LBP2: House of the flying diggers BOSS FIGHT (R-TYPE stylie)

Shade_seekers 'House of the flying diggers boss fight.

Hey all:) PHEW, I've had a marathon session with this level!

Basically, I wanted to create a space ship shooter, with power ups, huds and interesting enemies...think I've cracked it:)

Contains: R-type 'add ons' (two types) that can be sent out in front of your flying digger, or kept close by, both positions have pros and cons.
Power up tokens can be collected to not only unlock a battle droid add on for a short period, but also a secondary fighter droid that spins around your digger, and after 10 power ups, you get magma fire for a short amount of time too.
Diggers auto re-spawn after death right in front of the character spawn, so you automatically re-enter a new digger straight after re-spawning allowing for a smooth game.
There is a hands on quick tutorial to get you familiar with the controls (there is also a shield, and a 'chargeable' secondary weapon on the diggers to get to grips with, so quite a lot to take in with out a tutorial)
Two players can play at once, a third and forth can also watch while flying in 'spectator diggers'.
There is a hard, and easy(er) selector and the beginning. (The easy mode basically equips you with a battle droid power up for the whole game, though power ups can still be collected to unlock secondary fighter droids, and magma fire power.

It's quite a long level, and maybe a bit technical for some, but as we all know, you can't please all of the people...........

Looking for any ideas for improvement, though the thermo is getting a little high now.

Will F4F anyone that bothers to write more than a few sentences, and constructive criticisms are VERY welcome.
ENJOY!

http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/...r/APhoto_5.jpg
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http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/...r/APhoto_1.jpg
http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/...ker/APhoto.jpg

http://lbp.me/v/yqd8n5

ok i will play your level right now, and feedback as i play.
Title looks great.
Im doing the tuturial now and its great that you added one. Also your menu looks nice.
Cute star wars spoof >.<
Eye of the tiger music is great lol
It looks good so far everything is working smoothly (still in tuturial)
Well Done.
Now on the the level.
Nice powerups for the digger. THey work well and look great.
Ok it has took me so long to try and kill this thing. and i am giving up on it. im not too good at these kinda levels lol.
It looks great it works well my only suggestion is maybe make the boss a lil less health...but it might just be me and everyone else will have no problem lol.
Awesome Job :D
The F4F pick a level from my sig :)

Hi Purpleiris, and thanks for the feed back.

Spent the most of this afternoon and evening making changes:

1.On EASY mode, it only needs half the amount of hits to destroy the doctors walking tank.
2.I only just worked out that you can set score givers to negative numbers.......added LOADS more score givers on the enimies, and added a score deduction on the diggers so you loose points every time you get hit, this makes itfeel more worth while when you avoid a hit.
3.Added three different mussongs at the three distinct sections of the game.

Hope this helps?

I typed a super long message earlier today but I was hit by that annoying "browser outdated" message, so I had to wait until I got home. I played your level for about an hour today. I like it so far, but I found a few glitches for you. I took two pics and uploaded them , so you can see where they occured (check your level) Like the title intro and the screen selection. One time I died at the start trying to select the tutorial. You may want an option to skip the intro like I did with the 8212 level. I turned on the camera skip option and attached the end of the camera to a destroyer to clear out everything and start the level. Your tutorial helped, but I was a little lost at the start to attack the ship, and the camera blocked the view most of the tutorial for me, and I had to move down to see the word blurbs many times. Also not sure how to exit the tutorial, I entered it a second time by accident, but I may have just not noticed the return option. Tried to beat the boss three times, but first time ran out of lives, second time the spawning robot moved to the foreground and could not spawn new diggers, and the third time I had to go due to time. I did not play easy mode, so I am sure that is part of it. Because the digger aims horizontally only some of the areas are a bit hard to target (that tail on the second creature could only be hit if I lured it down to the ground, otherwise it stayed behind the creature's head). The smaller baddies would block my ship from emmitting many many times, so I would be forced to run and jump until there was a place for it to spawn. The enter button on the digger is a triangle and the read speech bubbles it the same, so possibly turn the comtrollinator to auto enter, and you could even put some of those speech bubbles on timers so they will go away after a bit (it blocked me from entering the digger many times). I liked the controls, but really wanted to angle aim, and I broke off one of the bosses legs, so he would end up flipping over and then turning back (not sure if that was on purpose, but figured i would mention it). The life meter is good, just every now and then the thing would be out of camera veiw. Great lelev thus far, I will play it later and try and beat it this time...but I won't switch to easy, and great sounds for that too btw. :)

Hope this helps...I figured you needed some good feedback...instead of oh I played it..I am really bad at it..I give up...please play mine. :p Then again I guess I just have mad F4F skills. (uh-uh I did not just talk smack did I? Awww yeah I did!)

This level took a realllllly long time to load.

