Sell me on Binding of Isaac.

[Draco18s]

Oh, definitely.

Playing Cogmind lately has been an...interesting experience, as there's a lot of things that I'm super glad the guy did (98% of commands can be done with the mouse, compared to a traditional roguelike, as well as ascii particle effects) but there's a few things that make me go "erf. I am not enjoying this."  And one of them happens to be that it's a stealth game lacking traditional cover and with a combat model that makes fights extra deadly.  One of the things I liked about Deux Ex: Human Revolution was that getting spotted was not a (non-)instant loss, but that you could fight your way out of a problem (and just so happened that I enjoyed trying to be stealthy more than the gunplay, so I tended to save/load a lot when I got spotted).

So its influencing a lot of my own design.  The blog posts on Cogmind's "information warfare" was quite an insight into things that could be done, and while I didn't borrow mechanics overtly, it got me thinking about how I might implement the same kinds of strategic play.

Invisible enemies counter traditional sight.
Wall-hacking counters invisibility.
Phantom enemies (total non-threats, but invisible) counter wall-hacking.

Disguised enemies counter traditional sight.
Signature scanning counters disguises.
Signature Scrambler tech counters scanning.

Etc.

And oh yeah, getting spotted is Hard (you've got your own invisibility and signature scrambler tech available), but getting into a fight shouldn't be a drawn-out loss.  And even a loss isn't game-over.

[Misery]

- Only being able to fire in the cardinal directions while my enemies can fire in any direction is a tad infuriating.

Annnnd....deal breaker.
A Wizard's Lizard had this problem and that was the point at which I said "nope" and quit; I hadn't even bought the game yet!  I was watching a Let's Play ("WTF is...?)
I completely agree that in a side scroller it's fine (hell, I love Rogue Legacy and Risk of Rain), but top down is just Capital-N No.

- No descriptions of anything in the shop before I buy it?  I have yet to buy anything, then.  With items I pick up, at least I can put them back down again for the most part.

Yuck.

As the bit with the direction restrictions go, I think one problem is if people go into it with the mindset of a "shooter" more like Nuclear Throne; a game like NT is, well, the shooting is all it has; it just outright doesnt HAVE anything else, so absoultely every element focuses on this.  It makes perfect sense, in that game, to be able to fire in literally any direction at all.   Isaac, though, was never designed that way to begin with.  Every now and then I hear someone brand it as a "twin stick" game, but it really just isnt.

Not to mention that I think the game takes at least some inspiration from the shmup genre, and I dont mean stuff like Geometry Wars.  Heck, Edmund (developer) had stated at one point that his original vision for the game was that it was going to be alot more of a bullet-hell experience.  However, Flash would have just plain imploded if he'd try to do that, so alot of ideas for enemy patterns and such were toned down and made more "traditional".  In a traditional shmup (and bullet-hell ones actually), you can shoot in ONE direction.  Most of the time.  Controlling the direction the player shoots in makes it somewhat easier to design patterns, which is something I say out of experience.  Designing INTERESTING patterns in a game when the player can attack from literally any direction is.... much harder, to put it mildly. And also kinda frustrating.  And then you have to add additional calibration to compensate for that, if you're trying to create patterns that are whatsoever complicated.  Not to mention the current method works within the game's overall structure, as in, the way layouts are.  And playing this, and comparing it to everything I've seen from THAT genre, I see *alot* of design similarities, including attack pattern concepts that frankly fall apart if full directional shooting would be added.  Hell, there's one boss in particular, the Haunt actually, that displays this problem.  Most players never, ever think to try an angled attack against him.  Aside from being hard to pull off, the Haunt is just a dangerous and imposing boss; most players will only ever attack him from the bottom of the screen.  He moves back and forth at the top, always clinging to that northern wall, and fires downward.  If you try to go up and shoot at him from the sides, he'll suddenly rush and be on top of you in an instant; it's a very damn stupid idea.   But because the overall pattern he uses was not designed with this in mind, I found a way to use an angled attack against him, which shuts him down pretty hard.  It's a difficult technique to do, and not even once have I ever seen another player try it, but because of the way his patterns are, he just cant do much about it, and... yeah, it just falls apart.  But his patterns are still INTERESTING, as they are with most of the enemies and bosses.

