RF Generation Message Board

As the indie shmup scene continues to grow, more developers have had an opportunity to get their games out there for public consumption. The rise in popularity of the "rogue lite" formula has played a part, as people are seeking experiences that are less static, and a bit more unpredictable. After all, with so many rogue-lite twin stick games, platformers, and action RPGs, why shouldn't the shooting game genre dip a foot in the pool, right? Developer Panda Indie Studio (aka Arabong) has been doing just that, with early titles like Project Starship and Red Death. 2020 brought us the latest take on this formula, Project Starship X.

Project Starship is back with a wacky take on cosmic horror. In this rogue-lite shooter, you’ll take the role of the tentacled-yet-hip Swagthulhu as you CRASH-KILL comical abominations in flashy 16-bit style! With multi-purpose dodge mechanics and tons of crazy pick-ups, you’ll be able to crash your ship straight through the enemy and emerge unscathed. Project Starship X celebrates genre conventions by turning them upside-down! Join the RF Generation Shmup Club in July 2021, as we fire up Project Starship X on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAaof0FcLRA

Participants:
MetalFRO
Addicted
MiniConsoleMan
BdotReality
Cork
Golem
ChrisTapp76

Awesome, I'm in for this. Picked this up awhile back on the Switch but never truly gave it the time it deserves.

Very cool, welcome aboard!

Now that I'm finally mostly done moving, and ready to stream again, count me in for this one!

  I'm in this month too.  :banana:

Welcome aboard! Also, glad to hear the move is winding down for you, Bdot.

I had some time to spare, so I fired up this one. Initial thoughts after 2 hours (spoiler warning!!):

-Fun game, good music. Is the Sun song a Gradius homage?
-The dash gives you a huge amount of invincibility time, and it refreshes really quickly. Kind of reminds me of Vanishing Earth in that sense.
-The ship is invincible during the dash move, as you would expect. However, you are also invincible for a fraction of a second AFTER the dash ends. Since you can only dash upwards, learning that after-dash invincibility is important when you need to fly through lasers that move up the screen under your ship.
-I like the tank. Normally, your dash only points upwards; when you dash in the tank, though, you dash backwards to eject out of the tank. You can then rejoin it by dashing upwards. This creates moments with a fun up-down rhythm.
-I also like the crawler. There's a jump move that's like Aerostar but better. You can even jump on enemies.
-Seems like the variation could be small enough that it's memorizable, despite some randomness in the level layouts.
-Having tried the first five characters, the easiest one for me so far is John.
-Visual notes:
--The lightning powerup is overload mode. This is important to remember because the screen will flash with a giant background image. The last thing you want to do is pick up this powerup when you are trying to dodge bullets--you'll obscure the bullets with a giant, shaking splash image.
--The screen will also flash when you strike a dash target and when you take a hit. Flashing after you take a hit isn't so bad, since you also have some invincibility afterwards. It's the flash after hitting a dash target that is important to anticipate, since you won't have any invincibility period to reorient yourself.
--The flashing HUD panels cannot be changed. You also can't put up paper or something to hide them, since they show your health and bombs.
--There's plenty of other flashing stuff (ship -> crawler transformation, boss phase transitions), but those are segregated from any danger.

My initial score (dunno if I'll have time to improve on it, but hey) - 948,499 - John - https://i.imgur.com/GRHnwcc.jpg

Great thoughts so far, Golem, and welcome! Looking forward to hearing more from you this month. Also, great score!

I managed to clear the first "lap" of the game, the initial 5-stage set. Apparently there are 4 "laps" to complete in the game. So this isn't the sort of thing you can just sit down and 1CC. Once you unlock the final lap, then you can go for the win, and effectively beat the game. I struggle with the sun stage, and also with the ground sections with the crawler. For some reason, I keep either running into spikes before my jump engages, or I run into the jumping piranha plant things, because I fudge the timing. I've unlocked John Johnson and Sophie Jefferson. Sophie's always a wildcard, because you can roll a really good load out with her, or it can be really bad. I managed to get 1 roll where it was fast, wide fire, and 5 hit points, and that made her pretty powerful. Other times, it's a slow, narrow shot, and 1 hit point. So it's always a challenge to see if you can power her up enough on a bad roll to make her really useful. One of these times, I need to kill Shopthulu, because apparently, that's how you unlock Swagthulu, who is supposedly the best character in the game.

