Callisto 0.2

weak · Post by **weak** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 10:39 pm

we've just released Callisto 0.2, you can get it at http://fraglab.at/callisto

Changes include:

* new planet to raid
* online highscores
* improved audio and visuals
* new enemies and weapons
* new powerups
* map statistics
* new enemy and bullet patterns
* bugfixes

full resolution screenshots and online hiscores here

Readme:

Callisto 0.2 - Sony PSP
http://www.fraglab.at/callisto

GAME INFO
----------------------
Callisto brings classic 2d shmup (shoot 'em up) action to your PSP. Fight giant bosses, face dozens of bullets and enemies,
collect powerups to improve your ship and try to get the best online score to tag your name on our website!

GAMEPLAY
----------------------
Use the analog (recommended) or directional pad to steer the ship. Use X to fire, and O to drop a smart bomb.
Shoot at powerups to change their type and collect them to improve your ship.

Powerups:
BLUE: increase fire power/switch weapon
RED: increase fire power/switch weapon
CYAN: get an option (drone)
YELLOW: increase ship speed

CONTROLS
----------------------
Analog Stick or D-Pad: steer ship
CROSS BUTTON: fire weapon
CIRCLE BUTTON: drop bomb
SQUARE BUTTON: drop bomb
START BUTTON: pause game
R-TRIGGER: take screenshot (only if game is paused. screenshots are saved in the game folder)

INSTALLATION
----------------------
Firmware 1.50:
Extract the __SCE__callisto and %__SCE__callisto folders to /PSP/GAME/ on your memorystick.

Firmware 1.00:
Extract the __SCE__callisto folder, rename it to callisto and copy it to /PSP/GAME/ on your memorystick.
Replace /PSP/GAME/callisto/EBOOT.PBP with FIRMWARE1.0_EBOOT/EBOOT.PBP (included in the archive).

CHANGELOG
----------------------
[02-06-06] v0.2
- add: new map, boss, enemies
- add: online highscores (http://fraglab.at/callisto/scores)
- add: option powerup
- add: speed powerup
- add: statistics at end of map
- add: enemy movement patterns
- add: bullet patterns
- add: atrac3 music
- chg: square button behaviour (drops bomb now)
- fix: d-pad/autofire bug
- fix: high-score name entering bug
- fix: collision detection bugs

[22-12-05] v0.1
- initial release

CREDITS
----------------------
Miko Wohlgemuth ... code
Holger Sadek ... gfx
Eduardo Ramirez ... additional gfx
Markus Krebs ... sound fx
Thomas Novotny ... various support

Music:
"Callisto Main Theme" and "Callisto End Theme" by groovemaster303 (groovemaster@fraglab.at).
"Slater" by A P Bolan (http://artistserver.com/wwwartistservercomAPBOLAN).
"Everlasting Memories" by Tecknixia (http://www.artistserver.com/artist/inde ... /tecknixia).

CONTACT
----------------------
callisto[at]fraglab.at

NOTE: won't work on 2.x unless someone finds a way to load the atrac modules...

thanks to chp for a ton of gu infos, to jouni for helping to sort out a nasty vsync bug and of course to everyone working on the sdk.

hope you'll have some fun playing

AnonymousTipster · Post by **AnonymousTipster** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 2:15 am

Awesome stuff.
I know this has been in development for several months, and you've done a good job too.
Graphics are pretty nice, especially the boss. Did your team model it from scratch? It looks sort of familiar.
Two tiny little niggles: When you die and you lose your power-ups, it would be nice if they were the same colour as you picked them up (so if you picked up all red, they come out of you all red).
Also, the High score name system comes up a bit too fast, and I end up entering my name as AAAAA because i'm still holding down X.
Just tiny little improvements on a perfect game.
As for difficulty, I didn't find it too hard, but only if you can continue from the next level, and don't have to finish the first level again and again.

Great stuff, can't wait for the next version!

weak · Post by **weak** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 2:47 am

first of all, thx a lot for the feedback tipster!

Did your team model it from scratch?

yes, the boss was modeled and textured from scratch by pimpot (Holger), based on a sketch by klesk (Thomas).

Two tiny little niggles: When you die and you lose your power-ups, it would be nice if they were the same colour as you picked them up (so if you picked up all red, they come out of you all red).
Also, the High score name system comes up a bit too fast, and I end up entering my name as AAAAA because i'm still holding down X.

the powerup behaviour will be changed, should make it indeed easier to pick them up after dying.
same for the name system, will be changed. thx for pointing that out. if you just miss the first few letters you can at least still delete them by pressing O.

rmedtx · Post by **rmedtx** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 2:52 am

Thanks for your comments and feedback AnonymousTipster, ;)
To answer your question; Yes the boss was created from scratch by The Lead artist Pimpot.
Weak I see you beat me to answer this one ;)

AnonymousTipster · Post by **AnonymousTipster** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 3:21 am

Wow, the last boss really does look superb, it looks like it was inspired by the HL2 striders, am I right?
I think that pimpot should model the player's ship, because that would look pretty awesome.

