I think bombs should have a longer drop range when hitting grounded enemies... but this game is definitely a fantastic one. Just out of curiocity, how many packs are in the game thus far and when people release new ones, will the option be there to download them like in beatstar? Or do we have to manually put them into the packs folder? Right now I believe the future war pack is the only one that's available... I'd also suggest that once more packs are created, that there be a starting set of two or three packs to choose for those who don't like 8 bit or have trouble hearing it. Also I agree with dark's assessment of the learn game sounds menu... I was definitely really confused my first few games and that caused me to die early. Lastly, whichever voice filters in some of the menus seem to be a bit overdone... I like the effect, but maybe less of it would be better especially since some do seem to have trouble understanding it. But I love the game!

@crashmaster I like your ideas especially since I never played on those old arcades... Those weren't around anymore by the time I was old enough to make use of them... The only Idea I don't like is the arcade speaker thing, as this would make all of the game sounds a lot harder to hear.

Thanks for all the nice comments. Yes, right now packs ahve to be put in the folder manually. Maybe we'll add automatic downloads later. Right now future war and Xevious are the only two packs available, but I'm hoping the community helps us with this and comes up with ideas.

@crashmaster, while I do like your ideas, and I did say I'm aiming to simulate arcade-ish games, I'm not interested in simulating the machine's workings. Not only would it bloat the game, but it would also take more time to write things that would really not be part of the game itself. Also the original Xevious didn't have a startup sound, and neither did Fardraut Densetsu, which is what this is based off of.

TO the person who suggested a longer bomb range, that's why the powerup is there. The regualr bomb range is supposed to be quite tiny so you have to work to destroy things.

People usually think I'm very weird because I love chiptune, I collect old assistive technology and do all kinds of random vintage sound things even though I'm only barely 16. At least I know I'm not alone. The music in Xevious was always super simplistic. In fact, in the original Xevious there was only one bgm track, the one monophonic one in the game. People used to hate that about the game, so Fardraut Densetsu added a bunch of tracks. Every bgm track in VFB is from there, except for the mothership music. I was actually expecting a lot of people to complain about the fact taht everything is 8-bit, so maybe when more packs are around, I can make an alternate one to start with, although I know I won't be using it myself.

That is linear predictive coding. Used on *A LOT* of old hardware and even some newer toys as well. Speak 'n spell, Street Electronics echo, etc. In this case, we used bitspeek, which is a vst.

so I've been playing this game on and off today.  It's a lot of fun.  currently playing with the 8-bit pack.  I like the sounds on the futuristic pack but they  kind of remove the classic arcade game feel that the 8 bit sounds provide.  I haven't downloaded the update that was just recently released, but I do agree with above posters that we should be able to disable music volume from options.  Also, any tips on getting those annoying towers?  I usually don't press x fast enough and so the tower never becomes unhidden. 

I was just thinking. Maybe when people upload new packs, they should be able to supply some form of contact information, in case their submission gets rejected for some reason; that way you can tell them what the problem was and they can fix it. Actually, that should be added to Beatstar's pack uploader as well. But that's another topic altogether.

Yeah, that was a bug in the first version, redownloading the game should fix it.

@Defender, thanks for your comments. There is actually a way to clear the whole screen, I believe it was explained in the manual. If you have three shieldbits to spare, you can press A to fire off a grenade sort of thing. It will travel forward just like a beam, and if it manages to hit something, it will explode and destroy every enemy on the screen.

The reason why the obtained sounds are mentioned in the sounds menu is because in other packs they may not necessarily be speech, like for example in future war.

I'll look into changing those menu options. I do realize the BNS is kind of a terrible synth in some cases, but it was kind of meant to be retro.

I don't have trouble differentiating armored airships from ground bases, but I can probably try to find another loop for them.

As for the items, they are completely different wavforms. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm used to chiptune and 8-bit sounds, but I can tell a sawtooth wave apart from a 12,5% pulse just fine. The PCEngine did have a pretty nice sound chip though, so I can probably make it pull of a few different waves.

Nah, not in it's current form. But you could run it under bootcamp or a VM, that's actually entirely what the game was programmed under.

oh o, was rather hoping that it could be made for mac, i don't really want to keep windows around just for games lol

hi, i like the game. the old, and the futuristic wars pack too. but what annoys me the loud music. for some strange and interesting reasons i am not able to turn down the volume of it with my home and end keys on my laptop. and i agree with the poster, that disabling the music in the menu would be good.
keep up the good work,
M.

I'm liking this game so far - I've played it since it came out.  However, I think it feels a little slow, in terms of the firing rate, even at higher speeds.  I wonder if it would be possible to have a cheat code/cheats menu where we could enable a greater rate of fire (maybe decrease the times between beams by a small fraction (I cant give exact amounts as I don't know the speicifcs of the time between firing at the moment).  Or just simply increase it for a little for the next update.

Other than that I like what I'm seeing, other than the fact that I can't name a pack either (there seems to be no pack name file int he example pack to change it).

Keep up the interesting work.