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Kitsu · (06-03-2011)

Blast space rocks and giant tentacled monsters in a crazy frenzy to prove the effectiveness of the new Neo Magiko prototype!

Download link at bottom of post.

Story:
Since time immemorial, Earth has always been protected by a group of powerful young girls known collectively as Magikos. From their first sightings in the late 1990s, millions have repeatedly been amazed as previously bed-ridden maidens defeated performed superhuman feats in order to beat back various invaders, besting both human dictators and horrible aliens. With the Magikos as their spear, humanity lunged forward and began to expand within the solar system and beyond.

However, Magiko powers often proved to be not quite as reliable as they liked, often cutting-out at the wrong times and leaving the girls once again absolutely helpless. And with new threats being discovered in neighboring star systems and the constantly growing danger of new enemies from both within and without man's domain, a more reliable form of defense and offense was needed.

And so was born the NeoMagiko project, an attempt to create a more reliable form of Magiko using robotic parts. For decades, reputable roboticists and scienticians, including the famous Lazerus, have worked together in the confines of an old facility in the rings of Saturn to create the first prototype. Now, that prototype, dubbed Neoxis (from Ancient Greek for "girl" and the word "nexus") has been finished and is ready to undergo field testing.

Gameplay:
Fly around in space, using your weapons to destroy enemies. Sounds simple, right?
However, you can't actually directly control your movement; instead, you must propel yourself using your weapons. After all, every force has an equal and opposite force, including recoil.

[Image: jp5Fe.png]

Images can't show motion too well, but trust me, she's definitely somewhere else after this shot.

On top of that, since this is all a test, the researchers back at the lab are itching to see all their latest weapons being used on the field. Therefore, you'll be forced to change your weapon
every so often. The timer at the top of the screen tells you how long you have until the next switch, as well as what the next weapon will be.

[Image: jqb8K.png]

The base has a shield, but it only lasts a short time after each hit.

The goal is to simply defend the base at the center of the screen for as long as possible. Though you yourself can respawn as many times as necessary as long as that base has health left, you
won't last long without it.

On top of that, if you fulfill certain circumstances, you just might be able to unleash Neoxis's true Magiko powers!

Default Controls:
Aim with the mouse
Fire front cannon with M2 and rear cannon with M1
Hold a mouse button to charge that cannon up, then release to fire a more effective shot, different depending on the weapon you currently have in use.

Controls can be changed from the Options area in the main menu.

Available Weapons:
Plasma Kabang!!: A short-ranged plasma charge boasting huge amounts of damage potential.
Stella Ignis: A machine gun that fires tiny stars in rapid succession.
Drago Flamma: A fireball-launching shotgun that fires many shots in large bursts.
Levi Spark: A laser capable of piercing through vast swaths of targets.

Other unlockable weapons are also available!

More screenshots:

REVI SUPAKU! (Click to View)

Defend the base at all costs! (Click to View)

Download:
http://www.host-a.net/u/Sploder/NEOMAGIKO1_01.exe

Get out there and blow some stuff up!

Credits:
Sploder - Programming, Graphics, & Game Design
Gorsal - Music Composition
The Sounds Resource - Castlevania/Ninja Gaiden sfx rips

Change list (Click to View)

Extra note: I'm probably not entirely done with this yet, but I'll post what I've got for now.

Gorsal also made an awesome support banner thingy. If you want it in your sig (maybe), here ya go:

Code:

[url=http://www.spriters-resource.com/community/showthread.php?tid=17527][img]http://i.imgur.com/e6ySE.gif[/img][/url]

>>Assuming people who want it are too lazy to type out the bbcode themselves

ThePortalGuru · 06-03-2011 11:11 PM

This looks glorious. Giving it a download in a little bit!

**Gorsalami** · 06-04-2011 05:37 AM

even better than the first beta you sent me! I really love this; it was (and still is) such an honor participating in this project with you, Sploder! I look forward to more additions to this game, and will help you with all I can do c:

Kitsu · (02-23-2012)

Someone encountered a 'divide-by-zero' error...

Oopsies!

Anyway, a fix of that has been uploaded.

@Gorsal, haha, thanks! That's some really good encouragement!

