Post by inopagames in AlienHypnoShooter comments

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Yeah changed the icon. It’s a bit of a spoiler yes, but wanted to show what the game is about. Can’t show much in the screenshots since it’s a submission to a non nsfw exclusive jam, and I think everything shows up in the jam screenshot tab.

Yeah the idea is for it to be arcadey and replayable, but that requires some immaculate design if it’s just one level. I’ve gotten bored of some of the shmups I’ve now tried to get better at, and they have been pretty highly rated. I’m not that fond of the memorization aspect of these games. So I’m opting for a randomized level to keep it fresh. You would have to beat the randomized level multiple times to see all the transformations. Or halfway the longer level, which is always the same. Was thinking the boss would be the same every time, as you wouldn’t battle it quite as often as the level itself.

But tbh I’m a bit worried about the resource balance, it’s gonna be fairly quick game with the amount of resources you aquire, since the transformed pilots keep producing and you keep getting more of them. I could make them expire but that doesn’t fit the current lore and is a bit grim. The current ship doesn’t have the bomb restriction though so it’s a mix between the two ships, hopefully the restrictions change things. The only ship that can really cash out the resources, doesn’t capture and doesn’t autobomb. But I need to make their bomb way different, spamming screenclear for 5 minutes isn’t that fun, even as a powertip I planned it to be.

Thanks for the feedback! Very good points. I’m hoping the randomized aspect would be the thing keeping the grind fresh, and it’s not gonna be a long grind with the resource gain being so explosive. Would love to hear what you think if you try the current version!

Rexizor172 days ago

Ah, gotcha. One thing I noted, was that I got worried I might miss a stage in the transformation of the captured boss by spending too much time in one life. I still think a gallery of some sort would be a good feature. Perhaps in the form of a "vitals log" or something like that.

I like the idea of a randomized level, although I'm not too familiar with shmups, so I can't say whether that would actually fix the "memorization" issue you're talking about. In the game's current state, I don't see any problems with being able to memorize where the ships spawn. In fact, I feel like it works to make you feel like you're getting better at the game as you continue to play it, especially since there's no real "upgrades" to the game, just having more nurseries to give you more get-out-of-jail-free cards, which doesn't really make you feel more "skilled".

In terms of resource management, I feel like, instead of making the nursery-assigned pilots produce a consumable resource, it would be better if hitting certain milestones of pilots upgraded the amount of bombs you always carry when going into a level. That would make it feel more like an actual upgrade, and would make it so you wouldn't run into situations where you just only get one Core to collect even after getting 4 each time previously, which feels pretty annoying. Making them a resource feels to me like an unnecessary level of complexity, and having them be a upgrade can still carry the thematic flavor of "they're producing what you make the bombs out of". As it currently stands, I wouldn't say that the game is "quick" because of the bombs. If it went on longer, it would probably be too repetitive, seeing as there's only 2 enemy types and the boss. So, no need to make them decay or anything like that, even if you keep them how they currently are. Although, I'm not sure what you mean about there being multiple ships? If you can swap ships, I don't know how to do that.

To go along with that, I think it would be good to let you choose where you put your captured pilots. It would make you feel like you're actually strategizing, and honestly, I don't see a reason why you wouldn't be able to do that. Of course, this would matter a lot more if the other captured pilot positions were implemented. You could also carry that "putting pilots into a place is your currency for upgrades" mechanic onto all the other positions, or make the Juice the currency for upgrades (like, firing speed or something), and the spare pilots are used for extra lives.

Also, a final minor thing: I've ran into this issue a couple times where I'm trying to hypnotize a piloted ship, but the bullets from all the drones hit me, I bomb, and the ship I'm trying to hypnotize gets destroyed too. I think it'd be good if the bomb, instead of destroying the piloted ships, would just stun them for a bit while still destroying their shields. Or maybe specifically don't blow up the one you're hypnotizing? That seems like it'd be a bit hard to code, though.

inopagames172 days ago

Yeah thought of missing a stage too, atm it should work so that you only ever go to next form, even if you beat the whole level. Kinda breaks the logic of the transformation taking time, but can’t have you missing a form if you play well. Can’t remember if the overflow time counts towards the next step currently, but it really should.

