Recently one of my friends was talking to me about two shmups that are featured in the Indie Game Challenge, those being Zeit^2 and Galactic Arms Race. Both of these are unique in their own light:

Zeit^2 is a shmup that allows the player to time travel for a limited time, both forwards and back. When going backwards, a replica of your previous self also fights which mimics everything that you did at that time. In essence, you are fighting with a self-generated partner destroying those enemies in the past. When going forward, time speeds up allowing for the stage to progress faster.

Galactic Arms Race doesn't have time travel but it does have self-evolving weapons. The game itself generates the player's weapons based on what "isotopes" they pick up and what ones they decide to keep or discard. This is done using a Compositional Pattern Producing Network generated from a customized content-generating Neuro-Evolution of Augmenting Topologies algorithm. Essentially, the weapons become incredibly unique, fresh, and perfectly suited to the player.

So what does this have to do with Fraxy? In the recent updates, Fraxy has been given the ability to change weapon abilities through the use of Extra Parameters. Even more recent, those Extra Parameters have basic math functions associated with the values (+, -, *, /) allowing them to be changed a bit more dynamically depending on the conditions. Looking at many new bosses, they have a lot of bullet-spam patterns and they are getting more complex.

What I want to see is what the potential of bullet/part patterns can become using these new mechanics in Fraxy, something that beings the full scope of what Fraxy is into light.

____________________
RX-12 - Bydo Coefficient Test Unit

"No, don't try and pull any fast ones. There's nothing illegal on the Internet."

"Hello extremely! I hope you like to *play*. Some *campers* are not so good for *games*. Is it time for *playing* yet?"

Asker: How do I remove the border on a GroupBox in .NET?
Answer: Use a panel instead?
Asker: Gee, thanks @$$.

Unfortunately not as of yet as the game isn't quite finished, but it's close to completion I believe.

Here are the Indie Game Challenge links:

Zeit^2

Galactic Arms Race

____________________
RX-12 - Bydo Coefficient Test Unit

"No, don't try and pull any fast ones. There's nothing illegal on the Internet."

"Hello extremely! I hope you like to *play*. Some *campers* are not so good for *games*. Is it time for *playing* yet?"

Asker: How do I remove the border on a GroupBox in .NET?
Answer: Use a panel instead?
Asker: Gee, thanks @$$.

Well, there is the YouTube preview of it...

Even though it's not very long, it does show off some of it's potential. I hope that these games become wide-spread as I would enjoy seeing these concepts used in future games (especially shmups).

I can imagine it now. There is a infamous shump called Zanac made by a now extinct company called Compile. Zanac was noteworthy due to the way the AI dealt with you. As you collected weapons, fired shots, and destroyed stuff, the AI would send out enemies that would be able to counteract your current weapon, for example the Shield (number 2). If you equipped that, the AI would go insane and send out tons of enemies just to break it down. If you were more aggressive, it would be more aggressive in return. Add these two systems together and it's almost nirvana, even if it gets a tad complex (that never hurt anybody anyway!).

Shame Fraxy can't do that yet, but I'm confident that someday it will. Of course, this topic is for implementing complex and interesting weapon and boss patterns using what we've got now.

____________________
RX-12 - Bydo Coefficient Test Unit

"No, don't try and pull any fast ones. There's nothing illegal on the Internet."

"Hello extremely! I hope you like to *play*. Some *campers* are not so good for *games*. Is it time for *playing* yet?"

Asker: How do I remove the border on a GroupBox in .NET?
Answer: Use a panel instead?
Asker: Gee, thanks @$$.