Making an Advanced Shmup #82 - Prototype Testing - Pico-8 Hero

Let's develop an Advanced Shmup in Pico-8 one video at a time. This series is specifically designed for more experienced developers looking to enhance their skills.
Aktake Playtesting VODs
👉 • Shmup Design Talk #1 -...
👉 • Shmup Design Talk #2 -...
👉 • Shmup Design Talk #3 -...
👉 • Shmup Design Talk #4 -...
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0:00:00 Intro
0:01:05 Round 1 Feedback
0:04:11 Round 2
0:06:42 Round 2 Feedback
0:10:54 Round 3
0:16:40 Round 3 Feedback
0:19:48 Round 4
0:23:21 Round 4 Feedback
0:25:40 Lessons Leaarned
0:38:57 Ko-fi
#pico8 #gamedev #stg #shmup

[@AKTANEARCADE]

Putting aside shmups for a second, this is one of the best dev related videos because of how honest, and interospective you are as a human being, and that really lends a lot of real true emotion to this tale. This is actually quite a story end to end, and it is worth telling over and over again, and I think it could resonate with any game developers regardless of genre! Well done with this!

[@LazyDevs]

Thank you for your kind words, Aktane! And thank you for participating in this story. Gotta finish the final chapter now!

[@thisisreallyme3130]

​ @LazyDevs Could you ever explore the Pico-8's "serial" (via GPIO) capability? It'd be awesome to see a Pico-8 game triggering serial I/O. serial is official and documented (but a bit under-documented, and only a couple of proof-of-concepts found online using GPIO)

[@richardbramley2238]

Fantastic video. Especially the discussion at the end. Deep lessons that relate to my work and hobbies.

[@Ver2ion]

id love to see what u can do in love2d

[@JohnDekka]

Same! While I like the limited environment with Pico 8 / Tic80, I also would like to see some tutorials with Löve2D.

[@blevi2695]

@@JohnDekka maybe picotron

[@drOffset]

These are really interesting insights, thanks for sharing.

[@blevi2695]

finaly ,waitting for you

[@boghogSTG]

I think the stars in round 3 are really interesting. I think the main issue isn't necessarily the "ask" side as you put it (though you did ask for a bit too much with how fast you made them LOL) but rather where the ask was coming from - I think the difficulty in grabbing stars should come from the more natural level elements/enemies and stuff. My guess is that if you slowed them down soplayers could always grab them if no enemies are on screen, but then started contesting that with enemy bullets/spawns players would feel like dropping stars is more "fair". They'd think "I COULD grab all these shiny stars, but then I'm not quick killing the enemies fast enough and the next wave will kill me" instead of just getting annoyed at the star falling speed But that also gets into your level design/mechanics interaction comment - this kinda stuff is hard to test for without levels that really challenge the players. That's why I think it's a good idea to start with really hard levels and then scale back, as painful as that might be for playtesters. It's definitely a very tricky needle to thread. Happy to contribute to this even if I didn't playtest the later stuff, really useful stuff for shmup devs

[@LazyDevs]

Yeah maybe it was just a matter of slowing them down. The trick to be able to pick them all up was all about positioning. The Stars would get ejected away from the ship. They would also bounce off the screen walls. And they would always have some upwards momentum so if you manage to fly "behind" the bullets the star would fly into you. So I'm pretty sure a good player could develop the skills over time to position themselves in such a way that they can always grab all the stars. But it wasn't obvious what to do and if there was a lot happening on the screen anyway it felt just unfair.

[@hansvonpetersen5011]

i really love the artwork. especially the cows

[@llpBR]

I was going to post the same comment. Those cows are so cute!

[@hansvonpetersen5011]

@@llpBR totally

[@JohnDekka]

Mega! Danke dir für deine Videos!

[@SeonghyeonLee-sy9un]

훌륭하고, 대단합니다 😍

[@SvensPron]

Question: If you want focus fire and hyper/bombing in your game, why not just have the ship auto-fire when no button is pressed and then use one button for focus and the other for hyper? (sorry if you addressed this at some point, but that thought was bugging me the entire video lol)

[@LazyDevs]

Good question. Yes, we discussed this previously. I don't want the ship to auto-fire because I want the player to be the one who is shooting. I don't want them to be just "along for the ride". Also as you saw we had situations in play-testing where players did want to stop shooting.

[@SvensPron]

@@LazyDevsyeah, that makes sense, cheers for the reply 🙏

[@themacboy]

Link to shirt worn in the intro please!!!!

[@LazyDevs]

teefury.com/products/tee-mens-basic-i-know-that-reference

[@ace_dent]

First! 🥇😅