Duality ZF (by Xona Games)

[Sik 07]

looks cool i really like the graffix just wondering how the controls are gonna work. Is there a release date yet also do you get to give your xna created titles achievements if so do you have any ideas for them yet

[Ivo]

The idea of controlling 2 ships in a game designed for it is really cool I hope you guys can implement it well (obviously there are already games with Co-op that let you play both players).

I checked the video now and I think that having a ship die and continuing in "1-ship" mode is somewhat detrimental to the core idea of the game, being designed to be a "dual play" shmup. One of you even suggested in a Youtube comment that you may make the game single play an unlock dual play - I think that would be a bad idea. I think the obviously distinguishing feature of this game would / should be the "intended for dual play" feature. As such you may even want to consider a way to restore the two ships play, even in survival mode - perhaps a timer or something. You would only be vulnerable to actually "game over" if you lost the last ship when it was alone, but to avoid several deaths you could apply a hefty score penalty each time the ship respawns (probably better to have penalty only when ship respawns and not when it gets killed) - and / or add cumulative seconds to the timer for each consecutive respawn (e.g. first respawn takes 1 min, 2nd takes 2 min etc).

EDIT: I have to echo what BigTinz said - spread the word. Getting a mention in one of the famous game related blogs (kotaku / joystiq) should be within your reach and would do wonders. You can probably send an early version / demo to one of the kotaku editors and ask him to post about it if he thinks it is a cool idea. I think it is highly likely they would consider this a cool idea

[J T]

I love the idea of controlling two ships simultaneously. That will take some practice. I think I would make it so the two ships cannot overlap so that players are forced to learn how to pilot them separated from each other. If you let the ships cross through each other, I can imagine people just stacking them on top of one another and playing the game like any other shmup, but with double the fire power.

I hope a PC version will be available in the future.

[MrPopo]

I honestly don't know how well a PC version would do, since controlling two ships almost requires a dual analog setup. But I do think it would be nice for this to also come to the PSN.

[J T]

PCs can have dual analog controllers too.

You can also have keyboard setup where esdf and ijkl control your movements and you fire using your thumb on the space bar or holding down your pinkies on a and ;


Just a thought. I would just like to play this without having to buy a new console that's all.

[Matthew Doucette]

To answer you all at once:

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Love that a few of you love the art style and graphics. We have taken the worst hits because of our “poor” art style. Graphics artists can rip on newbie programmer art just like programmers can rip on newbie programmers! One graphics guy is giving me a hand with some obvious flaws that we will fix, but the art style is going to remain. I am quite satisfied with it. If our gameplay and action overshadows the graphics, then our main goal is complete.

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The weapon is called the DUAL-SL (spread/laser). So it’s the same weapon, that can be morphed into a spread or laser or a hybrid in-between (which I did not make much use of in that demo).

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Controls:

- Left thumbstick = moves fighter #1
- Right thumbstick = moves fighter #2

- A = shoots EDIT: (autofire in dual play)

- Left trigger and bumper = morph to spread or laser (which do you think?)
- Right trigger and bumper = morph to spread or laser (which do you think?)

- Triggers = smooth morphing
- Bumpers = stepped morphing (to accurately access hybrid modes you like)

Which trigger does what? I want to poll you. Picture yourself controlling one of the Duality: ZF fighters. It has spread by default. You can morph it to laser. Which trigger do you pull to do so? Left or right?

But know, to morph back to spread you have to pull the other trigger. So in the end, one trigger always goes towards one weapon and the other trigger always goes towards the other weapon.

Which trigger should be spread and which should be laser?

Also consider that the laser is great for concentrating fire power on bosses, big enemies, and supply ships (to give you power up icons fast), and the spread is great for miscellaneous damage of multiple smaller enemies and ensuring no little enemies have been missed.