Wheras if you go and compare it to Nuclear Throne, well.... my one constant complaint about that game, over and over again, is that the enemy patterns are BORING.  I mean, I'm sorry, but they are.  I have alot of respect for Vlambeer, but I very honestly dont think they're very good at that aspect of design.  As a result, ranged attacks tend to be extremely formulaic, and MOST enemies just run at you and crash into you.  Heck, the ONE boss in the game that actually has complicated patterns is the Throne itself, but the way it manages is is that it DOES in fact control the player's attack direction: you *have* to attack it from below. You cant attack it at a diagonal angle or from the side or whatever, you are *always* below it.  That alone allows the patterns it fires to work.

This is a common problem I see in most free-aim shmups of any sort; alot of devs really seem to struggle with this one.  Absolutely bugs the hell outta me.   It's why I tend to prefer scrolling shmups in most cases; NT is one of the rare exceptions to this rule since it's just so damn good overall.  Usually though, non-scrolling ones, mostly twin-stick types, or top-down, honestly start to bore me after a time since the patterns used are just.... not very interesting.  Isaac ends up fixing the issue by allowing more traditional pattern design concepts to be more easily implemented by using the directional restriction.

I've forgotten what else I was going to say about all of that.

I've played a bit more this evening during a break from working on SBR, and I'm getting more used to the drifting of the bullets.  It makes it so that I can fire in more directions, kinda.  Still not my favorite thing.

This game has captured me enough that I think that I really want to take a lot of inspiration from the things I LIKE about this game and roll them into the next game we're doing, but change all the things I don't like about it.  I'm quite excited about that, adding on to the things I had already planned about the next game.  It simplifies some of my ideas and solves some problems to think of it as a roguelike and ditch the survival bits.  Runs in roguelikes are quite like going out on scavenging runs in a survival game, but way more interesting.

My thought is that you'd be out in space building up your own mothership (kind of like you build your manor in Rogue Legacy), and you'd be building up things for smaller craft as well.  You then pilot one of your smaller craft into one of a few derelicts that are near you out in space (your mothership moved while you were in your last run, so the derelicts are different every time).  The exterior of the derelicts would give you some clues as to what is going on inside there, and the risk vs reward ratios, etc.  So then you venture into one, and then it's a roguelike run flying through the derelict.  If you win the run, that's great, but you didn't just win the game -- just got some major victory on the path to ultimately winning the metagame portion.  And if you lose the run, you pop back out and the mothership has moved, etc, as with BOI or RL.

Combat-wise, all of what I had planned before would still work, but keeping it in semi-enclosed spaces and making you clear areas before moving on would solve a lot of problems like "just run past everything" or "there is no real environment, just empty space all the time."  I had already thought of a solution to the second part anyhow, but my solution previously to the first part was only having enemies drop loot.  This is a lot more interesting and familiar, and you can't just skip hard sections.

Anyway, I'm very excited about that.  BOI does a lot of things that I really like, and so does RL, but they also both do a lot of things I don't like.  That tends to be a good recipe for me to step in with my own design.  It was rather how AI War sort of spawned out of Supreme Commander in some ways.

I get more and more curious about that next game every time you mention it.  For what it's worth, I do think you guys would do better with a roguelike style of design than a more "survival" sort of thing.  When I heard THAT bit originally, I seriously just had a hard time really picturing it happen.  It just.... I dunno, it just doesnt quite fit to me.  Hmm, kinda hard to explain why.

didn't this start out as a shmup-ish sort of thing?  Or am I just projecting my own ideas onto it?

