Bullet Hell Ponies

Dear Princess Celestia...

2012-02-07T21:15:00.000-08:00

Still working on some ideas for Zecora. It's going alright but slow...

so in the meantime....

Here is Twilight reading off what she learned about Heresy to Princess Celestia

Zecora Preview

2012-01-29T13:30:00.000-08:00

Here is a Zecora Preview. I had a huge creative block with her since she isn't shown too often in the series. I still need to come up with a few more attacks for her.

After she's done, I'll start constructing the level and enemy spawn patterns and 1.6 will be out.

1.7 will be the epic battles against the princesses.

Then I'll flesh out dialogue and story.

After adding bombs and more balancing, It should pretty much be complete

Still Alive

2012-01-07T15:30:00.000-08:00

Yup I'm still alive. Sorry Ive been gone. My significant other has been gone for 6 months for college and came back for 2 weeks to spend time with me over the holidays so I had short hiatus from coding. Now that I'm back, I'm working on Zecora and then all that's left is deciding the spawning patterns for enemies and 1.6 will be released.

After defeating the Protoss, our ponies return to Equestria to find that the planet has not been saved, but is still becoming more and more chaotic and there is disharmony amongst ponies. They are forced to fight against their old friends to get back to the Castle of the Pony Sisters deep in the Everfree forest.

That will be what is included in Release 1.6

The next release will be the fight within the castle against Nightmare Moon and Celestia. And then the mystery boss who is behind it all (probably not so much a mystery).

And after that, I'll be editing the dialogue to better fit the story, work on a new title screen, add some finishing graphical touches, and then continue to apply game balances according to feedback.

Oh yeah and I need to develop a bombs system somewhere in there.

Happy New Year Trixie

2011-12-13T17:51:00.000-08:00

PREPARE FOR THE GREAT, THE POWERFUL, TRIXIE!!!!!

too many fireworks...

It's Nightmare Moon

2011-11-27T16:36:00.000-08:00

EVERYPONY RUN!!!!!

After finishing Derpy, I needed to celebrate.

So here is what Nightmare Moon would look like if she was a Chaos Grey Knight Terminator

Derpy took this picture with a paper bag.

Images after the post break, because Blogger does weird things to my page

Also, artwork for Trixie is done and code soon to follow

Derpy Complete

2011-11-26T23:15:00.000-08:00

Derpy Done

Yay, now to eat some muffins.

1.6 Slowly but Surely

2011-11-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

Finally got back to Coding after a long break of no sleep due to work. Here, have some Discord and Derpy!

1.6 All Pony Preview

2011-10-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

Ponies! much prettier now!

Yeah... so sorry I haven't had much time to work on ponies lately.I have a lot of crap I'm dealing with at work and Ive been really busy/tired. I think I want to pop out a couple more enemies before I start constructing spawn orders and level stuff. One of my biggest concerns is art. I have no scrolling background for Equestria. I plan to do a "Ponyville" area and then an "Everfree Forest" area and have enemies according to area. My main concern is enemy variety in this case. I don't know if just the 3 pony enemies can sustain enough variety in the level. I also need more Everfree Forest enemies. I'll also not be working on this during Christmas break unfortunately, which is a shame.

I'll be continuing my slow and steady progress. I just hope that people don't get bored and impatient. I know I would. :/

I would definitely like to thank all of you for your support and interest. Especially those of you who I see so much giving me all this amazing feedback. I definitely could not have been able to do all of this without you.

Thank You

1.6 Pegasus Preview

2011-10-08T20:23:00.000-07:00

These guys actually turned out pretty sweet. I am really happy with how they came out.
Don't worry, the unicorns will be drawn to equal quality.

Also, Im looking for something I can use as a scrolling backdrop for the equestria level. Some kind of overhead map style image that I hope I can mess with to create 10 screenlengths of scrolling background (I dont want landmarks to repeat too often). Please let me know if you guys are aware of such images.

1.6: Of Unicorns and Cutie Marks

2011-10-07T18:49:00.000-07:00

More Previews

Unicorn texture is placeholder. and Cutie marks still move. I just wanted it still so you can see it clearly amidst youtube framerate.

You really need to see it in HD to notice the timer ring around the cutie mark. there is a black border that fades to white and then flashes during the last second before change.

1.6 Buffalo Preview

2011-10-01T13:36:00.001-07:00

Finally got the color fixed

I think Im gonna start working on ponies as the basic enemy of the Equestria stage, but Im having trouble thinking of their shooting patterns

so far:

Unicorns: double helix sine wave bullet streams(because they are magic?)

Earth Ponies: circular shockwaves of bullets (as if they are pounding the ground with their hooves (despite the fact that the ponies themselves will not be animated and there will probably be no stomping sound effect))

Pegusi: wtf should pegusi shoot?

