Notester82

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

Puzzle, Rhythm, Roguelike, SHMUP, and Indie game nerd - Electronic music enthusiast - Hobbyist gamedev - Occasional artist - Abstract and Vectorheart art lover - (Current pfp by CivilDog)


Notester82
@Notester82

Meeeeeep, I caught wind of a game jam being hosted by Team Overloaded and M.Knight about making a caravan shmup1 (type of shoot-em-up where runs are usually short and your goal is to score as much points as you can within that short time period), Gunner Parade '23! I'm not the biggest shmup connoisseur, but I've still tried out a heckton of them (Eschatos, Platypus, Monolith, Espgaluda II, Jamestown+, Blue Revolver, Ikaruga, Graceful Explosion Machine, Everyday Shooter, Zenzizenzic, Trigonarium, Dead End City, Super Galaxy Squadron EX Turbo, okay sorry I think I've made my point), soooo...why not try making one for the first time?

A bit nervous about some of the nuances I might encounter, but I'll see what I can do!


  1. Okay actually, you can make any kind of caravan game, it doesn't have to be a shmup! However...shmups are pretty darn cool and I want to challenge myself! Will this backfire as I don't immediately have a non-shmup backup if shmup stuff gets too complicated? Only time will tellllll



Notester82
@Notester82

Alrightyyy, what does one do when they're wondering how the heck they'll tackle a shmup game jam? Well they watch Bog Hog's "SHMUP WORKSHOP" series (thus far) 2 videos a day while taking notes on everything! I-I've actually been meaning to give those videos a peek for a while now and now's a good excuse for such. I imagine that they're not the be all end all for shmup gamedev...but at the same time, they might as well be because holy heck, it's a hecking good and detailed series for explaining shmup game design!

Cool, I've got knowledge, and a new lamborghini but also KNOWLEDGE, but I also need an idea...preferably more than one so I can have backup options...hmmmmm. See, it was kinda funny watching episode 6 of SHMUP WORKSHOP ("Scoring Systems"), as I learned about/got reminded of several different archetypes of scoring, which then had me puzzled on what systems to try and implement. Grabbing pickups, bullet cancelling, enemy chaining, grazing, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ;u; Maybe I'll keep a balance of things that would be easier to implement and things I want to reach out of my comfort zone for, but so far I've got an ideaaaa

A picture of a page from a grid notebook that contains a sketch for a caravan shmup. The top of the page reads "Quad" in square geometric writing, the middle of the page shows the player (consisting of 3 hollow squares spinning around a small filled square) shooting towards a group of 3 rectangles and through an array of small square tiles with a combination of a straight and X-shaped shot pattern while a big square is lurking on the top-left corner, and the bottom of the page contains textual notes on what the game may feature.

Yep, quadrilateral caravan shmup. Meep! Felt inspired by Super Star Soldier (to the point where I'm using the shot type in that game...Have I ever played it? Not yet, have only seen gameplay so far (sorry). Does it seem cool and fitting? Yesh!) and will aim to make something similar to that whilst hopefully doing (my own) interesting thiiings. I don't have any other sketches/planning other than the above image, but I imagine that I'll draw out enemy waves or something later. For now though, this felt like enough planning to just start (because I was eager to do so)... But first, I looked at a GameMaker project about hitboxes and hurtboxes because I had the foresight to realize that the singular collision boxes that are built into GameMaker objects won't be enough for having separate hitboxes and hurtboxes for enemies (but also my enemies are just simple shapes? Not complex machines or creatures or anything?? But I guess it's still good to configure custom hitboxes and hurtboxes either for leniency or something???). Then I started development!

A gif of the player from the previous sketch in motion, moving around in a dark gray background and shooting squares in the same straight and X-shaped shot pattern from the previous sketch.

Here's what I have so far, a player made up of a small square (their hurtbox) and 3 rotating hollow squares. They can move around and shoot squares! And yes, I normalized the diagonal movement (making it so you don't move faster diagonally than cardinally, most shmups peeps like when movement's like this since it's more consistent, which is critical for dodging things sometimes)! This seems alright, but as I shared this gif with someone, I realized that perhaps the player's weapon looked a little puny.

A similar gif to the one above, except the bullets are bigger!

Now that's more like it! I've only been focusing on movement and shooting so far so I've yet to determine stuff like playfield boundaries and enemy sizes. I felt worried about the player bullets being too big or something, but eventually I just upped their size and made the bullets shoot faster. Balancing can come later but this certainly looks more fun! Another juicy thing I wanna do is making the square rings spin faster while firing.

Anywaaaay, simple (but still kinda involved) day 1! I suppose I'll think of how to tackle enemies next, and I still feel like doing custom hitboxes and hurtboxes instead of the singular collider GameMaker has for enemies. Also a little more planning/scheduling, maybe? I'll seeeeeeee...


Notester82
@Notester82

Didn't end up doing much for day 2, but creating ground targets felt nice!