But it was really fun when I played it.

positive:
nice power ups
pretty good graphics overall -- especially the turdis there :P
great backgrounds

comments:
wayyyyyy ... wayyyyyyyy too long and difficult... and once the turdis comes, i basically just kept dying over and over until i finally one because its way too strong and it takes way too long and there is no strategy as those rocks dont explode and the enemies are too fast and too strong to kill... so you are forced to do nothing but die over and over
also i frequently got stuck on things


I was loving it until the Turdis part took like 10 minutes of dying to finish ;(
Sorry if that sounds critical - but I think you are onto something with this level if its less brutal.

You have a lot of good LBP2 knowledge... so I will continue to look forward to your creations.


If you have time, I'd appreciate your comments F4F on my sig.



F$F my sig when you get the chance, please :)

Pros: The looks are awesome! Especially that dragonfly looking thing. The way you made it move, especially the tail, made it seem somewhat lifelike.
The power-up system worked well, I really like the MAGMA voice recording.
I enjoyed the audible star wars sound when the electricity cannon was charging.
Overall mechanics of the digger, spider, and dragonfly worked well.

Cons: Takes a long time! Even on easy!
The HUD was almost constantly off screen.
When my digger got destroyed, I would not die, so I had to pop myself to get a new one. I ended up taking advantage of this during the dragonfly thing fight as I still had use of my electricity cannon. I could get right next to the head and just blast the tail. But again, it seemed to take forever as I only had the electricity cannon.
When the dragonfly launched its missiles that supposedly bounce of the shields, I would get the 500 points for deflecting the missiles, but I would also get the -100 for the missile hitting me.

Hey all:)
Number one, sorry for my late replies to all that have reviewed my level, and thanks for the feed back! K, so, time has been a little limited for me the past week, but I've made some considerable changes. I won't quote everyone, because it will just be way too long, but I do believe I have sorted nearly ALL the issues raised.

Where to start....... . I kept getting a bug where things that were supposed to spawn on the front layer were spawning on the middle, making it impossible to shoot, i'm guessing it was a thermo thing, where too much was spawning in one layer??? Well, I fixed that by adding holo three thick to all the enemies so it is now pysically impossible to spawn in other layers. The diggers have movers on them that make them spawn in the middle layer, and then move to the front when you enter, this too was playing up, but have fixed it. The diggers are now VERY easy to exit, and though it makes it tempting now to constantly respawn a new digger to gain the fully charged secondary weapon, It makes the game play far smoother.

2: The spider mech kept breaking: I realised i'd missed a couple of key pieces with the indistructable material tweaker.

3: Both the turdis and the Dragon fly could trap you against the bottom of the level: I've changed it so now they can't get right to the floor, allowing you to fly underneath them.

4: Some times the 'superduper power up' that was emmited half way through the attack on the dragon fly would dissapear, and so made it VERY VERY hard to take out the turdis: It now spawns differently, and if destroyed a new one will spawn.

5.The dragon fly 'sometimes' lost it's tail, though no one eles seems to have had this problem as yet. Took a long while to sort out, but done.

6: I've added a score system, which will show at 5,000, 15,000, 30,000, and 45,000. These scores will unlock prizes at the end of the level (new ending): The two mini walkers, the dragon fly, the turdis, and the digger.These can only be won if the game is played on hard, and one player.

7: I've added a few arrow hints on the tutorial, and an exit if you accidently enter the tutorial by mistake.

8: The cameras have been changed so the hud is in view the whole time now on both the tutorial and the main game.

Thermo is getting pretty tight now, and have had to delete a few things to make space, but i'm still willing to add/change things if more issues arise/are mentioned.

Thanks once again to all that have F4F'd so far, fingers crossed I can get some more positive reviews now?? :)

Shade_seeker

hey shade, just checked out your level, whoa.

you've got a great thing started, but I think you've got a lot of tweaking ahead of you.
first off, I don't know why but it took me a while to figure out AND i played you're tutorial, I think you could put in a bunch more dialog to explain, exactly what it what, I was getting confused with what was the powerups and how they work and the point of L3 etc. that aside, i did eventually figure it out but I think it could use some clearer explanation, that said i think there are some control things you can do to help with this.
1. please make auto-fire, your level is long and i only want to hit r1 so many times
2. auto spawn the helper droids, they were key to the first part and it took me a while to realize that i could only spawn after 4 powerups (yes i know you say that in the button), but I think it'd be just one less thing to think about, if they just came out on their own. (I'm also curious if the powerups still did something after i got the 4 and spawned?) and i noticed there was two kinds and i never figured out how i got each one.
3. i found that i never really used the shield, with the infinite respawns, and i never used the ultra attack, because the wait was too long, i think perhaps that instead of waiting and charging the attack which I (as a player) cannot tell if it's really worth it or not to wait and attack, perhaps it would be good if successful blocks charged the weapon, that way i'd use my sheild and i could charge my big attack without stopping me from continuously firing all at once.

