Forums » Games » Super Snail Rescue (Shoot 'em Up)

Hi there,

i finished a few days ago my first SHMUP. It has some performance problems on low end PCs and no mobile support at the moment. The difficulty of the game is also a bit unbalanced. So please let me know if you can beat the game ;-)

If somebody is interested in the source code i can upload the whole thing to GitHub.

Cheers,
Patrick

Very cool game! Feels so 90s classic Nintendo.

But it starts to slow down a bit. Maybe can think about improving the frame rate

I was an easy target, since i'm a great lover of shmup like Salamander, R-Type, and like, but this one is very nice.
So for the criticism : the screen is shaking far too much, this is visually tiring. Reduce the effect, or, even better, keep it only for 'big occasions'.
For the good : scenario is great, i love being a space panda saving my beloved snail-girlfriend :-). There are a variety of enemy / pattern, and we have quite the sensations of the original.
Good work !

(And if you throw the code+resources on github, i'll go and throw an eye at it)

@wands

Thank your for your feedback. Makes me happy that it reminded you of the games of the early 90s. Back then triple AAA budget games were still cool ;-)

The performance really is an issue on some machines. At first I thought it has something to do with the number of enemies and particles in the game. However the problems are still present with an empty level. The system lag seams to have to do with all the big background images. I am still working on that.

@vincentpiel

Man, thank you for your kind words of feedback and criticism! I played so many SHMUPS before working on this game, and still the original R-TYPE is my favourite. I really like the SHMUP genre a lot. That is the reason that I may come back to this game and make something better out of it.

You are definitely right on the screen shake. This effect is so tempting and I think I overused it! The crazy thing about screen shakes is, although it's pretty cool, barely anyone is using it. This video gave me the initially idea about adding it to the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U

Also I am glad to hear that you liked the scenario. I wanted a “cute” setting and scenario, but not a cute 'em up. My biggest fear was, that this will not work together. By the way, here is a link to the source code + assets on GitHub:

https://github.com/Pattentrick/super-snail-rescue

Feel free to do with the code what ever you want. But beware, I had to rush some parts of the game. Most of the code is well structured and documented with JSDoc comments, but there sure is some pretty nasty code hidden in some classes. I also misused some Impact++ classes, like the character class for borders and icons.

Nice find. (video)
Vlambeer really itemizes all the little extras he does for the game. Not just screen shake. And the screen shake is subtle.

Maybe I should create a tutorial and convert his presentation into an impactjs side scroller shooter. It will be fun. But first need to wrap up a little competition I am in.

Also you need to add proper motion, like easing in and out and not just linear velocity and sudden stops, that will make a big difference.

Cool game, as others have pointed out you've nailed the 90s R-Type/Axelay aesthetic. I like a lot of the feedback stuff you're doing, was writing a small article about that stuff yesterday, and I've also been heavily influenced by Jan Willems talk on improving your action games.

Just wanted to chime in on the screen shake effect, it might be a bit excessive, but the biggest problem with it is that it doesn't reset whenever you hit a new enemy, it only starts shaking if the previous shake motion is done. The camera does a violent jerk motion, then slowly resets back to the original position, and only if the camera is properly reset can it start a new shake. This makes it feel inconsistent, as it shakes violently when hitting some enemies, but not really at all when hitting others. I would fix this by resetting the shake every time you hit an enemy, regardless of whether the previous shake was over or not.