[Draco18s]

On the one hand, yes.  I get it.

On the other hand, I disagree.

I can understand the desire to make it a more "bullet hell" experience where your limited shot direction makes for more interesting fights due to bullet patterns.

But.

And this is a big "but."

1) As a designer, you have to be incredibly well aware of how these bullet patterns stack up when multiple enemies are present.
2) As a designer, you have to be incredibly cognizant of terrain such that the player can move into openings in those patterns, despite obstacles.
3) As a designer, you have to be incredibly careful of making sure that the attack patterns have openings that allow the player to move in and attack meaningfully.

A Wizard's Lizard did none of these things.  One enemy on screen?  No problems.  Sometimes the terrain would get in the way of a clean shot, but there was room enough to maneuver through the openings in the patterns and wait for the enemy's movement to take it to a place where you could get a shot.  But as soon as you had three or four enemies on the screen, and not even ones that even attack that often, and it suddenly became a nightmare just to avoid any attack at all, and getting a shot in was pretty much luck.  And four enemies?  The game didn't even stop there.  The guy I was watching play managed to get a room with 8 at one point and he was all of like 10 minutes into the game.

Bullet Hell games work because Rule 1 is never violated.  Even when there are dozens of enemies on screen, their shot patterns and placement are expertly choreographed such that there is always an opening somewhere (unless you've really gone done fucked up and didn't kill stuff--what are doing, you panzy? fire the guns!).
Secondly Rule 2 is never violated.  Bullet hell games rarely if ever feature terrain of any kind, and typically when they do, the standard enemies are fewer (and just as likely, subject to the terrain rules themselves, either by potential collision and death, or reduced firing cones).
Rule 3 is primarily the domain of boss monsters, which avoid Rules 1 and 2 by simply removing those possibilities during a boss fight.  There are no other enemies and there is no terrain.  Some of the bullet patterns I've seen for some bosses in the big-name bullet hells, like Touhou, are freaking gorgeous.  And I never fail to locate openings in them (although I might fail the reflex challenge of using them!)

[Misery]

On the one hand, yes.  I get it.

On the other hand, I disagree.

I can understand the desire to make it a more "bullet hell" experience where your limited shot direction makes for more interesting fights due to bullet patterns.

But.

And this is a big "but."

1) As a designer, you have to be incredibly well aware of how these bullet patterns stack up when multiple enemies are present.
2) As a designer, you have to be incredibly cognizant of terrain such that the player can move into openings in those patterns, despite obstacles.
3) As a designer, you have to be incredibly careful of making sure that the attack patterns have openings that allow the player to move in and attack meaningfully.

A Wizard's Lizard did none of these things.  One enemy on screen?  No problems.  Sometimes the terrain would get in the way of a clean shot, but there was room enough to maneuver through the openings in the patterns and wait for the enemy's movement to take it to a place where you could get a shot.  But as soon as you had three or four enemies on the screen, and not even ones that even attack that often, and it suddenly became a nightmare just to avoid any attack at all, and getting a shot in was pretty much luck.  And four enemies?  The game didn't even stop there.  The guy I was watching play managed to get a room with 8 at one point and he was all of like 10 minutes into the game.

Bullet Hell games work because Rule 1 is never violated.  Even when there are dozens of enemies on screen, their shot patterns and placement are expertly choreographed such that there is always an opening somewhere (unless you've really gone done fucked up and didn't kill stuff--what are doing, you panzy? fire the guns!).
Secondly Rule 2 is never violated.  Bullet hell games rarely if ever feature terrain of any kind, and typically when they do, the standard enemies are fewer (and just as likely, subject to the terrain rules themselves, either by potential collision and death, or reduced firing cones).
Rule 3 is primarily the domain of boss monsters, which avoid Rules 1 and 2 by simply removing those possibilities during a boss fight.  There are no other enemies and there is no terrain.  Some of the bullet patterns I've seen for some bosses in the big-name bullet hells, like Touhou, are freaking gorgeous.  And I never fail to locate openings in them (although I might fail the reflex challenge of using them!)