Also, with the end of the game, it shows you some of the other levels. Are all these levels finished, and you're releasing them level by level, or are they just mock-ups of the artwork that is being worked on for the next version?

EDIT: One other thing, are the levels hard coded, or are they read from files? There seems to be some files in map0, but do these files dictate the whole level, or are they only related to a particular part (e.g. Background movement, image paths) and the rest of the level hard coded?

weak · Post by **weak** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 4:00 am

AnonymousTipster wrote: Also, with the end of the game, it shows you some of the other levels. Are all these levels finished, and you're releasing them level by level, or are they just mock-ups of the artwork that is being worked on for the next version?

no, currently no other maps could be considered finished. we had another map from a pc prototype, but it just didn't work out on the psp lcd. colors were too dark and causing a lot of ghosting.
but a good amount of the next map is done, and it shouldn't take too long till it's finished. i think we will release map by map, it helps a lot to hear what people think.
here's a concept art showing the setting of the next map ;) (done by holger):

One other thing, are the levels hard coded, or are they read from files? There seems to be some files in map0, but do these files dictate the whole level, or are they only related to a particular part (e.g. Background movement, image paths) and the rest of the level hard coded?

the map files you've found are just the tilemaps of the background and parallax layer. other things like sprite definitions, sounds and other stuff are currently hardcoded.
we were talking about xml files to make the game 'modable', but that would require to release tools to convert textures, explanations how to use the map editor and other stuff. but i guess this will change.

AnonymousTipster · Post by **AnonymousTipster** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 4:14 am

Like the concept, looks nice!
If you could get a full alpha channel working, some green fog would be cool. This could be acheived by a screen quad with an alpha channel, and wouldn't use up the RAM, wheras a bitmap would use up quite a bit.
I guessed that the maps would be hard coded, because some of the level features would need scripting, which would take ages unless you used LUA as the scripting language, but it's still very impressive.

Probably my favourite homebrew so far.
Keep up the good work!

sandberg · Post by **sandberg** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 5:05 am

Very nice work ..

Wraggster · Post by **Wraggster** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 8:00 am

you have done a great job, its a real awesome addition to the PSP scene :)

mICrO · Post by **mICrO** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 9:09 am

Damm, I'm on my parents, for xmas hollidays and cant check it , becouse I din't bring the USB cable :(, I hope to check it soon, but looks great.

Seens to be a nices work :)

Best Regards

dot_blank · Post by **dot_blank** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 11:49 am

very well designed game ;)
artwork, user controls, AI system
all flawless ....except for high score screen
this would be most impressive
display of psp hb full production game

much great work :)
and the boss models are excellent

background map artwork is terrific
and look forward to more excellent
interesting artwork by holger :)
and forward coming maps to continue
play

EDIT: tested on 2.0 psp (loader 8.5 using 222mhz)
works and looks great ....some problems
to take a special look at

1.ok at title screen everything under start
works properly....using default audio options

personal note: would like to see seperate
options inside options labeled like audio options
video options, difficulty options, etc...with music
volume and stuff underneath audio options

....nice shoutout ;D

2. start of game loader is partly not visible
could do nicely with a 1 pixel white outline
to show user that its there more clearly
and maybe alter loader bar color instead of dark
grey

3. and finally at end of loader progress
the game crash :P ....would be nice to fix
this for 2.0 so those who have can experience
the wonderful work put into this game :)

thats all the bugs for now ;P
cheers

reakt · Post by **reakt** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:23 pm

This is dope! Awesome music and graphics. A well-polished homebrew game!
Suggestions for improvement: have a difficulty setting. I found it very difficult - especially with that little turret at the bottom - he pops up and actually aims at me, or seems to! Perhaps the game should start off easy and get more difficult - like R-Type.

I really look forward to the next map.

Seek · Post by **Seek** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 7:43 am

The game looks great, and the difficulty level seems right on.

The Theme and BG music .wav's combine for about 11MB. Removing either causes the game to freeze, and reencoding the music causes it to play very fast, and eventually freeze the game.

When I get the chance I'll try replacing the music files with short silent files to see if the game is still stable.

dr_watson · Post by **dr_watson** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 5:23 pm

Very nice indeed! Very impressive parallax scrolling.

I'm still stuck at the 1st level boss and the boss is really nice! Was it a 3D model?

Didn't see much (or no?) alpha blending (explosion etc...) in the game. Was it done on purpose?

