Post by Rexizor in AlienHypnoShooter comments

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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.

inopagames151 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.

Rexizor151 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.

inopagames150 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!

Rexizor150 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!

inopagames150 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.

Rexizor150 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.

inopagames150 days ago

Thanks, I’m glad.

Hmm the “juice per minute” I think I’d put it for all sectors. Kind of a mix of the both systems, but automated and not so tedious. The milking sector would have a meter or numbers which shows the total in and out, and goin on negative would eat the reserves if you have some. And if there is no reserves… Aah it’s getting too complicated again. I think I’ll just stick with the direct upgrade.

If I go with the direct upgrade I wouldn’t do the speed up, so I think the support will have both the TF speed up and produce speed up. The support lore sounds good, was thinking myself that they have a more “hands on” duty with the milking sector at least, but the nursery I didn’t figure how they’d help around, them being like nurses/assistants works. I can imagine a incubator being pampered by a swarm of supports. Kinda want to make the transform make them a lot larger now, just basically scaling the current art up. And in milking they basically just fuck.

Rexizor149 days ago

If there's no reserves, I assume the Incubator sector (or whatever sector is consuming the most juice) would just stall out and stop producing anything, and/or enter a "battery-saver" mode where it, like, consumes half juice in exchange for half core production. I can't imagine it'd be too hard to keep your juice production and consumption balanced, so the negative side would be more of a fail-safe, and wouldn't have to be that smooth, gameplay-wise.

Either that, or it'd stop you from buying any upgrades unless you had enough juice production to sustain them. A warning popup would probably be good either way, assuming you do go with juice-per-minute. Having the total in and out in the milking sector makes a lot of sense, yeah. Although each transformation should probably say how much it increases consumption by.

Yeah, if you didn't have the support team literally milking the milkers, that'd be a massive missed opportunity.

inopagames149 days ago

Yeah that sounds good, it just started to sound pretty hard to code in my head. Need to test if that’s the case when I get to updating.

Yeah hehe. Also thinking that when you assign the supports from the support sector screen, when you assign the last one, the representative disappears and appears standing behind the last selected sectors representative, or in front if I make the TF larger.

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