[AndrewofDoom]

What is SHMUPSpace?

SHMUPSpace is an arcade style mod for FreeSpace Open engine that follows the lines of more traditional shoot em ups (or shmup) of the late 80s and early 90s. Games like R-Type, Gradius, Thunder Force, and Gleylancer were my key inspirations in designing this mod. Then again, I did put a few nods here and there to Spoon's TDS (Please, please play that as well!) mod. TDS was what gave me the initial drive to make this mod in the first place.

That being said, it's time for something different. ALPHA ONE is always claimed to be the godlike being...now he really is!

Is There a Story to This?

No....well kinda. Even if there is a story there, don't expect it to make any bit of sense, even much less sense than Loliquest Dimensional Eclipse. Just don't expect it to follow FreeSpace continuity any one bit if it makes the game non deterministic (shields and flak guns never existed for anyone! Beams are called flux cannons instead are used only for bosses or really, really major enemies. Flux cannons only fire in a fixed direction).

How Does This Work? (AKA How to Play)
The goal of the game is to fight through each of the missions, blowing up as many bad guys as you can (cruiser class ships and below are valid targets to destroy, though larger ships take more effort than smaller ones) where at the end you may or may not face an end boss of that stage. You're given 3 lives at the start of the mission. If you die, you lose a life. When you restart the mission from either death or from the escape menu you are sent to a predetermined checkpoint (you get NO choice whether you go there or not) and lose all your upgrades in the process. If you die on your last life, you start from the beginning of the mission (at least in the first mission which is of course this release. Later releases will send you back to a selection screen after the first mission).

There are 3 types of upgrades, each of which are found inside a TTC 1 container and can be exposed by blow the cargo container up:

Red - Symbolized not only by being the color red but also have the letter "P" on them. These weapons upgrade the laser your ship has. This upgrade does carry between levels.
Blue - Symbolized by a blue spinning ring with the secondary acquired in the middle, it loads your ship with that secondary weapon pictured. This does not carry between levels.
Green - Green spinning right with a green plus sign in the middle, this restores 25% of your ship's health.

The controls of this mod are as follows (if you are using the pilot file supplied):

Arrow Keys - Move
Z - Fire primary.
X - Fire secondary.
C - Change Primary Bank
V - Change Secondary Bank
Shift V - Change Secondary Fire Mode

If you decide to not use the pilot file, this mod only uses these controls in the control menu which you may just want to rebind:

Left Thrust
Right Thrust
Up Thrust
Down Thrust
Fire Primary Weapon
Fire Secondary Weapon
Cycle Primary Weapon
Cycle Secondary Weapon
Cycle Secondary Fire Mode

PITCHURES

Cause everyone loves pictures!




^ That's what it looks like when you play on Insane difficulty. It gets noticeably easier on lower difficulty levels. (Slightly dated image)

Installation Instructions

1. You'll need to use the custom build provided in the download (or build a new one off of trunk) and ALSO RUN THIS MOD IN A 16:9 SCREEN RATIO RESOLUTION. Why do I have to run it in that ratio you may ask. Well, unlike space sims, side scrollers are very dependent on what ratio the screen is as well as the field of view the player is given. This is a major impact on game balance and I'm not going to rebalance the mod for 10 different screen ratios. If you don't know what valid resolutions would be, here's a list of the resolutions supported by this mod:

1280 x 720
1600 x 900
1920 x 1080

Also, don't try to be a wise guy and run something other than those three, because the mod will error you out if you try anything else.

2. If you are going to use the pilot file supplied, the pilot file goes to the Freespace2\data\players\single\inferno\  folder.

3. Extract the mod folder in the usual location and run it like you would any other mod.

DOWNLOAD YES

Go get it boy

Honestly I don't know how well this will fare to the world since my testers all ran out on me saying they're no good at this type of game. This release only contains the first mission as a way to get a feel for the reception of this mod.

[yuezhi]

OMG

what's the extra pilot file for?

[Commander Zane]

For the ship controls.

[Droid803]

its too hard you most make update

[Alan Bolte]

Amusing typo in the very first briefing screen: I think 'stored key parts of the planet' should be 'stormed'.

Couldn't pick up the first health power-up the first time I reached it, but I could the second time.