Oh, I know all of this.  Having played the genre to bloody death, and done my own designs.  Hell, I've done bullet-hell in a platformer of all things, definitely with full walls and platforms and whatnot, and can make it work out perfectly.  Not to mention the work for the Last Federation expansion, where it needed to be congested and complicated yet TECHNICALLY dodgeable (as in, I made certain that I could dodge it all on a consistent basis) even by a bloated ship in a turn-based movement mode (this was alot more difficult... there was yelling involved).  But back to Isaac...

Isaac works for this reason:  Rooms are not procerually generated.  FLOORS are, but rooms are not.  They are pre-made, and selected from some unholy number of total possible rooms for placement in the level.  Each one is quite carefully designed, enemies are carefully placed and chosen.  The only thing that's random is that enemies that are eligible for it (most of them) can randomly be chosen to become "champion" versions, where they gain some additional property (maybe they explode upon death, or have more HP, or whatever).  Typically you dont get that many of these per room.  But yeah, even the most cramped of rooms can often contain many things firing stuff all over the place.... but it works.   In addition, bullets in Isaac do not penetrate rocks/walls.  Well usually.  Isaac himself can gain the ability to do this via certain items.  Enemies, however, cannot (though some are capable of blowing up the rocks).  This too has clearly been taken into consideration when a room has a bunch of bullet-spewing monstrosities in it.  And of course, this is all designed with Isaac's limited firing directions in mind.

Not to mention that Isaac's hitbox is alot smaller than it looks.

Heck, some modders have gone in and made a ton of changes, creating more of a "true" bullet-hell experience; in other words, updating enemy firing patterns (and movement patterns) to spray much more stuff all over the place.  Having messed with these, they still work fine, so long as the creator is placing and considering things properly.  Which is what I did with the bullet-hell platformer sort of idea.  I can make cramped areas that still WORK because I know everything about how to make complicated (and very thick, much of the time) patterns function, with little space to move, often blocked off by stationary barriers, while always ALWAYS making sure that absolutely everything is technically dodgeable at all times.  And these arent simple patterns as a rule (except my earliest stuff).  I'm talking Touhou-level complexity.  Though, that's not quite my style; I actually prefer doing Cave-style patterns.  Gorgeous does not = functional or difficult, much of the time.  Touhou actually isnt very hard for me, and often creates difficulty in it's patterns by using RNG (bullets that may move in random directions, for instance... it doesnt do this SUPER often, but it's still there, and still annoying).  Cave-style patterns are pure function, often all bullets being the same color.  Though when I do it, I use lots of colors, because I can.  And yes, I use multiple attack-sources at once.  ONE firing point (be it a stationary or mobile enemy, or a static thing that cannot be destroyed) is dull, and from playing the specific sorts of bullet-hell games that I do, I'm very used to having well more than one firing point on-screen at all times, even just on a single boss, so all of my own designs are influenced by this.  And I test the funky hell outta these; I do not leave in even the possibility of truly undodgeable patterns, because I bloody hate when that happens.  Every now and then I'll find a game that might have a moment like that, and it just drives me up the wall.  Seriously, it's *really* annoying. 

Of course, making something like that which truly WORKS takes a deeply stupid amount of time (usually), but still...  I've been able to prove that it's all doable.  Though I really do prefer a more "traditional" experience over that.

The bullet hell genre can fit into many different concepts:  But the key is the designer's skill in handling that type of design.  I find that this is actually a pretty rare skill for developers to have (considering the current gaming landscape, this makes sense).  ALOT of them can get this wrong.  Usually not "totally unplayable" wrong, but wrong enough to where you've a very high chance of taking the occasional genuinely-cheap hit.

