Bullet Frenzy Offline
Title: Bullet Frenzy Offline
Release: July 2018
Original Development Year: 2015
Development Period: 4-5 Months
Development Status: Completed
Availability: PC
Tagline: Bullets Overwhelming!
Release: July 2018
Original Development Year: 2015
Development Period: 4-5 Months
Development Status: Completed
Availability: PC
Tagline: Bullets Overwhelming!
Bullet Frenzy Offline is a multiplayer bullet hell game where players actually compete against each other shooting barrages of their own attacks against their opposition in versus mode and against the AI in the singleplayer mode. As the title implies, the game does not have an online mode however it was intended to have one and was originally "Online" in the title. However that isn't the only thing that had to change for its release.
The keen eyed bullet hell game fans might recognize the shapes of the silhouettes in the background as characters from "Touhou", however to make sure that I would be able to publish this game under fair use and not run into any legal concerns I turned them into semi-recognizable blobs and removed all of the names from the character select screen. In fact the original title of the game was "Touhou Online," and the idea came from a very close friend of mine who was interested in seeing the idea developed further. I thought it had the makings to be a really fun game so I decided to give it a go, but as it turns out online capability would be a bit too difficult for me at the time.
When you start the game you may notice that the game's menu screen resembles that of Super Smash Bros Wii U / 3DS. And in fact that's what I based it off of! At the time I was working on this game the new "Smash Bros" had just released and the distinct, dynamic design of the menu was very interesting to me. I took a stab at trying to mimic the style but without proper understanding of how z-depth worked at the time it proved difficult and settled on something more simpler. That's not the only reference to the "Smash Bros" series however as the third boss in the singleplayer mode was originally a sprite of the character "Tabuu" from Super Smash Bros Brawl's story campaign.
When you start the game you may notice that the game's menu screen resembles that of Super Smash Bros Wii U / 3DS. And in fact that's what I based it off of! At the time I was working on this game the new "Smash Bros" had just released and the distinct, dynamic design of the menu was very interesting to me. I took a stab at trying to mimic the style but without proper understanding of how z-depth worked at the time it proved difficult and settled on something more simpler. That's not the only reference to the "Smash Bros" series however as the third boss in the singleplayer mode was originally a sprite of the character "Tabuu" from Super Smash Bros Brawl's story campaign.
Another series I wanted to throw into this game was The Binding of Isaac and did so by including Isaac as the second boss in the singleplayer and the only unlockable character. Once again to avoid fair use issues I had to "blobbify" his graphics, however I doubt that Edmund would be that much of a jerk! All of Isaac's ability names were left unchanged as a nod to the fact that the change occurred (as well as all of the ability names for the characters in fact).
Developing the game proved to be an interesting exercise in using loops and timers. The loops of course were used for attacks that would spawn multiple bullets in a single tick as this allowed me to increment the launch angle efficiently. Timers played an integral role in setting the cooldowns of using abilities, attacks that fired bullets over a period of time, and attacks that fired bullets in a specific pattern. Not all of the patterns even made use of preset paths: instead I used the sin and cos equations since those were already wave-like.
Developing the game proved to be an interesting exercise in using loops and timers. The loops of course were used for attacks that would spawn multiple bullets in a single tick as this allowed me to increment the launch angle efficiently. Timers played an integral role in setting the cooldowns of using abilities, attacks that fired bullets over a period of time, and attacks that fired bullets in a specific pattern. Not all of the patterns even made use of preset paths: instead I used the sin and cos equations since those were already wave-like.
Thankfully this would be the last project where I wouldn't know about inheritance, and in fact I learned about it during development which greatly discouraged me. I wanted to start over and see how much time I would be able to save and how much more easily I could create what I've already done. However much like everything in the archive there were a lot of things I could have done better and would definitely be open to revisiting if I wasn't already working on something new.
Music Credit:
"Super Power Cool Dude" "Professor Umlaut" "Voltaic" "Aggressor" "Unholy Knight" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
"Super Power Cool Dude" "Professor Umlaut" "Voltaic" "Aggressor" "Unholy Knight" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Last Update: 07/04/2018