Keep up the good works! Looking forward to the final version!

weak · Post by **weak** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 7:21 am

When I get the chance I'll try replacing the music files with short silent files to see if the game is still stable.

if you want to reencode just make sure it 44100khz, 16bit singend mono/stereo (i was bit lazy with the wav loading code. not sure if anything but goldwave even works to convert files). i'm afraid it won't work on 2.0 even without soundfiles, won't free enough mem.

Didn't see much (or no?) alpha blending (explosion etc...) in the game. Was it done on purpose?

well, when we started we had software rendering, so the map was designed without alpha blending in mind. meanwhile it's all hardware rendering and alpha blending is working fine. actually there is some alpha blending like the mine debris, maybe the artists will use it more in the next maps :)

Arwin · Post by **Arwin** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 7:25 pm

- i'm afraid it won't work on 2.0 even without soundfiles, won't free enough mem.

It could depend on what the loading bar means. It got really, really close to the end of the loading bar when I tried it.

Pushwall · Post by **Pushwall** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:33 am

Very cool game! In fact, this is the first homebrew game I put on my PSP and was blown away with quality. Great stuff!!

rmedtx · Post by **rmedtx** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 6:42 am

Pushwall wrote:Very cool game! In fact, this is the first homebrew game I put on my PSP and was blown away with quality. Great stuff!!

Thanks Pushwall,
I'm glad you liked our demo. Holger (Pimpot) and I are working in more levels and more enemies and they are looking pretty cool too.

weak · Post by **weak** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 2:51 am

update released. details at the top of the thread

AnonymousTipster · Post by **AnonymousTipster** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 3:43 am

Very nice work. I like the improvements you've made!
The style of the level is very good (I like the smog at the bottom), and it's cool how some of the enemies come out of the tree trunk.
Level seems longer than the last, but I can't quite be sure. The boss fight was awesome, like the last version.
As with Gradius, the game feels more exciting once you've got the speed up, and the game feels a bit like R-Type too, with the addition of the enemies that swirl around you.
Online Scoreboard is very cool (just uploaded a little score now) and i'm sure it will get some competition. Online scores is something i've been looking into for my next ThrottleX release, except the scores could be uploaded via WiFi.
Nothing in the way of bugs or annoyances that I've found yet.

Possible future improvements:
1. More levels (obviously ^_^ )
2. Multi-player co-op (online co-op would be even better!)
3. More 'Options'/Options upgrade to more powerful versions once max number is reached.
4. Game remembers last name you input, so you don't have to re-type it each time.

crowba · Post by **crowba** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 11:56 am

Realy nice game.. i just played it the last couple of hours. You done a great job doing this from scratch. Its totally impressive and YES addictive even in this Version 0.2

My 3 cent on some improvements

-Maybe builtin a Heat System that heats up when shooting at high frequency for a long time

-a nice idea that you can change the powerups with shooting but it was anoying for me since they always flew around me exactly in the color that i dont need :D

-a shop system would be totally nice to waste your earned money on some powerups and goodies

-the invincible time after a crash is a bit short, i often directly flew into another bullet and died again

-MORE weapons and ship enhancements :)

I really cant wait for the next version.. the Online Highscore system is just a brilliant Idea, i hope more authors adopt this system (PSPtris)

weak · Post by **weak** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:23 am

AnonymousTipster wrote: Possible future improvements:
1. More levels (obviously ^_^ )
2. Multi-player co-op (online co-op would be even better!)
3. More 'Options'/Options upgrade to more powerful versions once max number is reached.
4. Game remembers last name you input, so you don't have to re-type it each time.

@2: multiplayer would be a damn nice addition, it's just a matter of work ;)

@3: we've been discussing some other weapons/ship improvements like homing missiles and other stuff, but more/stronger options (drones) is something we'll test aswell.

@4: i'll change that for the next release

crowba wrote: -Maybe builtin a Heat System that heats up when shooting at high frequency for a long time

-a shop system would be totally nice to waste your earned money on some powerups and goodies

-the invincible time after a crash is a bit short, i often directly flew into another bullet and died again

-MORE weapons and ship enhancements :)

a shop system is something we had in mind too. Like in Xenon II - Megablast on the good ol' Amiga. we'll have to see if it fits to the rest of the gameplay. currently you can get so many powerups that it wouldn't make much sense to buy even more. but maybe we'll change the amount of powerups or make some stuff 'shop only'.

and i think we could increase the 'invincible time' a bit.

thx both for your kind comments and suggestions. keep it coming :)

AnonymousTipster · Post by **AnonymousTipster** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:18 am