In dual play, the triggers morph both fighters’ weapons at the same time. We considered independent controls as MrPopo thought, but we figured it was easier not to, and it remove a large barrier of entry to dual play. Now some of you might want it as an option, but it is one of a hundred potential options we can put in this game, and not all of them are going to make it. For now, no option exists. And so far in playtesting, it is not missed.

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The camera centers itself one the players by maximizing the “border space” around the leftmost and rightmost player. You don’t want one fighter at the edge of the screen while on the other side of the screen have a fighter with tons of space left over. So it does that, but not instantly because it is far too jerky, especially when fighters die and come back, so we smooth it out. The slight movement you see after the fighter stops moving is the tail-end of that smooth camera scroll effect. We have tested various camera scrolls extensively, and this was best. I am not sure what is normal for scrolling. We only did what worked best in playtest.

We do maintain bullet positions with the ground as the camera moves. Any shooter game that does not do that is flawed. You have probably all played some shooter where it’s hard to escape an enemy bullet that the camera pulls into you as you scroll it. The sun in Super Mario 3 was like that.

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Glad you like the music. Imphenzia is great! It is the final music of our game.

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400 Microsoft Point is the official price. It will not be 800. We can only choose between 200, 400, and 800, but 200 option is only available for games that are 50MB or smaller and we are pushing over 150MB, which, incidentally, is greater than the 150MB limit for 400 and 800 point games!

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We plan to release it for PC. I will start a discussion on how to do that when it comes, but feel free to shoot us some advice. We are thinking of putting it on Steam. Plus, we need help with the dual play controls. What key placement should we use? Plus, it’s hard to get a lot of keys on a keyboard to respond. How do we support single thumbstick gamepads? All of this must be taken into account.

Plus, will Steam games work on Linux (through WINE installation or something)? I have absolutely no clue about this right now. We will figure it out when the time comes.

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No PSN support. I wonder what that would entail… I would love to port it. Something else to look into. Has anyone ported an XNA creation to PSN? What is the PSN development kit called?

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The enemy shots are drawn last of all, on top of everything. If you check our latest Duality: ZF screenshots (as of the time of this writing), http://xona.com/2009/03/31.html, you’ll see they are even drawn on top of the scores, text, sparks, explosions, etc.

You can also see the bullets are bright and also have a dark outline for when they are drawn on top of something their own color. No matter what, you can see them.

They are still sometimes hard to see, because the onscreen action and pull your attention away. But that’s your fault! Just kidding… We have gone through a lot of testing and pains to make them as visible as they can possibly be without removing the cool effects that help give an exciting experience.

Game development is all about balance. There is no “perfect” design. And whatever balance you choose will be too much of something for one player and too little of something else for another, and sometimes those two players are the same player just with different amounts of experience playing your game.

Making games is hard.

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WE HAVE NO HEALTH BARS! I agree with 64-bit; One bullet hits you, you are dead. There are no health bars, no shields, no bombs to save your ass. The only thing keeping you alive is your ability to dodge bullets and shoot down enemies so they stop shooting you. How about that? A 2D shooter that emphasizes the pure arcade basics.

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The campaign mode of the game takes about 30 minutes to complete. I’ve heard reviews of shooters that complain about “only 30 minutes” being too short. I think it is fine. Plus we have SURVIVAL, SCORE RUSH, and BOSS RUSH, which are short one-stage runs. The video above, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClxTi__1F0s, is SURVIVAL mode. As you can see, it lasted about four and a half minutes.

So, if you like long shooters, do the campaign. We have three campaign modes: HOME, ARCADE, and BULLET HELL. ARCADE is probably the most exciting, but we could not offer it as the default mode. It is Duality: ZF as it would have been had it been a coin-op arcade!

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Infinite continues. But, each time you continue you have less and less powerups. You continue with the same amount of powerups as you would have had had you had an extra life. Follow that? And each time you die you lose a bit. Don’t worry, there’s not Gradius syndrome in our game. You still have a fighting chance, unless you continue 10 times on a stage you were not yet meant to beat anyway.

