22: DDR as a top down shooter

[SkinkLizzard]

the aim of the game is to accumulate score(health) by successfully eliminating pesky moves,
to do this you shoot the approaching evil move with a handy direction ball.
If the direction of the ball matches the direction of the enemy it hits you gain score based on how quickly you eliminated it.
If on the other hand the directions don't match well you lose score equivalent to being suicide bombed by that enemy plus a little extra for how long it was around before your blunder.

for now there is no time limit on the enemies and they will run around after you until dispatched to the underworld.

Controls:

W - move up
S - move down
A - move left
D - move right

mouse to aim
Left click - shoot direction ball
right click - change gun pattern (this may become a pick up in later versions, I'm not sure yet)


Future developments:

drops - enemies will drop powerups or boobytraps, such as the power to melee your enemies for a short time or double enemy spawns per spawn.
super mode - added benefits whilst health is above 100, the health bar will go all sparkly and stuff.
area effect weapons like grenades for busting combo spawns.

perhaps even some decent music and graphics who knows :)

Older versions

DDRshooter version 1 (2.11mb zip)

DDR shooter version 2-1 (2.1 MB zip)

DDR shooter version 4-1 (2.7 MB zip)

Latest:

DDR shooter Final version [5-1] (7.4 MB rar)
sorry about the large file size

[Fengol]

Awesome idea, but I think either the arrows must move in a straight like rather than towards the player or rather than aiming at the arrow you want to shoot, pressing spacebar at the right time releases a shot in the right direction.

I would lean towards the former and have the arrows move in a straight line that the player must dodge if he's not going to shoot it immediately. Then you can add other enemies like a left/right arrow that moves slowly towards the player but can be successfully hit with either the left or right; and a up/down/left/right that moves quickly towards the player but can be hit with any direction. Finally have a wandering, slow moving arrow that needs to be hit 3 times that changes the direction the arrow is pointing after each hit.

[SkinkLizzard]

heh nice I like, I'll see about doing it that way, I wanted to change the spawning anyway
so that you have some warning that an arrow is going to spawn and where.

[SkinkLizzard]

update.
I haven't changed the way it moves yet because I feel it may take away from
the feel I wanted the game to have, which was something like Crimsonland x DDR in terms of
base mechanics.

So I've tried to make the current system more user friendly

new additions/changes

- HUD element to display gun sequence
- cursor shows current shot type
- increased room size to make moving around easier
- incoming spawn/spawn location indicators

- Lowered score damage and gain for killed arrows
- fixed time based score on arrows where leaving them created perfects
after 16 beats

new link in first post

[SkinkLizzard]

Sorry for bumping my own thread again but a new update

the game has changed somewhat significantly.
feedback I had was that the player was at the mercy of the game too much,
so the marker direction change has been changed to manual.
Right clicking now changes the marker direction.
E will now change the marker change sequence.

there are also now three game modes

Free Play:
the player plays until they've had enough and press escape which will take them to the end game stats screen.

Target Mode:
the player needs to kill a set percentage of the enemies in the given time
this percentage is currently fixed at 70 %

Timed Mode:
the player needs to amass a certain amount of score in the given time to succeed
this amount is currently fixed at 150

in both timed and target mode the game ends when the time reaches 0 (escape will return to main menu) at this point a button will appear to take the player to the end game stats screen.

new link in first post

[Nandrew]

Nice. I feel, however, that the game would be greatly enhanced if you could somehow match everything to a "beat" - so a regular sequence of sound plays to create a tune, and the generation of enemies matches this somehow. Basically so that players can get into a "groove" of sorts. Would that be possible for an upcoming version?

[SkinkLizzard]

yes it would, the only thing keeping it back at the moment is my lack of musical skills.
everything already mostly runs based on an internal beat I now just need to sequence a musical beat
to match it (and fix the spawning which is still randomized to create a spawner 50% of the time on every 4th beat)
thanks for the feedback :)

[SkinkLizzard]

well there's a lot more I would like to have done to make this complete
but for now its finished, Final version in first post.

it may contain a few bugs I'm not 100% sure
I know free play is almost definitely not bugged the others have had less testing
but should technically work seeing as they run mostly the same as free play.

In terms of balance its not very balanced at all with timed mode likely to be very easy at higher difficulties.

stupid .wav files ramp up my file size so sorry about that.