@Golem Thanks for the tips! That half second of invincibility after dodging helped me through some tough areas.

@MetalFRO Me too... screw that sun stage!

I've been playing with Garrett and Gwen and I think I prefer Garrett at this point. I unlocked the next character so I will have to try them out.

I just got my best run so far to Level 6 I believe and here's my score below. I don't think I was too interested in the dash mechanic at first but it's growing on me. I love the music!

 

 
 I just realized the score I posted above was for the tutorial. I forgot I was playing the tutorial until I just cleared it now. I definitely gets tougher and my scores are much lower now.  I need more practice!

Yeah, after the 1st 5-stage tutorial run, the game definitely ramps up. I'm planning on taking on Shopthulu this evening, to see if I can beat him, and unlock Swagthulu as a playable character.

I haven't managed to beat Shopthulu yet, but I've kind of taken a liking to John Johnson. His power is enough that if you can get an upgrade or 2, you have a pretty good shot at ripping through stuff kinda fast. I feel like I'm starting to get a little better, but as much as the game changes things up on you from run to run, there's a lot of reacting to things in real time, and I find that I can't quite get out of my own way. But it is fun to see how things progress.

Hi- late to the party on this one

Count me in

Chris Tapp76


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah, IIRC my high score was for the tutorial as well. I also had a 1-up on that run. My average for a first-loop clear is 400,000 (excluding the final boss). I need to review the footage and figure out how the hell I got 900,000. Now I can't crack 450,000.


The jump on the crawler is tricky to read. I definitely jump over enemies more than I land on them.

The second loop is pretty intense at first, but after some practice, I'm getting used to it. I've gotten up to stage 9 (2-4). The problem is, my scores absolutely tank in the second loop--I'm getting 10,000 or 20,000 per stage.

John is nice, but I find it's harder to clear out the eyeball waves, since his default shots are pulsing. Gwen is nice for those waves, but then you need to point-blank enemies to do any damage. I'm starting to lean more towards Garrett now that I understand what to expect. I think I've noted the characteristics of each enemy in the game (movement, health, shot, and any secondary layer of interplay). (EDIT - Nevermind, I didn't realize there were more stages to unlock.)

There also seems to be a strange bullet-eating aspect to the dash move? It seems like sometimes you eat a bullet if your dash lands directly on it. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how this works.

In general, the design seems geared more towards chaos (read: fun) than balance. Which isn't necessarily bad, but it does make learning a game difficult. For example, for stage 3, the cavern level is easier than the neon level, or you could just get a great powerup set or a bad one.

@Golem 900K !!?? Woah, I'm curious how you did that.

I'm starting to get a hang of this second loop. Beat my high score from the first loop in the second loop now.

Here's my high score from the second loop now.

I've noticed this as well, and have definitely abused it somewhat, though I'm not sure I've been doing it exactly right. I don't know if it's landing on top of bullets specifically, or just within a radius of your ship's sprite. Will need to investigate more, to try and figure it out. Also, 900K? That's ridiculous! I don't think any of us would stand a chance catching up, if that's the case :slick:

I haven't mentioned yet, but on stream Saturday afternoon, I managed to beat Shopthulu, and unlocked Swagthulhu. I haven't managed to beat the stage 5 boss in the 2nd loop yet, however. But Swagthulhu is a great character to pick, because his low health notwithstanding, he is the most powerful character up front, and any upgrades you get just help to strengthen his usefulness. I also managed my best score so far, over 600K. Still hoping to clear loop 2, so I can see Space Texas, and get to experience what else loop 3 brings to the table.

Oh, and one other interesting note - if you get to the end of stage 5, and don't unlock the boss fight, you'll open stage 6, which is basically a stage 1 redux with harder enemies and more bullets, so keep that in mind. I did that the other day when I reached the stage 5 boss with no health, and decided not to fight it.

