SHMUP Creator 1.4 was just released!
This update contains a lot of new features as well as numerous bug fixes and improvements. Thanks a lot to the SHMUP Creator community for helping us find bugs and giving us encouragement and great suggestions!
01. Feature highlights
Copy and paste between levels:
A much-requested feature, this allows to copy a full objects hierarchy, load another level and paste the selection. Objects hierarchy and triggers links are preserved, and this allows for quickly sharing complex gameplay between levels.
Tate windowed mode:
You can play SHMUP Creator games in Tate mode! Players can now rotate their screens by 90 degrees.
Right-click on your desktop and choose Screen resolution and change the Orientation to Portrait. What's new is that in a stand-alone game the windowed mode now keeps the Tate 3/4 window ratio.
Please note that the start menu is not automatically resized, so for now you need to design it to be readable in any ratio.
Refire limit:
You can now limit a weapon's rate of fire to avoid players being able to rapidly tap the fire button to achieve a greater rate of fire than auto-firing the weapon. With refire limit enabled the player will not be able to shoot faster than the weapon time between bursts duration. This solves potential exploits by players but also gives you the flexibility to design this feature into your weapon system.
Particle system from the center direction:
A new “From the center checkbox” forces particles velocity to come from the emitter position. Think of a ray starting from the emitter position and going to the particle birth position. Using negative velocities will move the particles from their birth position to the particle emitter position.
Score text decimal and thousands separator formatting:
You can display scores up to the thousands separator; the choices are no separator, a comma, or a decimal point. Note: In-game scores and multipliers also use these settings. Speaking of which, scores and multipliers now have separate scale settings.
Start hyper particle effect and sound:
When the gauge is full, you can play a sound and start a particle effect.
Better enemy HP bars:
You can now move the HP bars to any screen position. For bosses, you can now choose the number of layers as well as individual layer colors.
Chain combo system, keep the chain alive:
There is an option to keep a chain alive if an enemy's HP is decreased.
Keep reading to find out more information about these new features and the full list of all improvements and bug fixes!
02. Community shout-outs and game releases:
It's also a good time to say that we are really proud of our community: 4 games made with SHMUP Creator have been or will be published on Steam this summer!
These games are not only great games coming but are the confirmation of what we wanted to achieve at the beginning of our journey to build Shmup Creator. The tool is powerful enough to create professional games but easy enough for non-programmers to use it to unlock their creator’s dream shmup. We closely follow the development of these products and those games are like our babies; we are proud of them. :)
By the way, you can chat with us and with the creators of those games on our Discord server:
https://discord.gg/rBzRUpS
NANOFORCE tactical surgeon fighter
Climb into the cockpit of an overpowered micro-unit and fight against an invisible enemy that threatens the Human race. Progress through numerous enemy waves and bosses across more than 7 levels filled with action, secrets, and more!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2254900/NANOFORCE_tactical_surgeon_fighter
VERISIM SKIES
Skies is a Vertical Shoot 'Em Up with an emphasis on story and cinematic action. Go forth, Champion. Find your purpose. Fulfill your destiny. Accept your fate.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2358970/Verisim_Skies/
FIERY RIVAZ
Reanimate Shmups!!! It's time to revive the shmup genre. You can expect a shooter that focuses on varied and innovative level design. It is accompanied by cool 3d graphics and a great soundtrack.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2284590/Fiery_Rivaz/
INTERSTELLAR SENTINEL
A Sci-Fi fantasy Shoot'em up with a boatload of goodness!
PERDITION SPHERE
Another outstanding achievement, Aru won Best Game at the Bullet Hell Jam 2023 with Perdition Sphere! ːsteamthumbsupː Please try this great game for free: https://wingedfox.itch.io/perdition-sphere
03. Full changelog:
NEW FEATURES:
. Copy / paste between levels: you can copy objects, load another level and paste the selection
. Refire limit: avoid shooting faster than the time between shots to avoid exploit
. Tate windowed mode
. Improved engine performance
. Controls settings are now saved per project
. Player orientation and only lateral can be set per level
. Decreasing enemies' HP can keep the chain alive
. Choice of bar layers number and colors as well as X position
. Player collision shapes have a new Collide with enemies check-box
. Gauge Ready particle system
. Gauge Ready sound volume
. Bullets animations are offset in time
. Items can have a negative power-ups value
. Duplicate Weapon Set button
. International score number formating
. Scale for scores and multipliers sprites
. Particles velocity from the center or to the center
. Kill Trigger can disable the score and items for the killed enemy
. Stand-alone game preloads more textures to avoid performance hitches
. Faster rectangle selection
. Can choose the Text box letter typing sound effect
. Added Active bullets debug text
. Added a triggers selection filter
. Pad shoulder buttons can be set as a gameplay button
BUG FIXES
. Crash moving collision shape points after deleting something
. Updating a 3D model crashed the editor
. Possible crash with invalid high-score characters
. Button trigger with button2 was using button1 input
. After the hyper was stopped if triggered during focus the weapon was set to the non-focus one if the player was still focusing
. Possible wrong collision results in stand-alone games
. When the player dies, items stopped their movement and curves
. Disable color correction post-processing with default values for performance
. Start menu start sound duration was not the same after coming back to the menu
. Laser were cancellable even if Cancellable was unchecked
. When the player dies, attached SFX remained in their death position instead of disappearing
. Particle systems were sometimes shrunk when the boss was destroyed
. Pressing Ctrl + B wasn't restarting the level from the beginning anymore
. Displaying Text triggers with Picture: None could cause the start menu background to be 100% transparent after going back from the game
. End of level Level 'level to load' buttons were not updated
. Stop Start particles when the enemy is dead/paused if they are looping
. When paused, alt-tabbing and going back to the game made the music resume playing, despite the fact the game was paused
. If an attached enemy was starting first, when the parent started the enemy was starting again
. Stop updating the triggers if the level is completed
. Gauge start sound UI was duplicated in the editor
. Text sound volume was not using the game's global sound effect volume
. Music fade could sometimes use a wrong start volume
. Level sometimes didn't loop as expected
. Small hiccups after bullets change direction
. Moving the "text" object with the char timing set to anything but "0.000" and having "text" object set to "world position" hides the text when being dragged in the editor
. Start menu 'press any key' was not really centered
. UI polish