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We hope to continue the shooter trend on the Xbox, and also break down the Xbox LIVE Community Games barrier. Not many gamers know about it, and we hope to change that. That is thinking big. It’s just a dream for now. It will probably not happen.

But, there’s going to be more games from Xona Games, including a Duality sequel, so who knows what the future might bring!

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Hard? It has infinite difficulty modes. You have to beat the game to unlock the next one. So no gamer ever runs out.

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Thanks for all the marketing tips. If you have any, I will mark it down in my marketing doc. If you have any blogs and whatnot, please feel free to spread the word. It would be very much appreciated.

Do any of you have regularly updated blogs, podcasts, youtube accounts, etc.?

This game could be a fan favorite. It would kick ass if somehow a shmup could be one of the best Xbox LIVE Community Games! It might regenerate interest and respect for this kick-ass genre. Reminds me of a quote:

“I consider shmups to be the last real classic game genre still alive - games in which score, skill, technique, replayability, and finely honed 2-dimensional gameplay are all-important.” – http://www.shmups.com/

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Release date: We are saying this month, but don’t hold that against us. This game has to go through playtest and peer review (on top of our own playtesting that is) on xna.com before it gets released. How quickly it takes to do that is an unknown. With two weeks left in this month, added onto some major hurdles we’ve had this past week, I would not be surprised if it was a May 2009 release. We already have gamers upset over this. But, trust me, we know what we are doing each and every time we extend the release date. For $5 USD we hope everyone understands and doesn’t hold delays on our first game project against us. We truly intended to release the game sooner than this, but inevitabilities held us back.

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We are working on revival techniques. It will have revival if it works, and not have it if it doesn’t work. More than likely revival will happen at the beginning of the next stage.

We thought about having a “do not fire for 5 seconds to revive the other player” but we are making a shmup, not a donotshmup. The idea was from Castle Crashers where you have to stop fighting to revive your mate. The beginning of next stage idea sounds better. Waiting for a stage to end is not so bad.

Everyone revives on continues, of course.

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Dual play cannot be default mode, as solo play will suck as an unlockable after playing dual play. You want it to get “better” not “worse”. We cannot make both solo play and dual play unlocked as that’s too much content to throw at the gamer at once (2 control modes x 6 game modes = 12 configurations, not including multiplayer and difficulty possibilities).

Plus, unlocking dual play will be very easy to do. It will simply be a matter of playing the various game modes in solo play first for a tiny bit.

I think this is ok, as I remember Project Gotham Racing advertised the Ferrari F50 on their cover box, even though it was locked. Do you think this analogy fits our game?

That said, we could make dual play be the default mode in the trial. We are still working on this. We will do whatever makes the most sales (according to our guesses) in our trial mode. Unfortunately we are not going to be as free with this game as we have been with our works to date. We really need this to sell for it to be known and allow us to continue making games.

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Dual play ends up not being that hard to learn. I think most gamers are use to independent thumb controls (one thumb moves / one thumb aims), so it’s not that bad.

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Stacking fighters on top of each other is allowed, but it seems impossible to exploit. And, if you could, we want to let it happen, because you would have to be god like to play like that, and why would I ever want to stop that from happening?

Let me know if I am missing something.

Fighter collisions just ring out loudly as a no-no to me.

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Everyone, keep in mind that dual play is just an extension of multiplayer, so any dynamics between the dual play fighters must also exist with multiplayer fighters. Since we do not want multiplayer fighters colliding, we cannot have the dual play ones colliding either.

The only thing we “add” to dual play is the game knows the same player is playing both ships and adds up the scores for you. That’s it. The other dynamics stay the same, including death, revival, continues, left over powerups that go out to other fighters on death, etc.

Dual play is playing two players at the same time. We want to keep it as that, just providing the functionality within the controller and the scoring system to do so easily.

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Longest post ever, concludes!

[Ack]

Let's see...