[Draco18s]

The bullet hell genre can fit into many different concepts:  But the key is the designer's skill in handling that type of design.  I find that this is actually a pretty rare skill for developers to have (considering the current gaming landscape, this makes sense).  ALOT of them can get this wrong.  Usually not "totally unplayable" wrong, but wrong enough to where you've a very high chance of taking the occasional genuinely-cheap hit.

This.
And if you say Isaac went to the time and effort, then I'll consider checking it out again.

[x4000]

The bullet hell genre can fit into many different concepts:  But the key is the designer's skill in handling that type of design.  I find that this is actually a pretty rare skill for developers to have (considering the current gaming landscape, this makes sense).  ALOT of them can get this wrong.  Usually not "totally unplayable" wrong, but wrong enough to where you've a very high chance of taking the occasional genuinely-cheap hit.

This.
And if you say Isaac went to the time and effort, then I'll consider checking it out again.

I am no expert on that genre to the degree that Misery is, but I feel like they did.

[TheVampire100]

I still prefer Steel Saviour when it comes to Bullet Hell.
But I've never actually seen Isaac as Bullet Hell game.

[Misery]

The bullet hell genre can fit into many different concepts:  But the key is the designer's skill in handling that type of design.  I find that this is actually a pretty rare skill for developers to have (considering the current gaming landscape, this makes sense).  ALOT of them can get this wrong.  Usually not "totally unplayable" wrong, but wrong enough to where you've a very high chance of taking the occasional genuinely-cheap hit.

This.
And if you say Isaac went to the time and effort, then I'll consider checking it out again.

I am no expert on that genre to the degree that Misery is, but I feel like they did.

Yeah, I really do think they did, for the most part.

Now, that's not to say that there arent broken rooms, because there are.  Every now and then, you'll run into one; a room where you're almost guaranteed to take a hit if you dont have either enough speed (or enough damage to simply wreck the threat before it hits you) or flight.  This doesnt happen very often, but.... well, in a game with like 1000 freaking rooms, it's utterly inevitable that such rooms exist.  It's a very minor complaint though, considering how well all of the other rooms are made, and the simple fact that these broken rooms just dont show up much

I still prefer Steel Saviour when it comes to Bullet Hell.
But I've never actually seen Isaac as Bullet Hell game.

.

Yeah, the developer ended up going with a more "traditional" style of pattern design due to the limitations of the Flash engine used by the first game; it would have just exploded if he'd tried to go further.  So instead of a bazillion bullets, you get more of a combination of a decent number of bullets, plus alot of enemy movement that complicates things.  Ends up really working in the game's favor quite a bit.

[x4000]

Hey Misery, you're going to contract with us again for the next game, right?  Because you're one of those guys with a sense of design for the bullet patterns like nobody's business, heh.

[Misery]

Hey Misery, you're going to contract with us again for the next game, right?  Because you're one of those guys with a sense of design for the bullet patterns like nobody's business, heh.

If you still want me to, yes (though as with last time, I'll want a bit of time to mess with it first to make sure I can grasp it and such).   I'd been wondering about that.  And my parents have asked me about it, oh, 20 million times.  I rather quickly regretted pointing out the whole thing to them the first time. 

That'd be nice though, I've been absolutely bored out of my mind lately, outside of gaming.   Gaming has been good lately, alot of Isaac here since I bought the Wii U version as well just.... because.... and more of AI War, and Super Mario Maker that just came out (I hate all trampolines now), and one of my absolute favorite shmups of all time (Eschatos, which I actually consider better than most of Cave's stuff) is releasing on Steam in 6 days, this just after Raiden 4 (which is superb and also murderous) hit Steam as well.  Hell, Cave has stated that they're bringing some of their stuff to Steam later in the year, which was previously unthinkable.  I'm relatively certain reality is beginning to crack.  Or maybe I'm beginning to crack, never quite sure.