I managed to finally clear loop 2! Got my highest score so far, as well. I had to fight the Green Mushroom, so I could get the extra life to expend, but that was enough to put me over the top. That final boss fight in stage 5 is bananas!

Congrats! Ganbare Guru.

Congratulations Mr. Fro! Those 1-ups are a hell of a powerup!

It's neat how clearing the end level unlocks more content to play through. I spent like a week trying to "loop" the game by going through stages 6 - 10, and I didn't realize that everyone else was trying to "loop" the game by clearing the end boss on stage 5 in a second playthrough. Two senses for the same word, ha.

EDIT: Well, after clearing the TLB, you get a bunch of modes that give you higher scoring possibilities. So, it seems worthwhile to focus on clearing the game before scoring.

I did record a full run tonight: youtube.com/watch?v=7tUeozkgLgY

I think ultimately the challenge was memorizing the level blocks and mad events. Once nothing surprised me, it was all pretty doable. (Also helps that your health maxes out at 10, which is ridiculously generous for the genre.)

---

Here is the list of stuff I wish I knew off the bat:
- What all the powerups do (I mean... too numerous to list here)
- If you don't charge the final boss portal, the game continues
- If you clear the final boss multiple times, you unlock more content
- If you collect shield restores with a full shield, it powers up that little bar under your shield counter. That bar has five notches. Once you fill up the bar, you get an extra max shield. So, it is beneficial to pick up shield restores, even if you have max shield. (Aside from, you know, the 200 points.)
- Your post-dash invincibility allows you to move down about as far as you move up.
- Not all crash attack-able enemies will be locked on (e.g. hands in the moon stage).
- You are invincible when transitioning into or out of the crawler.
- Mad events undraw the screen all at once and immediately replace it with a new challenge. Normal challenges scroll in gradually from the top of the screen.
- You can hold up to fight gravity. By dashing, you can go up against gravity; by holding up, you will then slow your descent. This allows you to step up even when you are in "GRAVITY DOWN".
- Null health and burning will both give you overload power. (Burning will is when you don't get hit for an extended period of time.) Getting hit in the tank does not cancel burning will.
- If you clear a level without getting hit, you will get a tank powerup. If you already have the tank, you will get nothing.
- Please only watch the bottom three rows of tiles during the stage 2 Sun boss. Stay towards the right so that stray bullets get pulled into the Sun and miss you, but be aware that hazards can still come from the bottom right.
- Along with that - during stage 2 Sun, if you hug the right side of the screen, no bullets from eyeballs can reach you.
- The background dims when you focus shot. (Notable touch for a game that usually leverages confusion in its presentation.)
- The lag on being able to dash again is not the same as the lag on being able to re-enter the tank. I think you need to wait for the dash "clock" to reach 12 before you can go back into the tank.
- Shops are on stages 2 and 4.
- Space Texas has a discounted shop.
- Normal bombs only affect bullets.
- The green mushroom miniboss drops a 1-up.
- If "MAD EVENT" is written in blue, your controls are reversed.
- Mad events are not tied to a specific stage.
- The stage 4 asteroid belt boss (the xenomorph) waves its arms. You can't touch its hands, but you can touch its arms.
- You can touch the eyeball ship during the first two phases of the stage 1 Earth boss (...Zombie Hitler).
- The lighting is an overload powerup, which will shake the screen and paint a high-contrast splash image in the background.
- Holding the shot button slows the ship without changing the shot.
- Unless you are in the tank, where you have a standard spread/focus dichotomy.
- Each stage pulls from a bank of available stages based on the stage number. Stage 1 has a set of stages to pull from, stage 2 has its own set, so and so forth. That is, you could never have the cavern stage as stage 1, and you could never have the space-junk field as stage 2. Stage 5 rotates as you clear each one.

Um. I thought that would be just a few things. I guess it turns out I didn't understand many things about the game right off the bat, haha. I had to learn these things by trial and error.

So far, I think these are the easiest stages to score in:

- Stage 1 - Earth
- Stage 2 - Meteor Field
- Stage 3 - Cavern
- Stage 4 - Computer

First play tonight

Score 269,674

Well what more can I say about this game apart from the fact that it tries to do things different and original.