Yeah I think people like the memorization and gradually improving, it’s a big part of shmups I think. But personally I’ve gotten a bit burnt out from grinding a game and playing the first levels over and over again. The randomized level would also have designed spawns, but the order and which ones appear would be mixed. So you kinda get memorization there too, if you start to recognize the first part of a spawn. The idea is that the ufo would only get 3 bombs max, just left it like this to have something to use the resources for, and so you can brute force the game with grinding if you just wanna see the lewds but don’t care for the gameplay.

Making them a permanent upgrade sounds good and would fix the problem I’m afraid of. Would be a pretty elegant solution tbh. But I’d really like to keep them as a consumable, even if it is problematic and/or annoying. The nursery pilots work currently so that they have to transform and then produce a core, and take one extra cycle to form a new core. The juice is produced constantly. I’m thinking I’ll show not only the total of personnel, but at which point they are in the cycle. Doesn’t remove the fact that you sometimes get lots of cores and next time none, but it would explain why it happens.

Ah sorry about the ships, worded it a bit wrong there I think. There’s currently only the one ship. In the final version I’m planning to have the current ufo ship with the max bomb limit. And another ship/armada piloted by the transformed pilots which can be loaded with bunch of bombs. Thinking the second ship would use the juice as a fuel, but it’s a bit boring to have multiple resources doing the same thing, mainly it’s for the flavor. Might need to rethink the resources a bit though, I’d love the juice to have some other use too. Maybe I will make the upgrade system: unlockable sidegrades with different movement speeds and different weapon spreads.

Yeah the randomized assignments is deliberate. It’s supposed to hammer in that the captured pilots make their own choice on how they’d like to contribute. But yeah it would make it more interesting gameplaywise, just losing a bit of the flavor there. Hmm maybe the choice where the boss pilot goes would affect all the assignments, they’d still be randomized a bit, but the largest group would always follow the boss. I’ll lore drop this here, don’t know how or where I’ll explain it in-game, possibly in a sequel. But the pilots are clones and the hypno actually breaks their programming/connection to a mother brain, hence they want to help since you gave them free will.

Hmm make the bomb like an EMP? Would destroy drones and shields but leave the ships with pilots alive. Sounds pretty good, a great QOL-change and it kinda fits the idea that the ufo is more technologically advanced. Shouldn’t be hard to implement at all I think.

Thanks so much for such a comprehensive feedback, got lots to think about.

Rexizor171 days ago

Oh, yeah, EMP makes a lot of sense, flavor-wise. Brilliant idea! Different ships is also a cool idea, presumably with different attack patterns. Wouldn't really work if there's just one variant ship, but having the juice unlock those could work, if you don't want to do upgrades. Wouldn't exactly work flavor-wise, though. I guess... if the juice is used to fuel some sort of alien generator or whatnot, the energy from that could be used to construct the ship?

The captured pilots having a hidden transformation time alongside their resource production times definitely should be un-hidden in some way. You probably don't need to make a timer shown for each individual pilot, that feels a bit overcomplicated and would probably clutter the screen, but having two counters for "transformed" and "untransformed" pilots would work, IMO.

The thing about the pilots having their own choices is interesting, although I feel like it could diminish from the actual gameplay, especially if the reason is only explained later in game or something like that. Since I imagine 99% of people playing this assume you're hypnotizing and enslaving the pilots, like you'd expect from the hypno genre (and the term "captured pilots"). Maybe during the end-of-round results screen, you could mark one job as "recommended", so you'd get more captured pilots choosing that role? Or, if you get some aspect of control over it. Like, if there were 3 main "rooms" that the captured pilots choose randomly between, but there were sub-jobs within those "rooms" that you could choose. Like, there could be a "production room" with milk and cores, and a "support" room, where you could put people to... IDK, speed up transformation time or something? That's probably way too complicated, though.

inopagames170 days ago (2 edits)

Hmm yeah good point that the juice doesn’t really work as an unlock resource. Maybe you craft a new kind of core combining juice and a core, and that would define the ship. Shmups tend to have 3 or so ships: slow, medium and fast with different weapon patterns. The complexity starts to pile up though, would probably be the last thing I’d add in like a 1.1 version.

