[MrWright]

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Hi everybody!

Introducing my Freeware shmup: Antagonism. It was created by me, Ben Wright. The concept is similar to Space Harrier although the design, graphics and music are all my own work.

Download Antagonism at:

Antagonism Website


For those who've played Space Harrier, the gameplay in Antagonism is very similiar. Use the cursor keys to fly around the screen and the control key to shoot the waves of adversaries while avoiding various obstacles and missiles. There are 24 different stages (or zones) to complete.

Antagonism Trailer


I hope you enjoy the game and I'd be interested in hearing any views or opinions

[Hornet600S]

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Welcome!

Didn't play it yet (under Mac OS right now  ) but checked out the youtube video.
I'm not the biggest fan of the space-harrier type of game, but looks like a job well done. The graphics look just fine, range of view seems to be good, bullet speed etc. look rather well balanced.
Some suggestions:

- maybe it would be good to add some simple round pseudo-shadow to the objects?

- I noticed that for example the snake boss becomes nearly invisible when you hit it. I suggest using a different color as hit indicator. And add some fading to it. For example give it a slight red touch that quickly fades back to normal color.

Regards,
Daniel

[MrWright]

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Thanks for the feedback Daniel

A couple of people have noted the lack of shadows. Truth is, I'm not the greatest coder in the world and found it difficult to implement them with the design format I'd chosen. Plus I think shadows are more decorative then essential as the game plays ok without them.

I agree about the snake boss becoming nearly invisible when hit, although that backdrop is probably the lightest in the entire game and the invisibility thing isn't so noticeable with other bosses.

[Hornet600S]

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So, I'm back at my PC and tried it out, but the standard exe doesn't work for me. The loading screen appears and nothing changes for about 25 seconds, then the game aborts with the following message:

Runtime Error 2002 - Could not load animation at line 756.

Got a ATI 3850, Catalyst 9.5, if that helps. 
Anyway, tried the fallback exe without animations. That works fine!

First impressions:

+ Music is great!
+ Gfx too. Quite unique style, that dragon for example is just great.
+ controls are good, though a options screen for up/down inversion or key mapping wouldn't be a bad thing. And it gets my digital joypad wrong (always stears left if nothing pressed), analogue stick works fine.

- I really miss (fake) shadows. They would help a lot when it comes to depth perception. What are your technical problems here?
- the auto-fire shot interval is somehow weird. Do you have a hard shot limit?
- loading time is incredible long. 30 seconds, and I don't have the slowest PC in the world...

[MrWright]

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Ah yes, that hated Runtime Error 2002. I think it's a codec issue. The in-game animations are in .avi (XviD MPEG-4) Codec. I've been researching this error for some time and the only solution I've found is that the codecs need to be up to date - Let's just say I think I'll avoid animations in anything else I write.

I'm glad you like the GFX and music. I've always loved the classic Space Harrier theme and didn't want to just reproduce some inferior remix, so I did my own tracks instead (I suppose some SH purists might regard that as sacrilege, but whatever). The look of the game is meant to be reminiscent of Space Harrier, but not a direct rip off.

The up/down settings on the controls can be inverted by pressing control key during the title sequence (you'll hear a 'ping' sound when they invert).

I'm sorry there are no shadows although fixing this would be a real headache. All the enemy formations are stored in huge arrays of such complexity it makes me feel ill just thinking about them. Plus I completed those files some time ago. Adding shadows would require an overhaul of all that data which I really don't want to undertake. If I do produce any other game of this kind I'll remember the shadows.
 
30 seconds for loading? It's even longer on my ancient computer. The delay might be because the .exe file is compressed and has to unpack, I'm not really sure. All the gfx and fx are loaded on startup so I guess that takes time.

Thanks again for your feedback, I'd be interested in how far you can get into it - I can make Zone 20 on one credit (so to speak), although I think I made the later levels too hard.

[Hornet600S]

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Oh, I found out how to invert up/down - after I read the readme a second time 
I don't really get your problems regarding the pseudo-shadows.
I mean, whatever way you store your enemy data, at some moment you got their final 3D space coordinates, right? Or maybe a screen coordinate plus zoom-factor, whatever.
Then you got all info you need to draw that fake shadow: X is the same, zoom-factor is the same. Y is the same, only mirrored and multiplied with some constant depending on the 3D perspective. Use some dark ellipsis as texture. And if you want real retro-style then fake semi-transparency by flickering 
That's all, more or less...
Concrete formulas also depend on your internal coordinate-system, of course. Like, where's Y=0? At the screen's center or bottom or top?
Since I don't know how exactly you do your rendering (do you use any std. 3D API like Direct3D or OpenGL? Or some sprite blitting?) and how your coordinate systems look like I can't give you more detailed hints right now.

