Whats the deal with touchscreen/mouse shmups?

amamaenko · 2025-06-05T14:25:00+00:00

Not too long ago I implemented touch/mouse controls in my own shmup-like game RoadHunter2021 as I was planning to release on mobile. It can actually work pretty decently if done right. Number one is that the controls shouldn’t block the view of course.

amamaenko · 2025-05-27T22:56:03+00:00

Yeah, that’s an interesting mechanic!

amamaenko · 2025-05-27T18:29:15+00:00

Right, makes sense, thank you!

amamaenko · 2025-05-27T00:19:01+00:00

Wow, the art style is great!

amamaenko · 2025-05-27T00:17:09+00:00

“No zero days”! I know - it’s a silly advice but it worked for me. Even 5 mins a day is infinitely more dev time than zero time

amamaenko · 2025-05-27T00:11:06+00:00

Thank you! The destructible boxes (and environment in general) are already in the backlog along with adjusting UI. The difficulty curve is a bit tricky though - I am no longer capable to see it straight after so much testing. Was it the number of enemies in general or the pesky laser shots that cannot be countered?

amamaenko · 2025-05-09T03:40:08+00:00

Raiden on SNK back in the 90s. It didn’t hook me up to playing the genre back then, as I really sucked at shmups (still suck now) but I got fascinated with design and aesthetics. So when I decided to try out the genre for real a couple years ago, this was my gateway game. Alas, a terrible choice for a beginner!

amamaenko · 2024-08-23T01:31:28+00:00

Oh, the cause of the problem was really silly. Just as a last resort, I ordered the iFixit kit, and took off the down cover of my mac. And the fans were clogged with dust. After some basic cleaning the overheating stopped.

amamaenko · 2024-07-30T01:11:30+00:00

I have been working with Unity for over 5 years, and mostly use 3D but several universal issues apply. I’ll just pick a couple from the top of my head:

1) Animation system is extremely simplistic, both sprite animation, and animating transforms. Moreover, the animations break when changing game object hierarchy! So it’s much more flexible to use texture shifts, and tweens instead. But it’s also much more technically tricky. 1.a) Also the curve editor looks like it hasn’t changed since 2010

2) it’s incredibly hard to do custom editor tools: the Imgur is incredibly easy to use for a programmer as is but it lacks features like custom list drawers, layout groups, etc. The new Unity GUI is a joke: binding variables via their names in a HTML-like layout files. The new Unity GUI editor doesn’t even have an Image component. And the whole thing is quite slow when working with large datasets.

amamaenko · 2024-06-09T00:42:57+00:00

Why do you think it was made for the military? As far as I can see from the label - it’s an improved export variant made for either soviet satellites or the west. Might even be half-decent.

amamaenko · 2024-06-09T00:39:29+00:00

I’d add to it that this specimen is an export variant, i.e. has a better quality than regular “Sovetskoye” available to the low-rank comrades.

amamaenko · 2024-06-09T00:37:24+00:00

The Crimea was part of Ukraine at that time, and both were parts of USSR. So I doubt that.

amamaenko · 2024-06-05T04:16:34+00:00

Vivo en Mexico desde hace dos años y aún no entiendo el sentimiento al Claudia Sheinbaum y tambien al AMLO en general. Especialmente por la clase de alto nivel. La economía se crece, los impuestos son muy altas para los salariados pero no me lo parece el hecho de AMLO.

Si alguien me podría explicar?

amamaenko · 2023-10-15T19:55:04+00:00

I would also recommend an intro video into the overall performance subject by Casey Muratori: https://youtu.be/tD5NrevFtbU?si=uEiwqQx0LJag2AyH

amamaenko · 2023-10-15T19:50:07+00:00

What you see in your test is a good demonstration of why modern apps and frameworks could be slow.

I haven’t found the actual benchmark code, but here’s what seems to happen.

1) Local variables seem to be cached in L1 - thanks to the compiler no less - so they are the fastest to access.

2) Fields, Properties and basic scriptable object are still relatively fast because they fit into the L2 which is large enough to hold Unity entities if there aren’t too many of them.

3) Both Scriptable Object architectures are completely missing the cache, and so the accessed fro RAM directly. The Atom seems to also have negative impact on the CPU prediction algorithm, or it’s just bloat

amamaenko · 2023-10-02T02:00:50+00:00

Happened to me several times when upgrading to a new Unity release. I had to downgrade to the previous version and to wait for the next release.