1.6 Cockatrice Preview

2011-09-25T01:26:00.000-07:00

Here is a preview of what the cockatrice is gonna look like. Lasers will turn you to stone. non-lunatic = less lasers.

1.6 Parasprite Preview

2011-09-23T15:55:00.000-07:00

Soooo.... Parasprites...
Opinions?

Homing and Multiplying versions

also Manticores. What should they do?

SEASON 2!!! And Dialogue Help!!

2011-09-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

OSHIT!

Adding Discord Boss that uses your attacks against you..... to my queue ..

Been too busy at work to get much done on the game again, I need a bit of help with the dialogue. I'm gonna attach the dialogue that I have in the game to this post here for anyone who wants to help me it more interesting.

Dialogue Text Files

These might look a bit weird. They are extracted from my code. Its readable

Release v1.5.0

2011-09-06T22:10:00.000-07:00

Latest build: Fullscreen Windowed

There is now dialogue and some background story. I'm not really a good writer, but the skeleton is there and each pony shows her own personality (especially pinkie pie). The dialogue portraits look kind of wierd because I pretty much drew them with a mouse in Photoshop and I'm not too great of an artist. It took forever.

I would love to get suggestions, advice for the dialogue. Heck I would love it if someone wanted to provide whole conversations to replace mine.

This part was hard for me. It's really out of my element so it was hard to stay focused, and it definitely needs some fleshing out, but for now, on to the Corrupted Equestria level!

Soon...

2011-08-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

Its been a long time since the last update. I've been struggling a bit with the dialogue engine I'm having less time to work on this, my coding sessions are getting smaller and smaller, and I'm making some ridiculous errors that I shouldn't be making. The engine is pretty much done now except for a few bugs I need to work out. Then I just have to fill it with the text for the story and go hunting for facial expressions for the ponies and enemies to display when they are talking. The next update will include this. Then I will start working on the Corrupted Equestria level. (skipping the Hybrid level because this one sounds so much more fun.)

Update: I have got the engine working and some default dialogue that needs to be tweaked for each pony's personality. I now need pictures. Pictures of ponies.

Thoughts for next update

2011-08-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

Pic Unrelated

I havent been able to work on BulletHellPonies for the last couple weeks and Ive just come back with some ideas that Ive been sitting on.

Im envisioning some touhou style dialoge. probably between levels and before bosses. Ill probably have to do my own cartoony art for the starcraft portarits to make it consistent. At least as a placeholder, I can grab some renderings I hope.

This dialogue system will be the medium in which the story will be narrated.
Here are the cliffnotes:
-Hybrids have dominated and taken control of the Starcraft races.
-~~They have stolen the moon and replaced it with a fake moon~~
-They have stolen Equestria (and replaced it with a fake Equestria?) and taken control of the minds of its inhabitants.
-The Mane Six must work together to save Equestria from its captors.

This means that there will be a Hybrid level as well as a Corrupted Equestria level. (due to constraints of art, it might look just like regular Equestria). Im looking forward to an epic double battle against Luna and Celestia. Im thinking about making the battle similar to Utsuho for Celestia (for obvious reasons). Luna is gonna have her own craziness too. They will be very different from other bosses. There will most definitely be a Derpy Hooves Encounter too.

Thoughts?

Update1.4.0

2011-07-31T17:07:00.000-07:00

Latest Build: Fullscreen Only Today

Filly Mode video provided by supermark, a french e-famous guy!

So between my new work and life issues, I really have been too busy/tired/toogladtobealive to be able to spend too much time working on this. I've added some new enemies that are going to make playthroughs much more interesting. Backgrounds and Music have been updated too! Tell me what you think!

In the next release, I plan on adding more story (complete with touhou-esque dialogue) which will make way for a new level against the Hybrids and a following level that may include a battle with Trollestia herself!

but for now, here are this release's updates. The list seems small, but hopefully, it feels much bigger than that.

v1.4.0
-BUFFED Twilight (Z shoots faster and pattern is different)
-Overhauled Terrain
-Added ground units
-Twilight's attack now looks less "weak"
-Bullets for Battlecruisers, Science Vessels are bigger
-NEW MUSIC BY kIL6969 I'M SO EXCITED I'VE NEVER BEEN SO EXCITED EXCEPT FOR THE TIME I WAS LIKE HEEAAAGHGH!!