Yeah the timer implementation is super lazy and the numbers would be easy to show. Just felt that it would need some more info than just the numbers to explain the system, so left them out. Also this way hid my laziness haha. Each captured doesn’t have their own timer, they just all move to a next phase when the accumulated mission time hits the required time and resets. Hmm yeah maybe just “transformed” and “untransformed”, but that wouldn’t show the core cycle. Maybe I’ll add that info, or ditch the cycle completely, which would fix a lot of problems. But I like the flavor that incubating a core takes some time.

Yeah I wanted the reveal to be kind of a twist. But twists are a hard to get right. It waters down the hypno part a lot. And it might be too misleading if I use the word captured everywhere. Maybe I’ll change the terminology so it’s not that much of a twist, or ditch the idea completely. I just like the clone thing and have have a game idea for a sequel, not a shmup though, this will probably be my only one haha. But that’s way in the future, so I’m probably gonna leave this pretty open ended. Very good insight, didn’t think completely trough how people would experience it.

Yeah I could reuse the current boss assignment screen for that too, just change the text to recommended and hide the boss sprite. And if you capture a boss others would follow like with the recommended screen. I do like the idea of a support room, they would “assist” the personnel in production, speeding the transformation and maybe increasing the amounts. They wouldn’t transform themselves any further but I could give them some cute outfit hehe. But yeah some more complexity and I need to refactor the current menus somewhat. Great idea though, will definitely think about it.

Rexizor170 days ago

I'd definitely love to see a cute outfit, especially if, like the transformation, it got progressively more... something (more revealing?) the longer the boss worked there.

I do think the juice needs a bit more something to it. Oh, here's an interesting idea: each "room" has your base unassigned person who doesn't do anything, and the various jobs take juice to assign people to, or maybe they take juice to maintain. Flavor being that the juice is a catalyst for further, more specialized transformations, while being a "milker" is the default transformation, and probably wouldn't take any juice to assign/maintain. You could even have something like different "tiers" of each transformation, which cost more juice, but in turn produce more cores (or even more juice over time for a large up-front investment for the milker high-tiers). And those could also pair with the transformation stages of the boss character(s), so you'd want to tier her up each time she finishes her transformation.

inopagames170 days ago (1 edit)

Absolutely hehe, the slut division needs a fitting uniform.

AAAAW shiit that’s brilliant! That would absolutely make it more interesting and the flavor is spot on. Definitely going that route. I’m glad now I didn’t polish the resource system further yet ahah.

With this system I definitely need to scrap the random assign, or at least make the recommend system. Maybe the juice would assigned by the player to each sector. All sectors would need a basic amount or they start to perish, but maybe only if you start a mission with dangerous amount of juice. You could top it off with an extra dose which would buff the production/transformation speed. So the next mothership would be:

Pilots - Basically just lives for the second ship, they also don’t transform further, just get a weird armor. Need only a small amount of juice. (A bit on the edge if I scrap the second ship altogether, but it pretty much ties together my plan I had for the longer level and the endings.)

Milking - Produces the juice. They maybe just transform at an even pace or the transform speed could be buffed with juice. If there is nobody to transform, they use only the basic amount of juice.

Nursery - Produces cores. Need a lot of juice and extra juice buffs both transform speed and production speed.

Support - Would be assigned directly to each sector(only milking and nursery). Buffs production speed/yield of the chosen sector. Uses only a bit more juice than pilots.