I wish the game would let you dash backwards as in able to push back and dash at the same time. I know it is possible to dash backwards but they way to pull it off in this game feels awkward to me and hinders the gameplay

I think I prefer my shmups to be a bit more conventional. I think the game tries to hard to be different and this impacts my enjoyment

I will keep playing and hopefully the game will grow on me

[img width=700 height=525]https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20210723/6c18fe3fdd1449786d1a728eacecc658.jpg[/img]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That felt awkward to me, too.

The dash move sends your ship upwards. So, seemingly, its main use is to dodge through things by moving upward. The fact that you can use it to dodge things below you is the result of a nuanced rule: the invincibility time of the dash is longer than the movement time of the dash. The dash move kicks off two timers of different length.

It can be cool when games build challenges around nuanced rules. However, the very first level in the game tests this nuance, when you are first being introduced to the move.

Thank you so much for the amazing insights into the game, Golem! This will be super helpful to reference when we do the podcast, because there's a lot we won't have discovered organically on our own. I doubt I'll be able to clear the 3rd loop by the end of the month, let along the 4th, so thank you for sharing all of this knowledge with us.

@Christapp76 - yes, the dash mechanic takes some time to really get used to. I went into the month already kind of knowing how it works, because Ed from Studio Mudprints (Bullet Heaven series on YouTube) has streamed this game quite a bit, and I've tried to pick up some of what he has done with the game. That said, it still took me a while to wrap my head around it, because it's not a common mechanic in shooting games. Also, I get what you're saying about the game's approach and trying hard to be different impacting your enjoyment of it. What I suggest is going into each run with ZERO expectations, because you know the game could throw major curve balls at you right away. Just learn the stages and mechanics as best you can, find a character that works for you, and hope for the best. Oh, and if you can, take out Shopthulhu in the 1st loop and unlock Swagthulhu, because he's technically the best character in the game, despite low health.

I went back over my notes and tried to gather an understanding of the design. I decided to tackle the enemies, since that's where I had the most information:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fqJcbjXIKNELKxU0PVMEPtCLcjo6DhCVSqeAhhLzBxA/edit?usp=sharing

It's missing some enemies, but I think this covers most of them from stages 1 through 4. I also didn't include any bosses, but I did include a few non-enemies.

-I recorded 37 unique enemies. I'm sure I missed a few, so it could be 40-ish.
-12 enemies had aiming behavior (aimed bullets or homing movement).
-11 enemies fly on the screen, then stay in place until they die.
-10 enemies had non-breaking bullet streams.
  -6 of the enemies with bullet streams also rotated.
  -Only 1 enemy with bullet streams aimed at the player.
-8 enemies were crash attack-able.
-7 enemies rotated in place.
  -6 of those enemies had bullet streams.
-3 enemies had shockwaves (this seems very low, I must have missed some).
  -The shockwave itself is notable because it's the only attack that forces the player to dash as a matter of the enemy design. The clothesline ships in stage 1 junk force the player to dash, but that's a matter of level design, because they come from the bottom of the screen. (If they came from the top, you would not need to dash.)
-Only 2 mad events had an enemy (not counting projectiles like the massive skull walls).
  -Is this right? Am I missing something here?
-Most levels had 7-ish enemies, with 3-ish unique ones.

It's hard to find any one behavior that characterizes all of the enemies. However, it was very common for enemies to present themselves and stay in place until they die (11).

Rotation and bullet streams were also closely related. You have 10 enemies with streams, 7 enemies that rotate, and 6 enemies shared between the two categories.

Offhand, the 1st one I can think of is the 2 "My Little Pony" characters that swoop in and rotate around a pair of orb "ropes" of projectiles. What's the other Mad Event with an enemy?

I was counting the big and small meteors as enemies. They are kind of a border case, but you can destroy them, and they drop coins. IIRC, there is a mad event that's a meteor shower.

It's just interesting to note, since mad events go such a long way to characterize the game. I don't know of another STG that does something like it. And they're largely static hazards, not enemies that you interact with.

Ah yes, the meteor shower. I have trouble with that one sometimes. I try to hang at the bottom of the screen, and use the sun's gravity as an advantage for avoiding bullets, but inevitably, a small meteor will come in from the side right at the bottom and ruin my day. Or there will be a bunch of flames shooting out from the sun, and I'll get caught in the crossfire. Those can be kind of unpredictable.

