for various reasons I decided to scrap the shooting mini for ARIA. I also did not want to reuse the existing ARIA space battle in favor of something different that allows of a bit more creativity imo. So I decided to go with the combat system from Arielle story and flesh it out a bit more.
This version of ARIA (whatever it will be called later) is essentially skill based avoider game. Similar to a bullet hell but not really?
[button color=”red” link=”http://spiralvortexplay.com/svp/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/alt_ARIA_v1.zip” target=”_blank”]Download[/button]
On this demo I have 2 areas from two different planets. each girl can play on each so there are 8 total scenarios.
Please test for things like lag, etc.
I did quite a bit of optimization on the code but I also added more stuff.
these are a few issues I know about but I haven’t gotten to yet
1. the hit box for the ship is too big.
2. sometimes a ally attack ship will randomly stop moving
3. all ally attack ships are blue
4. enemy starting locations are random and can spawn right on top of the pilot ship.
5. sometimes flames appear as boxes
Also I would like to mention that the way the ships move around and turn is part of the difficulty of the game.
Basic controls and mechanics (will edit later and/or add key mapping)
Move with the mouse. The ship will gradually move toward the mouse cursor.
press 1 on keyboard to call in Ally Attack ships (max 5 at a time)
Q: activates active ability
Arielle – shoots laser beam destroying everything in it’s path and even near it.
TT – hold to shield from damage
Bri – hold to disable passive ability
captured nodes will recover health if you are near them, use this to your advantage to win in difficult areas.
you win when all nodes are above 10 units for at least 1 second.
see if you can win each area with every girl.
strategy
Energy planet:
The boss creates a barrier of energy that prevents you from shooting lasers
Arielle – shouldn’t be too hard, call in attack ships to clear out smaller ships buzzing around you.
avoid touching bigger aliens.
try to hit all 3 nodes with one MLaWs shot, it can shoot through the barrier.
use ally ship to help capture nodes.
block of projectiles from the giant alien to make sure the node count goes up.
Phia –
stay around edges circling around the area a picking off enemies, this allow you to avoid all of the enemy projectiles.
Make sure you don’t touch any of the bigger aliens.
use attackships to help capture nodes.
block of projectiles from the giant alien to make sure he node count goes up or use attackship to make the unit count raise faster.
Tiffany – TT moves slow so use shield to block damage from enemies.
use ally ship to help capture nodes.
ram into bigger enemies if you are close.
block of projectiles from the giant alien to make sure the node count goes up.
Bri – focus on taking out enemies
Bri takes damage over time so use ally ships to help capture nodes and recover your life from nodes if you get low.
try to not collide with the larger ships
block of projectiles from the giant alien to make sure the node count goes up.
Fire planet:
waves of Fire sweep across the map constantly.
Lots of enemies
Arielle – get away from enemies quick, and start of shooting.
call in ally attackships to help remove enemy attack ship from buzzing round you.
you need to quickly line up a good MLaWs shot. your first shot can mean the difference between winning and losing.
Use ally attack ships you capture a node and hover around it to regain life.
If a enemy is coming near your node you need to destroy it.
shoot the other node from a range with MLaWs once you are ready to capture it fly over and use attack ship and block off boss projectiles.
Avoid fire waves when possible.
Phia – get away from enemies quick and focus on clearing enemies from around a node.
don’t rush to hover over the node because if a enemy passes over it it will be hard to shot them. You might get hit with a fire wave once or twice but if you fly into it you will pass through it fast. Because of Phia’s speed never fly in the same direction as the fire wave.
your ally attack ships to help clear trash and capture nodes.
one the node is clear you can spend time to recover health.
use the safe node as a base to recover life when needed and finish capture the other node.
you can use attackships to increase unit count to 10 faster.
Tiffany – should be easy. shield up and ran into enemy ships to destroy them.
use ally attack ship to clear out trash and capture notes.
if you have shield to spare, use it to defend from the flame waves.
block of projectiles from the giant alien to make sure the node count goes up.
Bri – this will probably be a little hard.
immediately call in ally attack ships and focus on not getting hit from larger enemy ships. you will probably eat about 3 flames waves before you can capture a node to recover.
clear out enemies around a node and recover you life, but don’t hang around too long if enemies are moving towards you. defeat any nearby by quickly enemies after getting life up.
after you have a safe node fly out and destroy the remaining enemies.
fly back to the safe node to recover life.
No lag for me, I tested with all girls on the High Quality on the 2 planets.
I don’t find any bugs, I think the only one is when you finish the stage(10 on every node) you go back to main menu or is suposed to be this way ?
I think just need better way to move, when you play Phia is very hard to dodge and shot at same time she is too fast.
And you get lvl 30 ? XD
For now yeah you go back to the menu. In the game it will have dialogue or something like arielle story.
I’m still not convinced to change the movement heh. I might add some auto fire options.
Yes I got lvl 30. Don’t think it is worst it thoguh lol. Maybe after I unlock more stuff.
No lag.
I think Bri is actually toggle for the passive rather than hold to disable passive? Seemed that way to me as tapping Q would alternate between Bri’s health decreasing and not (unless it was coincidence and she was losing health some other way).
Playing as Bri is hard. I had trouble with Phia on the first planet too.
But I didn’t use ally ships (I forgot they were there!)
Your explanation of the different strategies is good. Obviously quite a bit of thought behind this. Good stuff. 🙂
Thanks~
Bri can be a toggle.
Yeah the thing with Phia is she flies into the enemy quicky but does half damage. You have to make sure you give yourself enough distance. with TT you need no disatance, woth Phia nad bri you need average distance, with Phia you need a lot of distance.
Ally ships definately help heh.
No lag for me either and I’m on a very low spec laptop right now.
Phia is hard to play but absolutely doable if you are focused. I find Ari a little bit more complicated because of the lack of mobility but again doable, Tiffany is the easiest, had no problem in any of the levels, Now Bri is VERY HARD on the Fire Level, you need to use the support ships asap so you get the first node and then with patience you can clear the rest of the ships. The game is very challenging and perfectly beatable if you take your time with every girl.
This is good stuff man, great level design.
Edit-
Phia on the fire level is harder than Bri, the hitboxes are a real problem when trying to use the speed as an advantage to move from one side to the other, that was the harder for this short. Again great work man, keep these coming.
Thanks~ yeah I plan to adjust the hitbox. Bri might have cooldown to remove all enemy projectiles. Or wipe out all smaller enemy attack ships instantly. All girls might have 2 active abilities, at least at initial release.
spent a lot of today reworking the game stuff for the non combat part of the game. hopefully will have something basic done tonight. I don’t plan to make the non space battle components of this game overly complicated.
Still working on this today (11 hours on it today so far) I’m trying to actually finish all of the gameplay.