The tiers sound good too. Then the juice could possibly be just a straight up currency to upgrade people right away, and not a maintenance fee. Which also works mechanically and flavor-wise. Upgrading with juice would also fix the missing a transformation stage and would probably feel better than keeping up with the maintenance costs. Need to think about it some more but maybe leaning towards the maintenance juice atm.

Fuck yeah! Thanks so much. I’d love to credit you in the next version if that’s ok, you helped a lot!

Rexizor170 days ago

Eyyyyy, I knew if I just said random ideas, eventually one of 'em would stick! Glad I could help!

Yeah, the "pilots" sector would basically be another resource like the cores, so having them take very little juice would make sense. Maybe not even based on "# of pilots you own" but "# of pilots you're bringing into a mission", if that makes sense.

So, as I understand it: In the between-mission section, you can go into each sector, and look at the available recruits for that section. There, you can send them to transform into that sector's producer by spending juice up front, and/or a gradual juice drain while they're transforming. You can also do the same for fully-transformed producers to tier them up to the next transformation stage (assuming you're going with that idea). And you assign juice from your overall collected reserves to a sector also in that sector's menu. But, you can also press a button to spend juice to speed up TFs in that section? Or does that happen automatically via drawing juice from that location's juice reserve? Honestly, I think that the transform speed should solely be tied to the support division. It makes them feel less unique if you can do the same via spending juice. Also, that would allow for symmetry between the cores and juice, where support girls could increase TF speed and production in both. With a system as technical as this, having there be as much symmetry between areas as possible will make things easier and smoother to communicate, as well as just reducing confusion.

I'm totally alright with being credited, by the way. Thanks for asking!

inopagames170 days ago

Ahah yeah sorry about that, been a really slow with ideas lately, really appreciate the help.

Yeah this will get pretty complex but I’m getting really excited for it now so I think I can pull it off. So I was thinking that after a mission:

You choose the recommended sector or choose all the assignments. People get added to the untransformed pool of each sector.

You get to the main screen of the mothership. You can choose one of the sectors. In the sector screen you can gather the products and see the specifics on the number of transformed/untransformed.

You’d either get a meter/numbers on how much juice is assigned to the sector and how much would be dangerous to start a mission with. You get to change the assigned juice too. You could top the meter over some level, it would use the extra to boost the transformation/production during the level.

OR you could use juice to transform people to next level directly, maybe by pressing on the number of that transform stage. If you upgrade the stage where the current boss is, the boss would visually transform right there.

Hmm the straight upgrade starts to sound more and more appealing. So maybe the juice would only be used as the fuel for the other ship and to transform people directly. But they would also transform by themselves if on a mission long enough, since you have to get the ball running somehow with the milking. And an assigned support would increase the transform speed and product speed. Sounds way easier to implement and not so convoluted to learn. Just got excited for getting the fact the juice is used as sustenance in gameplay-form. And wanted the supports to only buff produce, as I’m not sure how they’d speed up the transformation lore-wise.

Sorry for not asking earlier about crediting. This amount of support really needs a credit page.

Rexizor170 days ago

No worries about forgetting to ask about crediting, honestly. I just love seeing the game-making process, and I'm glad to help you out with this.

Yeah, I think that a flat "X juice per person transformed or tiered up" would be good, rather than it draining off a sector-based juice reserve. However, making the incubators produce cores by slowly consuming juice would also be good. Perhaps there could be a stat somewhere in each sector like "X juice consumed per minute", and that would drain out of your main juice reserve, or maybe just subtract from your overall juice generation rate via reducing the amount collectible after a mission, since that seems more seamless.

Lore-wise, I was assuming the supports would be monitoring transformation progress and adjusting juice flow to where it's needed for the transformation to progress, or helping the transformees relax and focus on the hypnosis, if the transformation process works similarly to how it works in Hypnothicc, or something along those lines to make the transformation progress faster.

If you wanted to keep the "spends juice to TF faster" idea, I think it'd be good to have the sector-based juice meter be for TF only, and you could input juice into it so that TFs in that sector could use it to speed up.

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