I found the speed of the game quite off putting, it felt wrong that the ship rotated so slowly towards the mouse cursor. I'm sure it was designed that way, but I can't help feeling the game is screaming to be faster paced. I only played it for about 5 minutes, so I'm not sure if it actually picks up pace later on or not.

Yep - I noticed that the gameplay seems to be a bit "broken", too. In such hectic games you naturally expect precise and responsive controls.
The slow rotation creates the illusion that some of your shots goe in the COMPLETELY wrong direction (only because the ship hasn't rotated towards the mouse cursor). That way the mouse control seems to be completely detached from the on-screen action...

I think it was designed for a controler,. It playes quite well on my 360 controler, the mouse play is a bit counter intuitive wheras in the controler ver. the cursor stayes close to the player and moves around with the stick. I'm having the same problem with Gyoza,. Im coming to belive that a slight reworking of the code is needed as even though it is quite easy to map the x-y axis stuff to the mouse cursor position the results are far from the same,. some amount of fly by wire is perhaps needed.

Those who complain about the speed notice a problem but make the wrong conclusion because of lack of information. Lack of information because those are players who only played the first few levels or didnt pick up power-ups.

What actually happens is this: Succeeding in this game is all about the powerups. Powerups in this game aren't just a minor bonus but really live up to their name. The discrepancy between a ship with no powerups and a ship with just a few powerups is HUGE. Even the first speed powerup and first fire powerup do not just double your firerate and turnspeed but MULTIPLY it.

This is IMHO the actual problem with the current gameplay. Scoring and progressing in levels is to the most extend only about powerups and scoring combos - anything else isn't even secondary.

So, the current problem with the game IMHO isn't its overall speed, but that the difference between no powerups and a handful of powerups is too big. Without powerups, you're totally useless and with a few powerups you're almost godlike.

A different and minor issue is a problem with the font... the "1" doesn't really scale well to lower fontsizes (check the highscores to see the issue in action).

P.S.: My advice for the beginner-players of the current game version is this: Whenever a fire or speed power up shows up - and you are busy with enemies - drop a bomb and get the powerup! Those are more valuable than the bombs, because they make a big difference and last.

Getting your scores up is mostly a question of combos. In the first levels, try to get cocky combos. In the later levels, focus on bullseye and hero combos - and try to kill enemies before they reach the center, because orbiting enemies take longer to kill than those which directly approach you. Also, dont forget the bombs... if stuff gets critical, drop them.

Looks like a clever remake/pseudo-sequel to the Vectrex game Bedlam. I'll have to try this one out.

Sorry, Lyx, but I don't draw the wrong conclusions. The problem is not with the turret turning speed, it's with the mouse control. jph wacheski made a good point about the controller.

No matter how fast your turret is spinning/shooting you can't tell its current position unless you look right at the center of the screen and that is counter productive as you have to focus on the mouse cursor and your enemies first.

The turret has such an indistinct shape that you can't make out the direction it is pointing to with your peripheral vision.

A simple "laser pointer" coming from the turret's gun would solve all these problems as you would see where you are aiming no matter what.

Note that many mouse-controlled shooters take this approach in one form or another (flashlights, laser sights etc.).

There's a couple of issues relating to the speed I think.

1: The actual turn speed itself.

Once you get a suitable amount of powerups, this is pretty much negated temporarily - *unless* you happen to die. In which case, when it steals your speed ups (if I recall, it resets your speed but only drops you one of the other power ups down) - you're as good as useless.

Alright in the early stages, but as you progress it's a crippler.

2. Imprecision.

There's been quite a few times I've found myself shooting down an aisle only to be ever so slightly offset from where I should be shooting and missing the target by a tiny bit. With the turn speed being generally slow, this usually results in a situation that I can't pull back from easily - most of the time resulting in a couple of nasties already too close to take down.

If the game were more of an amble, neither of these things would really be an issue I don't think. But as it's a fast paced shooter, they verge far too close to game breaking for me and I find it more an exercise in frustration than the wild blast it's meant to be.

With a joypad, I found it much worse than mouse controls, sadly.

The original Bedlam managed to get round the speed issue with the "fast rotate" button, sadly, that's something missing from this game, much to its detriment.

So, kind of like Star Castle in reverse?

We'll keep an eye on what people think of the speed.
If enough people think it should be faster we'll change it.
For me personaly it would make the game a bit too easy but we are open to change.

v.2 uploaded.

has faster turning speed as requested ;)

http://www.quantasm.ovine.net/index.php

Thanks smila. I've got to say this to me is the best thing to happen to arena shooters since Typhoon and Echoes. Wonderful game :-)

V2 seems almost perfect to me. What's left are imo two non-critical issues:

- the mouse-sensivity issue which some people mentioned, could maybe be adressed with a mouse-sensivity option.

- So far, i have not reached higher areas than 30, so the following is written from that perspective: The number of different arena-shapes seems to be rather low, since they start repeating fast. A higher number of them would significantly add to variety in gameplay IMO.

Love the visuals. Love the (v2) pace.

Yay - much better now, smila. I actually enjoyed the game now. Rank 12 on my first attempt. :-D

What I noticed is that sometimes your turret shoots slightly "off" your mouse cursor - no, it's not the turning speed or the rotating arenas.

Also, I'd still like to see a tiny little line extending from your turret's firing point to see where you're currently shooting. =)

Much better, feels a lot more fun now :D

Man do i hate it when i complete the Quantasm-Bonus and then accidentelly hit a warp token. I just probably did my best run yet, except of doing the above TWO times, so i ended up with a score, which would probably be near rank 70 in the online scoreboard. Seems like how well you use the quantasm bonus really accounts for more than 80% of your score.

We went for a little shooter that you can pick up for 10mins and not get too frustrated with.

Everyone seems to like the faster speed now - nothing like a bit of "user feedback" to make a game.

Im not sure about a line extending from the turret indeed from the scores people are posting I dont think its needed.

Lyx -> exactly what the warp powerup is all about :)

About the mouse imprecision issue:

I think there may actually be three aspects at work:

1. Mouse Sensivity not configurable. For example, in my case i consider it a bit too low.

2. The former may lead to keeping the crosshair more near the turret. At that point, resolution limits may kick in. You can see this in action, if you trigger the lazer powerup and then try to aim with the crosshair near the ship.

3. To counter that, you can keep the crosshair further away from the turrent. But then it may get lost in the action. I dont know if the following would work, but one thing which maybe could increase its visibility, is if you add a subtle black halo around the crosshair before adding glow effects - and drawing all that stuff on top of other things. That way, it may appear more seperate from the rest of the stuff on screen. I suspect aesthetically this idea would either look quite well or really ugly :-)

As for the quantasm bonus. I can understand that you want to make it really important. However, take into account that the more important you make it, the more trivial the rest of the game becomes - i'm not sure if you intend the game to be more than 80% about doing combos with the quantasm bonus - you decide :)

Loving the game. Addicting as hell...the really evil "one more go" type of addiction:-)
Btw, how about higher resolution and a 16:10 widescreen mode? The circles look a little bit odd when stretched...