Bullet Hell Experiment

[RohoMech]

Hi guys, I love shooters but I'm a bit miffed that they don't enjoy a larger audience. So, I've designed an experiment with some visualization and a move-assist feature which hopefully will make avoiding bullets easier. The goal is to broaden the audience of people who can nagivate the bullet pattern without changing the pattern to a simplier one.

Please, if you have about 5-10 minutes to spare, give this post a read (it'll explain things much better) and give the experiment a shot, EVEN if you usually don't play those kinds of games, I can really use your participation :-)
http://mawsoft.com/blog/?p=160

[stayne]

Post this over at www.shmup-dev.com as well if you want a lot of feedback.

edit: never mind ;)

[RohoMech]

hehe, thanks for the suggestion anyways Stayne :-)

[mrkwang]

Personally I don't like Bullet Hell thing from Japan, because it's too complicated & looks too difficult, even if it's kinda easier to play than outlook.

Maybe it's another kind of Maniac thing, which only Mania players do but newbie might run away.

[RohoMech]

mrkwang, yea, that's not going to be addressed by what I'm doing, because I do want the game to *look* really crazy, but still be "easy".

I guess its an opinion about style, some people like really complicated patterns, and other people want simple colorful avatars that take up 60% of the screen. Thanks for your feedback, btw, did you try the applet?

[mrkwang]

mrkwang, yea, that's not going to be addressed by what I'm doing, because I do want the game to *look* really crazy, but still be "easy".

I guess its an opinion about style, some people like really complicated patterns, and other people want simple colorful avatars that take up 60% of the screen. Thanks for your feedback, btw, did you try the applet?

Sorry, but what is 'applet'?

[spellcaster]

Well, I think you'd get better feedback, if staying right in the middle of the screen (as in: don't move at all) wouldn't allow you to avoid all bullets in most phases.

But yeah, the glow of the death zone helped a lot. I'm normally not very god at these kind of games, but I had no problem navigating around the bullet field in the applet.

I'm still not sure whether or not I'd like a game like this - I'm more the kind player liking to mash the buttons and see stuff explode - bullet dodging is a necessary evil, not something I'd consider a part of the game that increases the fun for me.

[jankoM]

Nice to see something done with processing, but opengl in an applet is a thing that gives problems to most of people. (I couldn't understand why a processing applet would block my computer for 5 min when I use it all the time - and then I saw you inport opengl. I am downloading the exe now. is software rendering too slow?

//edit: I downloaded... I see now that software rendeder is probably too weak for this... (with the blending).. but the input was so lagging to me that it was not playable.. I have similar problem with processing and I have to solve it in short time... If you find any solution please tell me (and I will tell you)..

[RinkuHero]

There are many other uses for such algorithms, such as AI enemies or allies that avoid bullets. What did you do to create such algorithms? It seems like it'd be enormously complex to code AI that could avoid a danmaku pattern for a significant amount of time.

My last game Alphasix tried to do that (it was a 1v1 danmaku game where you and the computer opponent could fire various bullet patterns at each other, and I had to code the enemy AI to avoid your patters) and it was very hard and the result wasn't that great.

You can see it for yourself here (in the clip, it's always the AI that is avoiding the patterns):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVO-FupvVWI -- the patterns start at around 0:45

[RohoMech]

mrkwang, the applet is the java program running in your browser...heh
well, I'm really asking if you got a chance to try the experiment or not (just trying to get a lot of people's data)

spellcaster, Sweet, I'm glad what I'm trying had some helpful effect. Hopefully the analysis will shake out a similar trend. Also, thanks for playing even though its not your kind of game, I'm hoping to address the frustration issue, because some of these bullet hell games have really great content that people can't reach because they're just too hard. Heh, and on your suggestion, I'll see about designing an experiment around better explosions :-)

jankoM, sorry your browser locked for 5 mins, the opengl *was* needed to quickly do the blending effect. In all honestly, if I'd had more time to spend on things, I could have faked it (the bullets are on a black background...) but in software the game is just too slow. Also, glad to see another Processing fan, Impossible introduced me to it, and now I just can't get enough. I'm not sure what your input problem was...I have some stupid timing code in there (deltaTime * Velocity) which I think is causing some issues on faster machines...I'll let you know if I figure out the issue though.

And to anyone I've missed, thanks again for trying things out and please pass the link on to anyone you think might be interested :-)

[RohoMech]

There are many other uses for such algorithms, such as AI enemies or allies that avoid bullets. What did you do to create such algorithms? It seems like it'd be enormously complex to code AI that could avoid a danmaku pattern for a significant amount of time.

My last game Alphasix tried to do that (it was a 1v1 danmaku game where you and the computer opponent could fire various bullet patterns at each other, and I had to code the enemy AI to avoid your patters) and it was very hard and the result wasn't that great.

You can see it for yourself here (in the clip, it's always the AI that is avoiding the patterns):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVO-FupvVWI -- the patterns start at around 0:45

RinkuHero, sorry, I think I've mispoke. I did not create an AI to help the player dodge, its mostly visual cues that I'm hoping will help the player figure out where they need to be. The move-assist is pretty simple: check where player is moving, if that makes them move into a bullet, don't let them move.

Btw, neat video for your game, the patterns look pretty cool.

[Nexic]

Hi guys, I love shooters but I'm a bit miffed that they don't enjoy a larger audience.

Shooters in general have a very big audience, but a ton of competition and lot's of younger gamers with little spare cash. Of course, maniac shooters have a much smaller audience since hardly anyone has the time to learn all the bullet patterns.

I couldn't get your game to work under Windows XP, click the exe and nothing happens.

[RinkuHero]

I don't know that many young people that play shooters (2D overhead style I mean), I think it's mainly restricted to retro-gamer types that remember the classics. Kids today don't play 2D shooters, they play 3D FPS games and such.

[RohoMech]

Shooters in general have a very big audience, but a ton of competition and lot's of younger gamers with little spare cash. Of course, maniac shooters have a much smaller audience since hardly anyone has the time to learn all the bullet patterns.

I couldn't get your game to work under Windows XP, click the exe and nothing happens.

Nexic, thanks for trying it, I'm not sure what the issue could be, as I'm deving on a Windows XP machine...I bet it has to do with the Java Virtual machine...grrr...this Java dev experiance has been pretty awful...
though, one thing, the .exe will try to connect to the database to get a session id (so I can start people at different phases) and it also will post your results to the database, meaning it might need some security permissions...but whatever, thanks again.

Also, yes, I meant Maniac shooters, asteriod / space invader clones are as plentiful as tetris clones.