Thanks for the comment. I wasn't a big fan of Demon Star, ships had too much health, but I get what you're saying. The homing missiles are quite strong too.
My guess is that they are powerups? In that case, please keep them strong. They were my fav weapons in DS but I hated how they were weak for a powerup that is limited. The whole point of homing in on enemy is to help the player clear the screen clutter afterall, why not do it with a bang and make them actually useful, like a one shot kill (not for boss of course).
Anyways, it's upto you how you balance your own game. It still looks fun. I am atm playing Gradius V and just installed Demon Star 2 after reading this thread.
BTW, I didn't play much of DS1 but in DS2 you pretty much died in a shot or two most of the time. What I really like in DS is how the developers didn't flood the screen with enemies (like Astro Avenger for example) where you had no way to dodge the countless bullets flowing towards you (I really hate that).
Anyways, good luck with this (didn't you create a mech game as well?).
The Kino One upgrades 3 times using the same kind of powerups so you have 4 levels of power:
Level1: slow main shot Level2: faster main shot and non-homing missiles Level3: faster main shot, a slow sub shot and non-homing missiles Level4: Main shot, Missiles, Faster sub shot and homing missiles
you keep each powerup unless your shield gets dropped and you get hit after your shield is destroyed. Your shield regenerates after it has been knocked off, or when it takes any damage, so you could play through the game without dying if you were really good. For the shield, think halo style shield system, that's exactly how Kino's is.
As for DS, yes that's what I hated too. YOu couldn't take but 1-3 hits depending on what they hit you with and it was totally lame. Also, making homing missiles a weapon you lose, when they aren't even that strong, is lame.
And yes we did make a mech game, it was released in June of last year. This game is nearing completion too.
\/ our website has updates for our stuff, and you can see our other game there.
Well, I think I would have gotten bored of keeping missiles all of the time in DS. Powerups work differently in different games I guess. That is, keeping powerups time limited keeps them fresh and keeps the player on the lookout for some edge over the enemy. The only thing I would have wanted to keep were the laser upgrades in DS, damn it was lame when you respawned during the boss-fight only to spawn without any powerful laser and any extra upgrades as well.
Anyways, I will wait for the demo to sample your upgrade setup.
Here is a short video showing a little more of the game. It was all taken from the second level. The game is getting very close to completion now. We are working on mini-games and the menu now. After that we will start beta testing.
Thanks esper, it got there from us contacting GamersHell. Anytime you submit videos to GamersHell they end up on GameTrailers. PreVa is on Game Trailers and so is Kino One. And Kino has a really good rating so far. And believe me when I say that submitting news to GamersHell is easy and they are nice people. Here's proof:
Forgot to post this, a HQ version of the Mars Fleet gameplay video. Yes it looks good in fullscreen:
Last week we had some problems that threw us back a bit, but we're going back full force this week. Expect Kino before the end of spring.
Overall everything has went well, and I look forward to more work, matter of fact we're in the last stage now. We also may have a nice distribution deal on our hands as well, but that's all i'll say on that.
Enjoy the HQ video and expect to hear more from us soon.
@ortucis: Great, I look forward to letting you play the demo, as I mentioned expect it soon, probably sooner than you think.
edit: forgot to mention, the music in this trailer is music that will be included in Kino.