cargo dump and slowly tugging them away, reacting to the player when he gets close and turning from their pirate activities to defend their booty.

Play some shoot'em ups and make notes about what you like about them,
that will guide you to what will make your game fun.

Oh while your enemies have constant fire still, you might want to try this, player deflector shield bounces bullets around, and that is your only means of killing the enemies. Space Armada breakout.


And no response might be a forum bug, I check the site everyday and this is the first I've seen of this thread.

[bronxbomber92]

Thank you, akb. I wish I had an NVidia card to repay the favour.

I like the idea of shooting draining the energy. As well, making the enemies fire in uneven spurts seems more fun and probably more believable.

I'm going to hold off on making more enemies until fighting the current ones is really fun, but there will certainly be much more variety in the future.

As for your experience Bronx Bomber, what kind of machine are you running on? What OS? I haven't done too much testing (only on my MacBook Pro (10.4) and the old 800mhz eMac (10.3)), so I'm not surprised that there are bugs.

There isn't a loading screen, so it could be that it gets caught up trying to load the level when you press "begin game" and appears to be frozen.
MacBook bought this summer...

[akb825]

Stupid question, but did you press the button on the bottom right to start the game?

Edit: at the story page, I mean

[Frank C.]

I'll echo igame3d's comments, but basically:

1). Faster enemies with better firing patterns - e.g. not always straight down and not at regular intervals. Bigger and slower bullets (at least initially) might help too...

2). Get rid of the inertia on the player ship.

3). If you want to make a hardcore shoot'em up get rid of the shields on the player ship as well. "One shot kills" is more intense - extra lives are mandatory in this case however.

Grab some of Kenta Cho's games (PARSEC47 and rRootage in particular) to get a feel for the extreme end of the genre. If you're into MacMAME try to "acquire" some of the games in the 19xx and DonPachi series.

[leRiCl]

great game! it'd be nice with different type of ships and different firing patterns. Like the shiled/hp concept. :)

[Shivers]

Thanks!

I'm (hopefully) going to get a chance to put in some time on it this week so I can get the gameplay a bit more original and interesting. After that I'll try to get some more variety in the enemies.

It seems that most of the 3DU judges noticed only one thing about the game: It's not 3D! Well, that's certainly debatable, but I ranked about how I expected and did qualify as an entry so I will get the extension on the Unity license. Great success!

[AndyKorth]

Neat game! I like the menu system and story page, those are very nicely done. It's a fun start, I do have some suggestions.

Player ship could shoot fewer bullets or shooting could drain energy, as someone mentioned.

Rolling should occur sooner, and should stop when the ship is completely on it's side. This can make for easier dodging too!

There seem to be boxes to pick up.. I'm not sure what they do.

Finally, I have some performance problems on my 1.4 GHz G5. I set the graphics to fast, but ot slowed down quite a bit after a few minutes of play. I didn't see a huge spike in memory usage, but something didn't seem quite right.

Enemy bullets should be less regular, I think. This makes it much easier to sneak in and destroy them. Otherwise, I find myself flying on the edge of their bullets, waiting for them to move towards me and into my fire stream.

[Shivers]

Thanks. I'm hoping to get a new build out soon.

I like your idea about the ship staying on it's side. Perhaps there should be a special 'dodge' button?

Player bullets are definitely going to take energy. As well, enemy bullets will be shot in spurts rather than a constant stream.

As for performance, that's something I plan to spend some time on soon. For myself, I've noticed most performance problems in the stratosphere level. Is that true for you?

[AndyKorth]

Sounds good Shivers!

It was on the space level. After about 8 minutes of gameplay, it got really slow, fairly suddenly. The funny thing is, there are no enemies on my screen, but I can hear a lot of them shooting. Did they fly past me? Maybe they are running around way past the bottom of the screen. I did miss a fair number of them.

[AndyKorth]

Yep, that could be it. When I die, it goes to the next level and the game speed is back to normal.

Also, there's some strage behavior with the high scores. I seem to have set every single high score except the last one.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

[leRiCl]

I think it was one of the ships lingering at the side, creating more and more bullet particles. You can't kill it, because you can't get to where he is (you can see 10 pixels of him on the left of the screen).

Also, i got to 14095 points by shielding myself and crashing into enemy ships... you might want to do something about that.