I'm no shmup expert, but I'll tell you my thoughts anyway.

Firstly, why pikachu, are you trying to get all the pokemon people to respond to your topic?

Anyway, vertical/horizontal - I'd personally pick vertical. I remember you mentioning that you wanted top-down, and top down is usually done in vertical, it's also a lot more practical to use vertical on a DS. And you should not need that much information shown at any given time on the interface anyway. Do you really need that map always open? Do we need to always see the portrait? And three extra areas for ??? on the screen >_<
Anyway, the point is -  vertical .

Two vertical shmups I recommend that you check out are Tyrian and DoDonPachi.

Do you have to focus on just one painting!? Guernica would be an obvious choice, but why not incorporate elements from other paintings too? I've always thought that Three Musicians was awesome, but I'm not entirely sure how you would incorporate that into a shmup. But then again I'm not entirely sure how you would incorporate Guernica into a shmup either P:

I'll comment again once you get started.

Hell yes on the Tyrian! 

Me, I've always preferred the top down shumps.

Now I'm gonna do that thing that I do and post a bunch of pics and let you decide what you like best...









(I like this one because it's not quite top down.)










I had a few more examples to post, but I can't seem to remember their names, so I can't google for them. >_<

JAL EDIT: Thx, Greenie for the refs. Will you remove them now? Tyrian will be my insipiration for this.


Edited by jalonso - 03 July 2009 at 12:44pm

The horse and lampshade


thx, Shoy + Green :)

I agree. I didn't really get what it was until I looked at the painting a few times. D:

yo, a LOT of artists used geometric and organic shapes. I think the only way to make it truly picasso is to render the ships even more like the above painting. I dunno, it just looks like crazy ship designs to me :/

This a problem that I see really often - you are spacing out your stars far too evenly. I think you really should be heavily studying Dr. Squid's work. Have a look at this piece, for example, observe how the stars are spaced. Check out all of his other pieces that feature space backgrounds as well, you'll find that the stars are never simply equidistant.

Also, I don't think fuel or ammo are really concerns in shmups.

Anyway, starting to come together nicely ;D

@ska, I just threw that image for y'alls to see what I thinking. The sky will never end up looking like that. Nothing will end looking like that which is just a layout.

@lucas, I think for this I'll just do those 2 screens and the 3rd is title and load screen. Which will be another painting of his, the 3 guitar guys or the 3 women painting...dunno yet.

Still confused about SHMUP GUI elements. C'mon SHUMPers what is the bare essential items you like in SHUMPs?


Edited by jalonso - 03 July 2009 at 12:23pm

Trying to find my player ship and finding my colors.
I'm not going to sweat the BG sky since so much will be covered up eventually.
This is way more challenging than I first thought :|

I think these artist based mockups are a really good idea and really creative. Do you know what you're doing for the later ones? I think Escher might work well.

Oh, sweet. What is it for? NES, SNES, etc?

1930s Spain during the War.



Edited by jalonso - 06 July 2009 at 2:34pm

Something to fit the Picasso mood, Tri-lock crosshair.

Just an idea.

I must say, I liked the shmup mock-ups better, making a DS mockup in general is a great exercise in spatial orientation and organization. You have to find a way to balance form and function without drawing too much visual noise or superfluous data.

I can see how shump might not 'make sense' for Picasso, if you're going to stick with the new mockup, you gotta draw a weapon at least, and keep in on DS.

The colours are awesome, although I feel like the values are darker than what Picasso would have done, maybe? ... but then there's the blue period.  BTW, are you planning to have a different level/design for each period or anything like that? cause that would be pretty badass and might make some aesthetic decisions easier for you.

Also, man is that ever cool, I'd love to play that.  We should get more developers up in here. ; )

A way better now than the "location" screen. I would not drop the blue walls, they're good and very powerful.

The shoot'em up is also very good. It's a pity that you don't continue it. The player spaceship in the shoot'em up doesn't work good for me, but the rest is ok.

Coming back to the fps. Have you thought about adding blood?

Also the perspectives are very odd. I know it's picasso style, but I don't see how someone could program a 3d world so distorted. An idea, maybe it could be done normally, like the doom engine, and then add a "distortion" filter.

Another idea is to walk step-by-step, dungeon master style, but this is a radical change.

Offtopic: I'm still busy with the work and the exams, but in the little free time I finished the minimap in Medici, it autocenters on your current location and is scrollable, also highlights leohouse and medici, and I did some other important things. I'm dying to work on it full-time again. Still some weeks of work.. : S

These are really coming along nicely, love it

Hey,  I just noticed that, for the L/R hub on the top left and right corners, you have things like "Weapon", "map", and "item".  You probably no this already but you are missing these on a couple images.

I can't wait to see the title screen!

Should the player hand be super realistic or keep the style? Would wearing a glove be/look better?

Great points, this has to be explored.
I have been thinking of this dynamic and did try a realistic weapon earlier on and looked bad to me. I think adding the hand now changes everything.

Are you really gonna make a game of it or what? kinda genius 

You're really pulling this off jal.  I had my doubts at first, but this is looking great!