 
  Well since the month is just about up, here is my high score of 576,438. I got the final boss in loop 2 down to a third of his last health bar left. Oh, the agony of defeat!!

  At least I defeated the toilet squid eyeball monster in one of the runs.  :toilet:
 
  This game really wasn't on my radar to buy and really play but since the Shmup club was in, so was I. Surprisingly, I really did like this game. I eventually got a hang of the dash mechanic and the randomness of the levels and Mad Events. Those things made the gameplay unique and memorable. The graphics were decent and the music was really good as well. Thanks to the Shmup Club for this recommendation.

I bought this game a while back when I saw the glowing review from StudioMudprints, I initially played it several times but wasn't really feeling it.

Fast-forward to this month, and I want to keep going back and seeing what new enemies I will encounter and what pick-ups I'll get to destroy them.  Glad I finally gave this game the time it deserved.  Thank you to everyone for the helpful tips as there was so much to figure out with this game, which was half the fun.

High score of 753,981 (Got this score about half-way through the month and although I feel like I've gotten better at the game I couldn't manage to come close to this)

Awesome to hear you guys came around on the game through playing it for the month. I think I kinda did too, in a way. Anyone else have final thoughts to share as we wrap up the month?

Lunchtime thoughts -

Playing well means grinding the mad events into long-term memory. This really cuts at the core of the genre itself. A scrolling screen will express challenges gradually by a movement of space. Something flies into view, and the player has a certain time frame to react. A core feature of STGs is the fact that things take time to happen because they have space to fly through, and that time is when the player forms a response. The fact that mad events flash onscreen instantly means that your reaction needs to be entirely pre-baked. I needed to remember right away which mad event I had and position myself accordingly.

There were a few other ways that the game worked against learning. A large amount of the variety came in the different flight paths that eyeballs would take through the screen. I'm pretty sure they only go one way, but unless you have memorized each shape of warning signs, you won't know where the eyeballs will appear until you see the eyeballs enter the screen. The large amount of variation also means that a good portion of the game's complexity is wrapped up in different courses that eyeballs can take.

Contrast that to Star Soldier, where different flight paths are reflected in different enemy sprites, and there are fewer types.

The warning signs in general were something I needed to adapt to. It's easy to understand how something moves through space by watching it move through space. Like, there's pedagogical value to just seeing an enemy move. The warning signs run counter to that, where the game signals the space that something will occupy, but not the timing associated with that space. It's an interesting method of communication that I haven't fully wrapped my brain around.

The dash move itself is very gracious. Internalizing the timing on this gives the player a large amount of leeway. Mad events and eyeball lines are all very particular, minute instances of memorization, but if you can hone the timing on the dash, that's a broad sort of memorization that applies across the game.

In the end, the character I preferred most was Garrett, since I think his default shot handles the largest number of challenges. You don't need to point-blank anything like with Shopthulhu or Gwen. You won't have any gaps like with John.

My apologies, I got some time into this game but didn't get to posting here.

I appreciate the unique qualities about this game, but also I found certain parts to be extremely frustrating. The gamemakers made the choice to have a style of being obtuse, it works fine with incentivizing the player to pay attention and really learn the game, but the settings and scoring explanation are unnecessary limited.

I never fully built muscle memory to hitting dash when I needed to, I really wish I could have mapped it to a different button in the settings. As I type this I realize I think on the system level on the Switch I could remap buttons, but I totally forgot about that new feature.

Either in the comments or on a stream I saw others liked tank, but I found it boring and tedious. Anytime I had the tank I was just ejecting to get around those enemies coming from the bottom and I never really got to unleash its firepower.

For the scoring, seeing how others are also confused, can I posit a guess? It's that the highscore and number at the top of the title screen is a sum of your loops. My tutorial score was right around 400,000. My score now is 762,940. I've gotten as far as Loop 3 Stage 5 (a full gravity down stage is brutal). So it seems to me the Highscore is the sum of the loops you've finished, with my first loop at 400k and my second probably being around 360k.