Some other thoughts on the gameplay
I also think you should pull the camera out a bit more, its just a tad too tight
I broke 3 of the 4 legs on the spider, dont know if that was intentional
It was difficult to identify how exactly and where exactly i was dealing damage to the spider
some of the enemies do that grab thing where you can't really move, that was kindof annoying
there's that sphere enemy with the two cannons, who looks like the thing in R-type, at first i thought it might have been my ally cause i couldn't kill it.. but it killed me with those rockets, so i dont know what was up with him.
during the tardis fight i really had problems respawning, because there was way too much stuff following to the spawn point.
The dragonfly kindof got old fast because he pushed me right into the wall pretty fast, and i basically didn't do anything but stand right in front of him and shoot, dunno if there was supposed to be a tactic there.. but the first half took real long and after i got the power up he died almost too quickly.

anyways, i dont want to sound discouraging i think you've got a bunch of great ideas and i can see you've put a lot of effort into it, just a bit more polishing and your level can really shine. great work!


if you've got some time, please come check out my latest level, F4F in the sig, thanks.

Nice level its clear that you put a lot of effort into this. The visuals are great and the menu and tutorials are very well done. However i think the level is way too long and most people would just give up after a while. Also sometimes it gets a bit too chaotic and the camera doesnt help it needs to be zoomed out more to show more of the boss and less empty space behind you. If you made it shorter and a bit easier this would be a very good level because the visuals and gameplay are already quite good as they are.

Hi Fei0x, hit man, and thanks for your feed back....you both raised a fair number of issues, and will list bellow all the changes I made that covers all that was mentioned.

1: The Tutorial is now VERY indepth, with a hands on approach, that lists everything you need to know about the mechanics of the level. (Most were already mentioned in the original tutorial, but it would seem a lot of people didn't understand it, so have re formatted the text to be a lot more informative)

2: The digger now has a second main weapon, now if you hold r1, it fires torspeedos :)

3: On easy, you have far less enemies to kill, BUT points are deducted from your score for playing it on easy. ...oh and EASY mode is now the default mode, rather than hard.

4:There is now a little more story line, that follows on from the level 'house of the flying diggers', and there are a lot more hints IN GAME to remind people of certain controls.

5.The cameras have been changed, and due to so many bugs, I have been forced to remove the second digger, and make it a one player only level.

I have spent three months on this level, and am now hoping it will get a bit of positive feed back rather than negative jibes.....

Shade.

Shade_seeker, I've tried your level, and manage to finish it :)

Here is my feedback :

- Loved the references to Star Wars & Dr Who (I think I din't get all references but the ones i get were pretty cool) :) Didn't expect to see K-9...euh sorry K-8 at the end :)
- Power ups are cool. It's complicated to understand how it work at the beginning, but it worked and it worked well. The tutorial is well done, explain a lots of things, but I think you've made a mistake on the button for the Sield (I'm not sure as I'm usually confused with left and right :p)
- The level look nice, the boss are awsome, espescially the dragonfly.
- I don't know how, but I managed to destroy the spider without killing it : at one point, I got stuck ont the top of the spider and the digger exploded, the second after, there were legs floating in the air and debris on the floor. After i respawn, I killed a few ennemis and come back where the spider was, and the only remaining part was the weak point of the spider, it was lying on the floor, i have to shoot it and destroy it to make the dragon fly appear.
- It's maybe too difficult to read what's happening on screen, and as you have unlimited life, I used the brute force tactic against the dragon fly and the TURDIS.

Overall, good level, you have a lot of good stuff here, it just need some gameplay polish and difficulty adjustment to be brilliant !

This looks like an awesome level! I queue it and will play it soon. Can you play my level Cryo Lab Rat and leave a review (The level link is in my SIG ok)

Hey bud, as promised I gave your level a shot (with LBP.me acting up it's taking me a while to remember which levels I said I was going to play).

You've done some pretty amazing things here. Things that I have no idea how you would have even gone about doing, quite honestly. While I love the concept itself, I found the level to be pretty confusing, even with reading the tutorial (as I think someone else might have said). I ended up just shooting the h#ll out of the boss and hoping it would eventually explode. I did get the power ups and use the turret thing as well, but it still felt like it boiled down to basically mashing R1.

I think I liked the bug thing that came out of the boss more than the boss itself, because with that you had a pattern to follow in order to down the thing, whereas the spider tank I just blasted the crap out of it for a long time (it also flipped over a few times, not sure if it's supposed to do that or not). I also died probably 4-5 times I think, is there a game over if you die too much?

It really is a great level though, you've got some real talent to create something like this. Look forward to seeing more from you!