A gif of the player shooting at small, orange, square tiles that explode when hit with a bullet and turn into a lighter orange color. The player can move on top of the tiles as if they're on the ground, and all the tiles are arranged in a hollow square shape.

I especially like how the explosions came out, simple but cool!

I suppose next I should either just dive into creating enemies that can shoot bullets or think more about the systems/things I want to put into Quad, hmmm... Also adding outlines for the player would be good now that I think about it, meep!


Notester82
@Notester82

Eheheh, didn't get around to doing much today. -u- Had a dermatology appointment (I'm okay, the bump on my chest is a harmless keloid), got back into Knotwords (I will get the 126-day streak on Classic mode back), and competed in a Magical Drop 3 random character tournament (shoutouts to Puzzle Wednesday) for the most part! I did make an outline for the player with a simple shader though!

As I write, I have Aseprite open for mockups on enemies (yes they're just simple quadrilaterals but the size of them thooough) and bullets (same thing as earlier)! Still conflicted between just doing stuff for now vs planning more but working on enemies first sounds good. The momentum will certainly not run dry after 2 daaaays, I hope.


Notester82
@Notester82

Meeeeeep, I made a tiny bit of progress with the actual project and did planning/theory stuffs in the meantime!

A gif of the player, which now has black outlines around them and a white square core (instead of being the same blue as the spinning squares around the player), shooting at orange tiles. The orange tiles emit a white square explosion effect when destroyed and the bullets have a blue splash effect when they come in contact with the tiles (or anything, for that matter).

At first I removed the blue bullet splashes because I felt like they didn't look that great, but maybe that was due to them being small (and even then, I still want player bullet splashes for hitting enemies to show that as a sign of hitting them), so they're back now, but slightly bigger than their original size (as big as the bullet). More importantly though, the player's decorative spinning squares and hurtbox now have a black outline for the sake of better visibility (while on top of ground targets). I think I'll also give all enemies that are in the air outlines tooo, for visual language/clarity purposes! Also, I made the player's hurtbox white because something about it being in the middle of 3 spinning squares that are the same color felt off to me. Speaking of the player's hurtbox, I have a feeling that it should be smaller than it is now. I guess I'll determine whether I should do that or not when I implement enemies and enemy bullet shots (please).

Three sets of enemy bullets, with each set showing a shade of pink, red, and purple, as well as their grayscale counterparts.

Speaking of enemy bullets, I thought about having three different colors of them for the sake of variety and separating groups/patterns by color! Then I began to think about their contrasts and sorta used their grayscale versions as a test for that (not that the game is going to turn the colors grayscale or anything, but meeeeeep; Also this could be mild colorblind friendliness? Don't quote me). I liked the bright colors on the 1st take (leftmost set in above image) but not much contrast while on grayscale. 2nd take (middle set) was better but I still wanted the purple to be brighter, so 3rd take (rightmost set) happened and I'll go with that one. Wondering if I'll even be using 3 colors at once but we'll seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

An array of pink, red, and purple enemy bullets in various shapes (square, diamond, rectangle, and trapezoid). One set of them has black outlines around the bullets, and another set has a black and a white outline around the bullets.

Aaaannd bullet designs so far! More outlines to help them stand out, and I'm pondering about them having both a black and white outline (their hitboxes probably won't include their outlines). I don't thiiiink I need the center of them to be black but I like the look of it. .u. (It does make me worry about not showing enough of the color of the bullet on the rectangle bullets with black + white outlines though, hmmmm...)

Anyway, back to implementing enemies and enemy bullet shots before closing out this post: Making an invisible "emitter" object that can be attached to enemies would be neat, I think! Then things could be simpler from there and I could have multiple emitters on an enemy or something! So far for the player's shooting, I spawn bullets a certain distance away from the player's X and Y position before having them move off in their respective directions (moving a certain amount of pixels on the X and/or Y axis every frame).

A snippet of code showing two arrays for the amount of pixels the player's bullets are offset by when spawned, followed by an image of the player and bullets conveying such

I...don't think I'm going to do the same for the enemies, heheh! Also might just use GameMaker's built-in direction (set a direction for an object to be pointing towards) and speed (have an object move forward or backward at a certain speed) variables for enemy shots instead of trying to calculate angles, whew



Notester82
@Notester82

Meeeeeep, I caught wind of a game jam being hosted by Team Overloaded and M.Knight about making a caravan shmup1 (type of shoot-em-up where runs are usually short and your goal is to score as much points as you can within that short time period), Gunner Parade '23! I'm not the biggest shmup connoisseur, but I've still tried out a heckton of them (Eschatos, Platypus, Monolith, Espgaluda II, Jamestown+, Blue Revolver, Ikaruga, Graceful Explosion Machine, Everyday Shooter, Zenzizenzic, Trigonarium, Dead End City, Super Galaxy Squadron EX Turbo, okay sorry I think I've made my point), soooo...why not try making one for the first time?

A bit nervous about some of the nuances I might encounter, but I'll see what I can do!