[MrWright]

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Antagonism is coded in Dark Basic Pro so it uses Direct3D. Almost all of the gfx are actually textured planes, not sprites. I appreciate the advice regarding shadows and I might look into adding them.

[Null1024]

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Nice, although up and down should go up and down on keyboard by default. I love how smooth everything is, and that death animation.

[moosa]

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I haven't tried it yet myself, but I watched the youtube video a couple times.

The shadows would indeed be a nice addition, if nothing else then at least for the player "sprite." You may want to consider trying a pseudo-motion-blur effect on the player graphic as well, to smooth out the motion a bit. I'm not talking anything fancy, perhaps just one or two semi-transparent "copies" of the player graphic that are offset a small amount in the direction opposite of your movement. If you don't touch the original player graphic and keep the copies behind it, you shouldn't lose the crisp look. I'm not sure how complicated that would be to implement in your case because of the unique approach in building this game, but if it's not too difficult a task I think you may find it worthwhile. Granted, thats more the sort of thing I would be concerned about in my own projects, and it seems to play just fine as it is, so I imagine you may be happy with it.

For someone who claims to not be much of a programmer, this seems like quite an accomplishment. Nice work, for sure.

[MrWright]

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@Null1024

Space Harrier had inverted controls so I just went with that, although I can see how it's not everyone's preference - at least you can switch them. Thanks for downloading.


@moosa

I agree that some motion-blur effect on the player would be an improvement. Again I was just going for that old school Space Harrier look. With programming I find that when I start tinkering with a huge block of 'functioning' code, something inevitably goes wrong elsewhere, and I have to correct that (only to find something else has stopped working). I finished Antagonism's code several months back and after hours of playtesting finally got it bug free (I hope), so you understand why I'm a bit reluctant to return to it. I should have stated that this is a finished product rather than a WIP, but thanks for the feedback.

[hermitC]

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Good work for a "not so good" coder. Respect!

Pro:
- lovely Space Harrier retro style
- smooth play, could not find slow downs
- music fits very well
- I like the list of used tools in the readme.txt. Good idea, will steal it

Con:
- IMHO the high resolution graphics doesn't match the old school style of the game
- loading times are horrible (don't have slow PC)
- hitting ESC threw me back to desktop but game did not stop (task available in task bar) - long cleanup phase?
- inverted vertical controls killed my gaming experience

Played it on Win Vista, Antagonism version without animations.

PS: When I've entered the Antagonism HP the first thing I saw were boobs in latex. May direct thoughts into wrong directions...

[MrWright]

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Thanks hermitC

Really appreciate the "pros". Just to address the "cons":

I did wonder whether I should do the graphics in low res. I think opinion is divided on that subject in regards to retro-games. I remember a poster on the Dark Basic forums saying they produce everything in 640-480 - for that 'old school feel'. Someone responded with "that's not old school, that's just old".

That loading time is pretty grim isn't it. As I mentioned earlier, I think it's because the .exe is compressed and has to unpack. Something I'll definitely bear in mind with future projects.

I'll also bear in mind the cleanup phase. For me, the game was aborting fine until my anti-virus upgraded itself, then it started hanging and had to be closed manually. Don't ask, I'm no expert.

The vertical controls can be reversed by pressing control key during the title sequence.
 
Thanks for the observation about the homepage, I've had a wide variety of reaction to that backdrop.

[Null1024]

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@Null1024

Space Harrier had inverted controls so I just went with that, although I can see how it's not everyone's preference - at least you can switch them. Thanks for downloading.

Not on the Genesis/32X. ^_^

And I dunno, I like the high res graphics. And for real oldschool, 320x240.

[moosa]

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I agree that some motion-blur effect on the player would be an improvement. Again I was just going for that old school Space Harrier look. With programming I find that when I start tinkering with a huge block of 'functioning' code, something inevitably goes wrong elsewhere, and I have to correct that (only to find something else has stopped working). I finished Antagonism's code several months back and after hours of playtesting finally got it bug free (I hope), so you understand why I'm a bit reluctant to return to it. I should have stated that this is a finished product rather than a WIP, but thanks for the feedback.

I suppose if you ask for "feedback" in a place like shmup-dev, you're bound to get this sort of response (i.e. ways you could improve it). I fully understand your reluctance to go back to a big project like this that you've finally gotten finished. If that's the way you feel about it then it's not worth it for little things like motion blur or even shadows. A lot of people like to keep their projects open for further improvements, even after they're publicly released, but I understand that sometimes there are those projects that you just want to call "done" finally and move on. Either way, you've done some great work here with this.

[MrWright]

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"A lot of people like to keep their projects open for further improvements"

I understand that but I'm the sort of person that starts to forget certain things after I've left them for a while, namely programming code. Might help if I labelled my code more I suppose. If I do another project I'll post WIP versions before any finalized version.

Thanks to everyone who gave my game a look. Cheers.