Codestar · 06-05-2011 05:34 AM

I just downloaded it and played it. Nice work, love the detail you put into the transitions.

I had a hard time getting used to the controls at first but soon got the hang of it. Fun game dude.

Guy · (06-11-2011)

Ugh, Gorsal you son of a gun, that music is amazing!

This was pretty fun, really hard to control jumping right in, but after a moment i got the hang of it, albeit i did a crap ton of dying, my score after my first playthrough was 58200...i'll do better next time (frikkin Neox and your 70000)

Also what exactly are those triangle things that float around...they look like panties Shy

ah okay, it seems they're "bolts"

LeleleleMAXIMUM · 06-05-2011 12:20 PM

downloaded and got a buttload of errors until i pressed abort

Spoiler (Click to View)

EDIT:
okay made it work now
man, that's hard! does the mousewheel change the weapon?

Lexou Duck · 06-05-2011 09:13 PM

DUDE

This game pretty much rocks all around
Fucking well done, guys.

~~triptych~~ · (06-05-2011)

the video game version of "sit in a computer chair with a fire extinguisher in your hand"

Chris2Balls [:B] · 06-05-2011 11:45 PM

it'll take me a long time to get used to those controls.
i like your spin on asteroids! Smile

Alpha Six · (06-11-2011)

Copy-and-paste from PxC, just in case you didn't see it (probably nobody else did).

Quote:Alright, so I've played this.

It's a fun little game, but the design ends up flawed and overly difficult in the end. I see the idea of only being able to move with your weapons, but the execution here makes it way too difficult to control your character-- leaving you to basically propel yourself in one direction forever and hope you can hit an asteroid.
It's easy to move your character, but it's difficult to actually control them, and, more importantly, stop them from moving. Moving becomes even more difficult because the player flips in a total 180 because of the mouse aiming-- forcing the player to realize that if they try to fire the direction they originally were, they're just going to get flipped over and propel themselves farther.
The game obviously has a learning curve, which I respect-- the best games usually have learning curves. The problem here is that the learning curve is brutal, and it seems like the entire fun factor of the game comes from beating that learning curve, rather than actually learning the game.

The graphics are eye-catching, but there are a lot of areas in the menus and such that give off an amateur/poor look, mostly due to the fact that there are visible scribbles and rough edges in many menu elements-- making the game have a little bit of a lazy-ish look. Transitioning from, say, the main menu, to the options menu, looks really nice though.

The gameplay seriously needs to be fixed, though. At the moment, this game feels like an interesting try, but consistent play just feels frustratingly difficult. You want to make a game that is fun and interesting, but you also want the game to be easy to pick up and play-- otherwise, a lot of people aren't going to play it past the first time.

As a game developer, you want to aim for the largest "community" you can establish with your project; Make the type of game that you want, but if you're going to release it publicly, you also want to make it accessible to as many people as possible.

Kitsu · (06-13-2011)

Also a repost from PxC, so people here can read it if they'd like:

Quote:Heh, yeah, distractions kept me from posting sooner (important distractions, though).

Anyway, from your write-up, I figured two major possibilities:
1. The idea of propulsion with weapons may not be a good fit for a shoot-to-survive game, but rather a game that focuses a little more on movement and strategic weapons-fire, like an exploration game with combat elements (that was actually another idea I came up with some time after I started this one)
2. The difficulty level needs to be shallowed a bit (or a lot) in order to give the player plenty of time to get used to flying and to realize the implications of traveling in this way before really trying to kill him.

I think a lot more of this game could have been ironed out more if I had established a much better testing group, instead of just me and one other friend every now and then. With more testing, I may have realized the basic flaws in the system better.

Finally, as for the graphics, the game was originally being developed for a minigame competition at MFGG, but I was late by a few hours due to me misunderstanding the duedate. After that, I did upgrade a many of the graphics, but started to get really lazy for some of the transition pieces and the menu backgrounds. On top of that was the feeling that I really wasn't happy with the style that I was using, but also feeling like I didn't have the skill level to do either of the other styles I wanted to try.

Anyways, it was a stressful, though somewhat fun, development process, and I've learned a bit from it. I'm not sure if I'll be adding any of my planned extra features (like bosses), but either way, it's back to SoL and my other projects for now, heh.

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