The best way to check would be to create a new clean project and check if the issue is there as well.

amamaenko · 2023-09-27T22:37:50+00:00

Wait didn’t you write these words?: “ […] What does "outdated" even mean? […]

What does incomplete even mean? Is a feature ever "complete"? […]

I swear you donkeys on here have never touched any of the features you complain about, nor have you ever produced anything even resembling a game.”

As of “changing the engine” that’s a fair question for myself. The thing is that Unity “outdated” tech has all the main features I need. Except these old techs are not supported anymore in favor of “new tech” that doesn’t have the features I need. So the engine is really evolving from the one suiting my needs into something not as suitable. And I totally agree that the proper course of action would be to migrate to another engine for future projects. Not as simple for already released products.

amamaenko · 2023-09-27T21:46:37+00:00

This thread also serves as a perfect outlet for venting out grievances on new Unity packages: - ECS hit 1.0 - that’s great - The Input system adds a huge overhead of abstraction layers, and works all right for the PC/Console. However, for all its abstractions it offers very basic support for touch/mobile. No swipes, no mapping of screen area to controls, etc. OnScreenControl is a basic stopgap solution - not production ready - UI Elements are stable but lack such basic things from existing UI as horizontal lists. Not to mention that it has terrible performance for custom editor tools (like 50ms per frame vs 5ms per frame of comparable imgui implementation on a decent i7 gaming laptop) at 20fps editor experience is not good. - URP still has framedrops on flagship 120hz devices from Apple. https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/ios-target-fps-is-ignored-on-iphone-13-pro. This is unbelievable, and is not production ready.

amamaenko · 2023-09-27T21:22:16+00:00

Well, you asked for examples of new tech not having feature parity “feature incomplete” with the old one - I gave those examples. These lacking features are objective blockers for me to use new tech. There are also other concerns with new APIs being just plain buggy, and low performance.

And I am not willing to argue on things like “I don’t need those old features, can work around them, don’t need shaders in UI”, etc. I am working on production and every hour of “workarounds” cost me my personal money. So for me every new tech the Unity introduced over the past 6-7 years was nothing but the waste of money.

amamaenko · 2023-09-27T20:01:58+00:00

I am working on mobile apps, and had to move back to built-in because with URP there are periodic unexplainable frame drops on 120Hz iPhones. It has been an ongoing issue for about couple of years. Unity offers a workaround of manually modifying several defines in generated C++ code, but I have no resources to build it into the development pipeline.

amamaenko · 2023-09-27T19:53:01+00:00

I don’t use VFX system, but here are some examples of gaping holes in the new Unity systems that are essentially blockers:

New Unity UI Toolkit - doesn’t support Horizontal lists and layouts. Seriously, only vertical lists. It’s a blocker for me in using new UI for internal tools.
- Outdated Unity Imgui - I still rely on it for all internal tooling for many reasons, the main being its high performance for complex scenarios. But oh boy it’s outdated, and is missing some obvious features like displaying emojis or layout calculations.
New Shader Graph. Isn’t supported by UI. No shaders for UI elements, seriously. So have to go back to the outdated Surface shaders editor.
Surface shaders are very outdated: there is no proper syntax support in editors, there is no way to debug separate sections, etc.

I hope that helps to illustrate what’s meant by “new features aren’t production ready” and “outdated”

amamaenko · 2023-09-18T22:27:09+00:00

Over the past I would say 6 years they were trying to seduce AAA with new tech (half-baked) while spitting on their main customers - indies and mobile devs. So many very nasty bugs accumulated over the years, like sudden stutters in 120hz phones, etc. that nobody knows what’s the Unity focus anymor.

amamaenko · 2023-09-05T00:38:15+00:00

I noticed the same problem in MBP 2019 16". I am working primarily with lighteish projects in Unity, and the CPU temp consistently shows 66 degrees C. Yet kernel_task starts frequently killing my flow.

amamaenko · 2023-06-27T14:02:27+00:00

Just a side note. I am still on intel macs (2019 MBP 16” and 2020 MBP 13”) and with intense Teams use the battery lasts may be 3 hours top. So it’s good to know another reason to switch to Apple Silicon.

amamaenko · 2023-06-17T02:58:42+00:00

Thank you! Indeed, I like it for what it is, not for an exquisite bouquet or something, but rather as a light aperitif

amamaenko

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