Sanctimonia says:

@Stirring Dragon

Thanks for that detailed and thoughtful post. You have no idea how much I appreciate that, as I don’t get a lot of feedback on Sanctimonia or Sylph.

Agreed on point 1, though I’m not sure how to elicit feedback from people. Right now I’m not reaching a large audience, and relatively speaking probably never will even after release due to OS exclusivity unless I get featured prominently on a Linux gaming site or can launch on Steam or other digital distribution services supporting Linux.

On point 2 (Sanctimonia), while I agree I bit off more than I expected to chew, with enough time I think can get it down. The most complex and difficult systems have already been implemented, requiring only refinement, optimization and minor bug fixes. Once I go back to work on it full time I expect perhaps another year for it to be complete enough to become viable as a playable game. If it were any other MMO (as in content-driven) I’d be dead in the water. The only thing that’s saved me is the procedural world generation and that the gameplay results from creative use of systems rather than pre-defined missions/quests/etc. Right now everything works that’s supposed to and it’s at a tipping point where things will rapidly begin coming together as a game rather than an engine, so I’m actually looking forward to getting back to work on it.

Agreed on point 3, although I know there are gamers who play games from multiple genres; I just don’t know what the percentage is.

Agreed on point 4, although the influence of Ultima on something like Sylph isn’t obvious. There are no RPG mechanics other than weapon upgrades and “health”. It’s more a matter of extreme attention to detail, giving the player little things they may not notice immediately but would be amazed by and appreciate upon later discovery. As far as Sanctimonia goes, it’s more or less a real-time version of what Ultima Online was conceived to be, rather than what it actually was. It’s based more on the idea and spirit of UO than the game itself.

On point 5 (renaming Sylph), I agree with the logic here but think this is a special case. Sylph is a “spiritual successor” or “love letter” to the 1986 game Silpheed by Game Arts. The title “Silpheed” (a Japanese game) is derived from the word “sylphid”, defined as “a mythological spirit of the air”. An alternative spelling is “sylph”. I keep waiting for a letter from Game Arts telling me to cease and desist, but I hope the difference in spelling is enough to prevent it or that we could perhaps work out a deal if it comes to that. So in this case the title has an appropriate meaning and connection to the name of the game it is based upon.

On point 6 I agree, although I’m limited in my capacity to influence this. I’m working pretty closely with the composer and musician Mordi on the soundtrack for a significant cut of any revenue Sylph may make. The tracks as they stand will be rearranged in order to delivery their payload more concisely and effectively before final release and should for the time being largely be considered works in progress. The actual music from Silpheed was a mix between rock and funk with some serene melodic bits interspersed, which is the target goal for Sylph’s soundtrack. I’ll pass this along to Mordi for his consideration.

On point 7, yes, that’s my voice with the pitch lowered and some reverb. The good news is that it’s a debug sound effect that will be disabled in the final release. I basically did it for my own amusement. I am however considering adding some com chatter with CIC which will degrade in quality as the player gets further from Earth. If I do that I plan to have my brother (or his wife) do the voice acting, as they’re both actors out in Hollywood doing their thing.

On point 8, the HUD/OSD is based directly on that of Silpheed’s:

http://www.silpheed.org/SilpheedPC8801/Screenshots/pc-dos-screen10.gif
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/silpheed/original/24.png

The weapon icons do look like shit, so I plan on changing those. I also need to add missiles so the player knows how many they have. The frame around the main OSD is a 3D model with separate lighting from the rest of the scene (rendered orthogonally), so I can play with that pretty easily. The weapon selection screen will eventually show the SA-08 inside the spacecraft carrier’s hangar (each stage ends by docking with a carrier), so its barebones look will disappear at some point.

On point 9, yeah, the shields are something I’ve been screwing with since near the beginning and I’m still not happy with them. The latest is that they’re rendered twice, once with the static “plasma cloud” texture and a second time with the “static/noise” texture used for force fields on base stages. I also rotate them so they twitch around a bit when being hit. Technically a non-spherical shield would rotate with the ship since it was being generated by it, but I like your idea about making the shielding a duplicate of the ship model with a different texture. Making it “grow” would be tricky as I’d have to join the separate ship sections in Blender to fatten it and save that as a separate model, but I could render the same ship part models a second time with a shield texture…that has potential for awesomeness if I can get OpenGL to behave.

On point 10, the camera perspective attempts to emulate that of Silpheed, whose camera perspective was (and is) rather unique among shoot ’em ups. It’s as if you averaged the “tilt” of a vertical shooter with After Burner or Galaxy Force such that enemies still appear from near the top of the screen but it’s neither 1st-person nor top-down. Each stage actually has a slightly different perspective based on its type (land, space, asteroid base). There are also two camera modes, one is loose and the other locked to your ship, similar to games like Gran Turismo. Here’s what it looks like in Silpheed:

http://youtu.be/6D9s_5EUGYk?t=3m59s

The perspective in Sylph is actually more 1st-person than Silpheed, so a change making it more top-down could potentially have a positive effect. The problem with that is applying it to the first stage (the only one with a horizon since it’s on the surface of Earth), would hide the horizon. Since the camera can be set per-stage, I could change stages without a surface (space stages) to be more top-down and the Earth and asteroid base stages to be more like Space Harrier. One issue I’ve discovered in playing with the camera is that it’s harder to judge distance and fire/maneuver accurately when the camera leans toward 1st-person and in “loose” mode. Having the camera lock tightly to the ship would reduce the issue.

To your point however I have been considering implementing a third camera mode that is straight up 1st person though I’m debating if it should be behind your ship (After Burner/Galaxy Force) or in the cockpit. Maybe a fourth camera mode so we can have both? 🙂

As far as how “3D” or planar the gameplay is, it’s fully 3D with the left analog controlling lateral movement and the right analog controlling diving and pulling up. Your cannon shots’ trajectory are also affected by your orientation on the X axis (pointing up/down), so you can aim shots at higher or lower targets. Despite this, there are rules in place that subtly “compress” the vertical axis to prevent it from becoming a full flight sim and “encourage” 2D, planar gameplay. So it’s a bit of a hybrid. The novice can play it as a fairly 2D game while the expert can take advantage of the third axis of movement and orientation as they see fit (subtly limited as it may be).

Some specific examples of how the 3D environment is compressed include slowly pushing your ship toward a median elevation between a “floor” and “ceiling” elevation relative to the landscape’s elevation (only on the Earth surface and asteroid base stages) and compressing the two vertical coordinates in 3D distance calculations used for collision detection so over/under shots are more forgiving. Games like After Burner employed techniques like this fairly effectively, giving you the sense of full 3D without the negative gameplay consequences of getting lost in it. There are still some things (particularly on space stages where the player ship elevation is not limited) that need to be ironed out to make gameplay more challenging. I need to find a good “leading” algorithm for bullet velocity, for example, so shots at a player with a static velocity will hit them.

Anyway, it’s awesome to talk to someone who knows what’s up with how to make a game. Game dev’s a rabbit’s hole of madness, but there’s nothing quite like it, and when it works it’s immensely satisfying. If you want to keep it going here, via email, on the phone, Google Hangout, or whatever I’m down. Your feedback is certainly invaluable, so big thanks.