  1. Okay actually, you can make any kind of caravan game, it doesn't have to be a shmup! However...shmups are pretty darn cool and I want to challenge myself! Will this backfire as I don't immediately have a non-shmup backup if shmup stuff gets too complicated? Only time will tellllll



Notester82
@Notester82

Alrightyyy, what does one do when they're wondering how the heck they'll tackle a shmup game jam? Well they watch Bog Hog's "SHMUP WORKSHOP" series (thus far) 2 videos a day while taking notes on everything! I-I've actually been meaning to give those videos a peek for a while now and now's a good excuse for such. I imagine that they're not the be all end all for shmup gamedev...but at the same time, they might as well be because holy heck, it's a hecking good and detailed series for explaining shmup game design!

Cool, I've got knowledge, and a new lamborghini but also KNOWLEDGE, but I also need an idea...preferably more than one so I can have backup options...hmmmmm. See, it was kinda funny watching episode 6 of SHMUP WORKSHOP ("Scoring Systems"), as I learned about/got reminded of several different archetypes of scoring, which then had me puzzled on what systems to try and implement. Grabbing pickups, bullet cancelling, enemy chaining, grazing, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ;u; Maybe I'll keep a balance of things that would be easier to implement and things I want to reach out of my comfort zone for, but so far I've got an ideaaaa

A picture of a page from a grid notebook that contains a sketch for a caravan shmup. The top of the page reads "Quad" in square geometric writing, the middle of the page shows the player (consisting of 3 hollow squares spinning around a small filled square) shooting towards a group of 3 rectangles and through an array of small square tiles with a combination of a straight and X-shaped shot pattern while a big square is lurking on the top-left corner, and the bottom of the page contains textual notes on what the game may feature.

Yep, quadrilateral caravan shmup. Meep! Felt inspired by Super Star Soldier (to the point where I'm using the shot type in that game...Have I ever played it? Not yet, have only seen gameplay so far (sorry). Does it seem cool and fitting? Yesh!) and will aim to make something similar to that whilst hopefully doing (my own) interesting thiiings. I don't have any other sketches/planning other than the above image, but I imagine that I'll draw out enemy waves or something later. For now though, this felt like enough planning to just start (because I was eager to do so)... But first, I looked at a GameMaker project about hitboxes and hurtboxes because I had the foresight to realize that the singular collision boxes that are built into GameMaker objects won't be enough for having separate hitboxes and hurtboxes for enemies (but also my enemies are just simple shapes? Not complex machines or creatures or anything?? But I guess it's still good to configure custom hitboxes and hurtboxes either for leniency or something???). Then I started development!

A gif of the player from the previous sketch in motion, moving around in a dark gray background and shooting squares in the same straight and X-shaped shot pattern from the previous sketch.

Here's what I have so far, a player made up of a small square (their hurtbox) and 3 rotating hollow squares. They can move around and shoot squares! And yes, I normalized the diagonal movement (making it so you don't move faster diagonally than cardinally, most shmups peeps like when movement's like this since it's more consistent, which is critical for dodging things sometimes)! This seems alright, but as I shared this gif with someone, I realized that perhaps the player's weapon looked a little puny.

A similar gif to the one above, except the bullets are bigger!

Now that's more like it! I've only been focusing on movement and shooting so far so I've yet to determine stuff like playfield boundaries and enemy sizes. I felt worried about the player bullets being too big or something, but eventually I just upped their size and made the bullets shoot faster. Balancing can come later but this certainly looks more fun! Another juicy thing I wanna do is making the square rings spin faster while firing.

Anywaaaay, simple (but still kinda involved) day 1! I suppose I'll think of how to tackle enemies next, and I still feel like doing custom hitboxes and hurtboxes instead of the singular collider GameMaker has for enemies. Also a little more planning/scheduling, maybe? I'll seeeeeeee...


Notester82
@Notester82

Didn't end up doing much for day 2, but creating ground targets felt nice!

A gif of the player shooting at small, orange, square tiles that explode when hit with a bullet and turn into a lighter orange color. The player can move on top of the tiles as if they're on the ground, and all the tiles are arranged in a hollow square shape.

I especially like how the explosions came out, simple but cool!

I suppose next I should either just dive into creating enemies that can shoot bullets or think more about the systems/things I want to put into Quad, hmmm... Also adding outlines for the player would be good now that I think about it, meep!


Notester82
@Notester82

Eheheh, didn't get around to doing much today. -u- Had a dermatology appointment (I'm okay, the bump on my chest is a harmless keloid), got back into Knotwords (I will get the 126-day streak on Classic mode back), and competed in a Magical Drop 3 random character tournament (shoutouts to Puzzle Wednesday) for the most part! I did make an outline for the player with a simple shader though!

As I write, I have Aseprite open for mockups on enemies (yes they're just simple quadrilaterals but the size of them thooough) and bullets (same thing as earlier)! Still conflicted between just doing stuff for now vs planning more but working on enemies first sounds good. The momentum will certainly not run dry after 2 daaaays, I hope.