Outside of the gaming though, uuuuuuugh.  Couldnt be more bored.  You know you've not got much to do when you go to the Walmart just for the entertainment of walking around and looking at stuff you're not actually going to buy.  I wish I was making that up.


I'm curious, are you guys still going forward with October as the release date for SBR?  I keep wondering how that's going, particularly after you listed all of those big changes you were doing to it (which, again, sound really good). I'll be jumping back into that whenever those hit.  I havent had a good turn-based game for awhile, aint been too much of that sort releasing lately that looks interesting.  Or at least none that I'm aware of... Steam's bloody store page could be hiding things from me again.

[x4000]

Awesome on your availability!  That will be great.  And I'll get you in much earlier on that one, so you won't be rushed at the end or anything.  Sorry to hear that you've been so bored in other areas of life, though.

October is still the planned release date at this time for SBR, yes.  I don't know that I could afford another pushback, although we'll see what happens.  Releasing substandard would be worse.  The new changes are practically a remake of the whole freaking game when it comes to the nuts and bolts of a lot of it, even though the overall idea is the same as before.  The new build is intended to come out this week.  I had been thinking that it would be yesterday, but there was more to do than I realized.  It's coming on well, though, and I think we're 3-4 days behind that schedule at the most right now.

[x4000]

By the way, if you're that bored right now, I could definitely use some contracting help on filling out commands for the lines that people have been writing.  I think that's really been slowing the writers down, and it might be a lot faster for someone a bit more technical like you.

[Misery]

Awesome on your availability!  That will be great.  And I'll get you in much earlier on that one, so you won't be rushed at the end or anything.  Sorry to hear that you've been so bored in other areas of life, though.

October is still the planned release date at this time for SBR, yes.  I don't know that I could afford another pushback, although we'll see what happens.  Releasing substandard would be worse.  The new changes are practically a remake of the whole freaking game when it comes to the nuts and bolts of a lot of it, even though the overall idea is the same as before.  The new build is intended to come out this week.  I had been thinking that it would be yesterday, but there was more to do than I realized.  It's coming on well, though, and I think we're 3-4 days behind that schedule at the most right now.

Ah, I wasnt really rushed  for the TLF expansion; really, it sorta felt to me like I had all the time in the world for that. Back when I used to work, every job I ever had was menial crap with some guy complaining at me that stuff needed to be done RIGHT NOW, or things of that nature... ugh.  So the TLF thing was downright relaxed compared to.... any of that.  Heck, 1/3rd of it was probably just me trying to get the blasted numbers right to balance everything out, rather than writing up the actual scripts, which didn't take nearly as long as I'd thought they would.  Amazes me, really, that just balancing things can take such a big chunk of time even compared to all of the technical stuff, as game design goes. 

Of course, there were only so many ships to do for that, dunno how much stuff would be needed for that next game, but it should be interesting nonetheless.

Good to hear the SBR changes are on schedule, then!  And coming soon, too, I'll look forward to that.

By the way, if you're that bored right now, I could definitely use some contracting help on filling out commands for the lines that people have been writing.  I think that's really been slowing the writers down, and it might be a lot faster for someone a bit more technical like you.

I did see a bit of the stuff that some of them had started to write, but what's this about commands?  I dont get that part.  Or I'm missing something, I'm tired and just about to go to bed here, so I'm a bit spacey at the moment.

But yes, if it's something I'm capable of doing, then sure, I'll help out.

[x4000]

Ah, good to hear that the TLF stuff didn't feel rushed.  It's a bit of a blur to me, so I couldn't remember, heh.  Anyhow, yeah, there will be quite a bit of more time with the next one, and quite a bit more needed, too.  Though a lot of it less complex individually (or else things would just be nuts).

The Commands are in the commands column here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d3pL_cz8vkCmvkt5Ly63asvd2rHPqPKVoS2_ytCTxiE/edit#gid=0

Shoot me an email and I can email you more info about how to set that stuff up.

[Misery]

Allright, I sent a quick e-mail.