Update 1.3.0

2011-07-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

Latest Build: Fullscreen Mode Windowed Mode

Some Reason I thought I posted this and turns out I never did..

minor upodates to some ponies and enemies. And healing overhaul

-NERFED Rarity (Fashion shield now costs more magic)
-NERFED Rainbow Dash (Rainbow Flash shoots slower at low magic levels)
-NERFED Rainbow Dash (Sonic Rainboom now costs more magic)
-BUFFED Rainbow Dash (Sonic Rainboom does more collision damage)
-BUFFED Applejack (Z now gets bigger with more energy to compensate for almost no spread)
-BUFFED Rarity (Z now has higher damage when magic is at least half full)
-Eggs are now much more nasty
-Archon movement altered
-Psionic storm is now a bit different
-Magic capsules no longer heal you when your magic is full
-Cutie marks heal twice as much

Next update will be bigger with new terrain that will make it so I can make some land units without it looking rediculous

Update 1.2.1 Hotfix

2011-07-02T11:15:00.000-07:00

Latest Build:Download Link

This is a re-roll for some of the things I forgot to do in 1.2

v1.2.1
-BUFFED Everypony (smaller hitbox)
-fixed a glitch that caused the game to repeatedly spam the collision sounds if you died by Yamato Gun
-corrected fullscreen settings
-fixed Sentry movement speed for Derpy and Filly Modes
-edited some BattleCruiser shooting patterns
-missile pods shoot slower

v1.2.0
-BUFFED Rarity (range scales a bit higher to compensate for new difficulty levels)
-BUFFED Rainbow Dash (higher energy now shoots slightly faster)
-added difficulty levels
   -derpy mode
   -filly mode
   -pony mode
   -trollestia mode
-allocated more memory for more bullets due to the new difficulty modes
-attempted to fix an issue that caused most users to freeze after death or victory
-Carrier and interceptor bullets move differently

-fixed some typos
-lowered pony voice volume slightly
-added volume controls to pause menu

Make sure to check it out!

Also, the difficulty modes might not be balanced so I would love feedback on the new enemy shooting patterns

I challenge you all to try and complete Trollestia Mode!!!!!

Big Update 1.2 (Difficulty Modes)

2011-06-30T23:50:00.000-07:00

Download Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?8qa2ftp52fg6dfg

Big update here. Main thing here is the difficulty modes. At this point, for the most part, higher difficulty = more bullets. however, some enemies do have different shooting patterns. I'm definitely looking for feedback on the new shooting patterns. Here is a list of all changes in v1.2

Note: I test the game in windowed mode because its a hassle to debug in fullscreen and I forgot to set it back to fullscreen mode. I will fix this and make a new upload tomorrow

v1.2
-BUFFED Rarity (range scales a bit higher to compensate for new difficulty levels)
-BUFFED Rainbow Dash (higher energy now shoots slightly faster)
-attempted to fix an issue that caused most users to freeze after death or victory
-Carrier and interceptor bullets move differently
-added difficulty levels
-derpy mode
-filly mode
-pony mode
-trollestia mode
-allocated more memory for more bullets due to the new difficulty modes
-fixed some typos
-lowered pony voice volume slightly
-added volume controls to pause menu

ALSO: For those of you who were experiencing freezes when you win or die, I moved some initialization code into a more stable location in hopes to fix this issue. Since it has always worked fine on all my computers, I am not quite sure whats causing this or what it looks like. So if this is still happening, please give me as much detail as you can about the situation and your computer so I can try to isolate the problem

Update 1.1

2011-06-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

Latest Build: Download here

IMPORTANT: I forgot to put the required redistributables in the readme. make sure to download and install these:

Microsoft .NET 4.0

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17851

Microsoft XNA

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=20914

This update is a small one, mainly balancing and some sound. Here is the full list of changes:

-NERFED Rarity (Z is now 25% less cooler)

-NERFED Fluttershy (X costs twice as much magic)
-BUFFED Twilight (Z riccochet actually targets other enemies)
-Twilight spread shot reworked
-Twilight damage reworked
-added voices on pony change and death (from kyrospawn's soundboard)
-game is now fullscreen
-graze radius increased
-added readme with better documentation

Coming soon:

-fix those typos

DIFFICULTY MODES:
-Derpy mode
-Filly mode
-Pony mode
-Trollestia mode

MLP vs Starcraft

2011-06-19T22:13:00.000-07:00

Okay, first time using blogger...

I dont have enough spare time for any Blog design so sorry if this page will forever look like crap, but We'll see.

Sooooooo I started off this game as an elemental shooter as some side project to practice my C# skills on my quarter off, before I start my first real full-time job.

PinkiePie=Fire
AppleJack=Earth
TwilightSparkle=Lightning
Fluttershy=Wind
Rarity=Water
RainbowDash=Psychic

These confounded ponies made me change everything!

I also originally shoved my game onto mediafire and submit it to equestriagaming, but after I was told by a fellow brony that my work got posted on equestriadaily, I thought I needed a central location to distribute my ponies and keep track of updates

WELL THAT PLACE IS HERE

(once I clean this up a bit... my spare time meter just ran out)

So here is my game, with typos and bad documentation in all its glory
http://www.mediafire.com/?mfnqurjuy87aaqg
(seriously I need to fix this thing up a bit)

Oh and also, youll need these to make the game work.

Microsoft .NET 4.0

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17851

Microsoft XNA

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=20914