Another thing you could do is have enemies come from the left. A couple of seconds before they arrive, some arrows would appear to warn you (like in Radio Zonde) then the enemies would fly in from behind and swoop around so you could shoot them. You could also have a powerup that allowed you to shoot behind you.
Other possible power ups:
1.Temporary or 1-hit shield protection
2.Extra bombs (maybe shop-only item)
3.Mega Beam (you could collect 4 power ups to 'charge' the weapon, then get X seconds of a really powerful beam, like in Heavy Weapon)
4.Mini-ship (makes your ship small for a period of time, meaning it's harder to hit, but your shots stay the same size)
5.Mega-ship (your ship becomes very large and invulnerable for a time, you stop shooting and have to run into enemies to kill them, like in Parodius)
6.Magnet-bomb (the bomb is thrown out in front of the ship, then activates, sucking nearby enemies into it, making them easier to dispatch). An alternative on this would be the black hole which would suck in and destroy them. I'm sure you could have some fun manipulating the display buffer to give a cool 'warp' effect for this one ^_^

Post by **Drakonite** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:40 am

Your website (specifically the screenshot new window code (BAAD!) ) does not work in firefox...

And I'm moving this to release announcements, since it seems to be the place for it?

weak · Post by **weak** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:48 am

Drakonite wrote:Your website (specifically the screenshot new window code (BAAD!) ) does not work in firefox...

And I'm moving this to release announcements, since it seems to be the place for it?

i'm using firefox 1.5.0.4 and it works quite good.

and just move it plz. i just didn't want to start a new thread.

@AnonymousTipster:

again, very nice suggestions. don't be surprised if you find some of them ingame sooner or later :)

Post by **Drakonite** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 12:26 pm

weak wrote:
Drakonite wrote:Your website (specifically the screenshot new window code (BAAD!) ) does not work in firefox...

And I'm moving this to release announcements, since it seems to be the place for it?
i'm using firefox 1.5.0.4 and it works quite good.

and just move it plz. i just didn't want to start a new thread.

Oops, I thought I had moved it :)

It could be something with how it reacts to 'single window' setups... It just causes another tab to open with the same page in it...
I consider any page which uses crazy javascript to open things in new windows to be broken ;)

AnonymousTipster · Post by **AnonymousTipster** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:29 pm

Er, website works perfect here too. If you haven't got 1.5.0.4, then try upgrading and see if it improves stability. You might need to configure JS or tab settings if it doesn't work.
In Tools-Options-Tabs you might have set it to Force into new tab. Check that.

crowba · Post by **crowba** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 6:18 pm

AnonymousTipster wrote: 1.Temporary or 1-hit shield protection
2.Extra bombs (maybe shop-only item)
3.Mega Beam (you could collect 4 power ups to 'charge' the weapon, then get X seconds of a really powerful beam, like in Heavy Weapon)
4.Mini-ship (makes your ship small for a period of time, meaning it's harder to hit, but your shots stay the same size)
5.Mega-ship (your ship becomes very large and invulnerable for a time, you stop shooting and have to run into enemies to kill them, like in Parodius)
6.Magnet-bomb (the bomb is thrown out in front of the ship, then activates, sucking nearby enemies into it, making them easier to dispatch). An alternative on this would be the black hole which would suck in and destroy them. I'm sure you could have some fun manipulating the display buffer to give a cool 'warp' effect for this one ^_^

THAT are some GREAT ideas !! Maybe we can take it even higher.

1. Rear / Sideshots would be really cool
2. Maybe add some Bonus Games like in Jets'n'Guns where you collect Cargos that you can open in between the Levels with a "password hacker" that infact is a little mastermind game. Inside the Cargos are some PowerUps, Or like the Memory Station / Asteroid Storm in Deluxe Galaga :D
3. Def need some Place to spend the $'s collected
4. Co-Op Wifi multiplayer :D
5. Maybe selectabl Ships or maybe even Buyable Ships in a shop system with different ad-/disadvantages
6. A "Level Completed" notice on the Screen that shows how much of the Level is completed - this could also be an AddOn for the Ship to buy a LevelMeter addon :)
7. some sort of Award System maybe for Submissions in the levels ?! Or for some special needs, maybe if a Heat Meter is added "get through the Level without Heating up your Weapon System to earn HeatMaster Medal" or something like that :D -then also nifty icons could be showen in the online highscore
8. A Ship Addon that you can buy, that automaticaly collects the powerups for you on the screen

weak · Post by **weak** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 1:43 am

i love the 'award' idea. would be nice to get medals for destryoing 100% of the enemies, etc... and show that in the online scores.

and i like a lot of the other ideas too. definitely some good suggestions, thx again.

crowba · Post by **crowba** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:50 pm

if you need a beta tester who is able to speak german with a lot of free time in the next month just drop mail :D