Controls went a little wonky at times, and collisions could have some odd effects, but overall I'd say it's an amazing accomplishment.

[Dark Hunter]

its too hard you most make update

Shmup newb. 

IMHO:
Difficulty is fine (average shmup, I'd say). If you're going for a Gradius type feel you've gotten it down (LOL at boss).

Aesthetically it looks incredible, utilizing all of the main engine's graphics I see. My only complaint in the graphics area is that weapons fire is not very visible. I know you're just going off of Freespace's default weapons graphics, but in shmups it is very important to be able to clearly see shots, both your own and your enemies'. Minor complaint there. The background nebulae also sometimes obscured things, but that may be my own graphics settings so I'm not sure whether to blame myself on that one.

Criticisms: Collisions. Everytime you collide with something, it sends the ship rocketing uncontrollably forward, often into more collisions, and more damage. This makes colliding with anything pretty much instant death. Which was fine in R-Type/Gradius/etc since the ship was a one hit wonder anyway, but here where you have a health meter it seems overly punishing, especially with how close you have to get to some ships to shoot their turrets.

Also, what's with that 1 single Tempest in our inventory at the beginning? A later pick-up gives us 80 of the things!    I'll just assume that's a bug for now.

All in all, though, I thought it was very fun, and I am dying to see more of this. My only major complaint is the wonky collision physics.

[AndrewofDoom]

My only major complaint is the wonky collision physics.

Believe me I wanted a way to work around that issue. It's due to how the script works (every frame the player is given an additive velocity equal to the scroll speed). I originally used a less wonky style of just moving the player along with the speed with a simple change in position. But that ended up allowing the player to go through any ship by just not moving.

[bigchunk1]

Aha that was so awesome! A totally new take on freespace gameplay and it WORKS! It works quite well. Everyone play it! play it now!

Spoiler:

[harsh]
You know what I am going to say Andrew. Why all the text at the beginning? There's not much to the plot so why all the freakin text explaining nothing?! Everything is skippable (I did not skip!) and you do skip I don't think it takes away from the game. Fleet x is moving to... fleet y is engaging at... blah blah AAAH!
[/harsh]
I'm surprised you can't manually change default control schemes with some kind of modding table or something. Be nice if you could.
Death happened shortly after "destroy the core". I was playing on easy. I'll let bosch win that one lol.
cool use of the powerups and really great atmosphere. There was a lot of action in the background and the foreground flying through the NTF fleet. Felt like a true schmup. Who needs the third dimension?

[Goober5000]

This is outstanding, AndrewofDoom.  An absolutely incredible piece of work!  Well done!  The atmosphere, gameplay, opponents, and general goofiness capture the feeling of a classic "shmup" perfectly.  Very awesome, and probably the best deserving mod of a highlight so far this year.

There are still some rough edges to be shaken out -- ability to pick up power-ups, sometimes not being on the same plane as the cargo, recovery if you happen to get snagged and dragged off-screen by the corner of a ship, etc. -- but those can be worked on.  This is already a must-download as it is.

I must say, though, that either I spent too little time in the arcades when I was little or you made this way too hard.  I mean WAAAAAYYY too freaking hard, to the point of hilarity.  I kept on dying after only a few minutes of gameplay, on both Medium and Very Easy.  That's not a show-stopper, though, because the invulnerability cheat comes to the rescue.

[Droid803]

see look goober agrees with me its too hard you most make an update

also collision it is not working by mission 1 you most make an update


In more seriousness, you say "my testers all ran out on me saying they're no good at this type of game." But every time I bring up an issue I'm brushed off by statements which basically read to me like "YOU ****ING SUCK AT THIS GAME" or "Can't be changed. DEAL WITH IT SUCKER" (Literally, most of the responses I had were along the lines of "AVOID THE SHIPS AND YOU WON'T COLLIDE". WELL THANKS, I'm not trying to run into ships...) That's not very encouraging. For one, I brought up the collision/sliding issue the very first time I tested it, and every time you just write it off. It's like you're allergic to thinking, and then even when I come up with suggestions for workarounds you just whine about how they're not perfect and/or ignore them. IMO the collision thing really ruins an otherwise brilliant concept, especially since ships that are vaporizing and are basically totally invisible still collide and cause that sliding thing (which, AFAIK, does not happen in Gradius). I admit that I might very well be atrocious at these sorts of games, but it should be no surprise why I said **** it and went off to go play Hoshizora no Memoria instead - I figured my testing wouldn't affect anything anyway. Testers aren't there to go "OHMAHGOD UR SO AWSUM CAN I SUK UR BALLS", they're there to point out potential flaws.