Ok, first off, I'm very impressed. You took the time to answer our questions, respond to our criticisms effectively with explanations and considerations, and also gave us an excellent look into what it takes to develop a game independently(I consider non-ESA folks and small game development companies independent). Kudos for being so upfront and personal, I can see that you are really dedicated to releasing a superior product, and I'm sure that will help to pique the interest of everyone here. I only wish you guys were interested in fighting games! Hahah, anyway...

Ok, so more questions. Thank you for clearing up that information about the camera, but now I have to ask, how will it be handled in multiplayer? With eight ships zooming about from four players, somebody is bound to run off the edge of someone else's vision. Will the game try to allow all four players to see the others at all times, or will each player's screen focus specifically on that player's ships?

Second, some Xbox Live games have achievements. Will Duality: ZF feature any, and if so could you give us a few hints about what they will be?

Third, would you consider referring to solo play as the "Warm Up" mode? Since the game is about dual play, then single play is obviously only the precursor, merely a taste of what is to come.

Fourth, how is the enemy made harder each time? Do they fire for and increase their health, or something else?

Fifth, since there are only the spread/lasers in the game for weapons, no bombs, no shields, and no health, what are the power ups? Will there be damage boosters, rapid fire, and upgrades to the spread of the amount of fire power, or is there something else you guys had in mind?

If you can't tell, I'm very interested in your product, and I look forward to supporting your efforts.

[Matthew Doucette]

I very much appreciate that you show your appreciation for our passion! Thank you!

You just picked off the largest missing feature of Duality: ZF, no online multiplayer. We promise it in the sequel, and have already started to develop solutions for lagging and camera work.

(We have a fighting game idea we want to implement at some point, so it's not out of the question. But that's game #4 or 5 on our things to do list!)

Xbox LIVE Community Games have no achievements or leaderboards. An update, to Duality: ZF, might have built-in challenges which will be far beyond what any achievements would have been, but no gamerscore. No hints on those challenges besides the obvious (beat the game, etc.) And we are coding a p2p score sharing system to emulate leaderboards. We are concentrating heavily on scores.

In harder difficulty modes, the enemies both shoot more and have more hitpoints. The score value is increased proportionately. Because of this, the scoring system does not "know" of the difficulty mode, it only "knows" of the enemy "toughness" and calculates the score from that. That makes scores accross various difficulty modes comparable and compatible. So we list them together. Plus the speed in which you kill the enemies multiplies the score (forever). Kill an enemy 10x faster, you get 10x the points. The scoring system is simply but effective and cross-difficulty. It's really quite amazing. I cannot wait to get on those scoreboards myself!

EDIT: Combining the scores of various difficulty modes was important as we have so many scoreboards already, when you think that each one of the following adds another dimension: 6 game modes, 1..4 players, solo/dual play, so just that alone is 6x4x2 = 48 scoreboards. Now, take that and imagine multiplying it with even just 3 difficulty modes (48*3=144)! And there's more I have not told you about, so it's even more scoreboards!!! So we count all difficulty modes together, which lets us have infinite difficulyt mode (unlockable so as not to confuse and frustrate average players).

The power ups just give your weapon more bullets to shoot, that's it. More weapons coming in the sequel, but you can see how we don't want to take the convo there just yet!

Thank you for your interest.

[MrPopo]

I can't quite get my head around the fact that the A button shoots. I picture myself with the controller in hand, with each thumb on a stick for each ship. My fingers are free to hit the triggers and bumpers. How do you hold down A while still manuevering both ships?

[Matthew Doucette]

I can't quite get my head around the fact that the A button shoots. I picture myself with the controller in hand, with each thumb on a stick for each ship. My fingers are free to hit the triggers and bumpers. How do you hold down A while still manuevering both ships?

Wow, I cannot believe I typed out that mistake. The A button shoots in solo play. In dual play, it is auto-fire!

EDIT: In fact, ABXY all shoot in all modes. Just in case anyone wants to use another button. And the dpad is supported, too.