[/end rant]

Yes, I'm just ever so slightly annoyed that everything I said just got blatantly ignored, and then called out on for not actually testing. I thought you would have learned...

[MatthTheGeek]

I kept on dying after only a few minutes of gameplay, on both Medium and Very Easy.  That's not a show-stopper, though, because the invulnerability cheat comes to the rescue.

Talk for you. Not everyone can use cheats.

[Alan Bolte]

You guys couldn't handle very easy? Man, I thought I was crap at shmups.

[Dekker]

I'll try this! R-Type 3 start/force selection screen music looks to suit the screen shot shown

[pecenipicek]

I kept on dying after only a few minutes of gameplay, on both Medium and Very Easy.  That's not a show-stopper, though, because the invulnerability cheat comes to the rescue.

Talk for you. Not everyone can use cheats.

surely you mean not everyone wants to use cheats. (yes, i know, the soggy tilde key is sometimes very annoying.)

[MatthTheGeek]

No, I mean not anyone has a qwerty keyboard. Cheats have always been technically unavailable for me.

[Dark Hunter]

I must say, though, that either I spent too little time in the arcades when I was little or you made this way too hard.  I mean WAAAAAYYY too freaking hard, to the point of hilarity.  I kept on dying after only a few minutes of gameplay, on both Medium and Very Easy.  That's not a show-stopper, though, because the invulnerability cheat comes to the rescue.

Trust me, as shmups go, this is strictly middle-of-the-road in difficulty terms (except for that collision thing. That seriously needs to be fixed prior to a full release).

While I agree that it was a bit tough for a first stage, it plays roughly as hard as some midway stages of games like R-Type or Gradius... actually it's still quite a bit easier, since the ship in those games would die in one hit (well, two if you had a Shield powerup in Gradius).

[Droid803]

In traditional SHMUPS: You die in one hit but your hitbox is either just your "sprite" or smaller than your sprite. Some enemies fire in fixed "spreads", or fires at where your ship is currently at (generally no target leading even in aimed/homing shots).
In this: Collision in this is bigger than the visible ship model. Everything always aims for your ship, with leading taken into assumption.

I can complete levels where like 80% of the screen is filled with enemy projectiles at times, but I've never managed to complete this which only ever has like no more than 10 bullets on the screen... You can't compare in terms of features. I'm fine with bullets as long as they're not being shot faster than your ship moves, while leading target...

(also, every time I die in this is due to that thrice damned collision thing, usually with a ship that is already dead, but I think I've beaten the dead horse enough times)

[Dark Hunter]

In traditional SHMUPS: You die in one hit but your hitbox is either just your "sprite" or smaller than your sprite. Some enemies fire in fixed "spreads", or fires at where your ship is currently at (generally no target leading even in aimed/homing shots).

I can complete levels where like 80% of the screen is filled with enemy projectiles at times, but I've never managed to complete this which only ever has like no more than 10 bullets on the screen...

Generally only true in Bullet Hell games, which are a subgenre of shmups. This mod draws inspiration from obstacle-based trial and error games, in which the entire sprite is generally the hitbox.

I tend to think Bullet Hell is easier than this style of shmup in any case. When 80+% of the screen is filled with bullets, only about 5% of them are in any way aimed at you. 

The enemies leading their shots is true though. That kind of surprised me. It's true that very few shmups do that.

You can't compare in terms of features. I'm fine with bullets as long as they're not being shot faster than your ship moves, while leading target...

Oh yes I can. The only things this mod is really lacking is some form of Option and a vertical weapon of some sort. Other than that it's perfectly in line with R-Type/Gradius style shmups. I mean, just look at Stage 5 of R-Type Final!

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Facebook wall spammed.

Also, I was thinking of Freedius for a name.

[pecenipicek]

No, I mean not anyone has a qwerty keyboard. Cheats have always been technically unavailable for me.

i have a qwertzu keyboard and hilariously enough, the tilde is to the left of my "1" key. always worked just fine.