Topic: Where's my Damn BlastWorks!

Blast Works isn't a port of TF, it shares some of the mechanics and includes four ports as bonus material but it's primarily designed to be a WYSIWYG implementation of BulletML (and fails at that because it doesn't allow BML's tree structure, only a linear one so many patterns you'd see in the original wouldn't be possible, never mind the worse rendering that doesn't even rotate the projectiles to face the attack direction) with some other crappy editing tools taped on. I noticed Eurogamer loved the tools, maybe it's my familiarity with Blender that makes me compare them to a professional level tool but I feel very limited most of the time when working with any BW editors. Doesn't help that there's no editor to define enemy movement patterns (seriously, an enemy behaviour editor wouldn't be hard, just use the same stage mechanism, add conditional and unconditional jumps to it, maybe even put the weapon triggers in there and call it a day, that's how I fed the data into the enemy patterns when I wrote a simple shmup in BASIC) and the only ones you can get are a predefined set which is even lacking some that the devs evidently used (e.g. "chase player while facing him", all you can select is "chase player without rotating") and there isn't even a way to get turrets to track the player. There's also some stupidity with not being able to store geometry as shape data in the specific (enemy, ship) editors so if you designed a ship in one of them and later decide to make it playable/an enemy too you have to remake it from scratch, you have to use the shape editor to be able to put it into the other editor despite the other editors having the full shape editor functionality too. There's no vertical mirroring which would be very useful for archieving a top down look, there's too few options for projectile looks (can't even make them look like missiles, if you want any geometry you have to attach a part to the enemy that then detaches and you can't launch a part more than once, would have been easy to let the user render a shape to a sprite and use that for the projectiles), blocks must have at least one axis aligned to a cardinal axis and, most importantly:

THERE ARE NO POWERUPS! Seriously, these idiots didn't even bother to implement something so basic. The only available tool is that sticky parts option and while that can be disabled if you don't want Katamari Shmupacy there is no alternate option for powerups. Of course it's possible to use a hack by giving a powerup capsule enemy an inactive part that is released when the enemy dies and let the player collect that but the parts start rotating upon release and if the player picks them up at the wrong angle... tough luck. Plus of course these pieces attach to the player's ship. I've seen levels that expected you to get VERY close to a weapon cache and shoot the weak point so the piece spawns inside your attach range but most of the time I approach them slightly wrong and collide with the weapon which is instantly fatal (can't disable collision on pieces like that) so I prefer to shoot them from a distance and hope the weapon comes down at the right angle. Seriously, what idiot thought it'd be a good idea to make a game focussed on User Generated Content and force a gameplay gimmick on the user that about 95% of them will want to rip straight out when making their own design?

Oh and levels can't attach ships (and preview mode always gives you a default ship) which is plain stupid since every ship can have its own bullet pattern and obviously a level has to be adjusted for the firepower of the player (if you want to make a ship with a firepower comparable to the Core Cannon from Space Invaders... good luck testing that) and so far almost every level comes with a comment "use with ship X". Selecting a user level is also really damn tedious, you have to select a player number, a profile (and it defaults to new profile instead of the last used one!), select a difficulty, a ship (with a pair of left and right arrows when you could have 20+ of them installed, if they're not going to let level devs restrict them at least they should have shown a selection menu like in the editor) and then finally the level you want to play. If you want to play another level you have to go through that whole damn selection process again.

BTW, the music sucks, from what I see most people use the TF music instead of the new tracks. The built-in singleplayer levels are pretty mediocre as well IMO.

Thanks for saving me some money.

I think many of KDR's comments are probably fair depending on what you're looking for. It works for me, though my opinion is possibly also shaped by the fact that I got a good deal on my pre-order at under £19. For a budget release I think it's pretty good, though I'm disappointed I cannot create a particle laser for my Defender ship like the one in the arcade.

For what it is I think it's pretty nice and the ability to share parts without having to use friend codes (you can optionally of course) was pioneering and I'm looking forward to Boom Blox Blast Party since it's doing the same.

Well, after all the rubbish that Gameplay has given me, I found a great offer on ebay for a nearly new copy for £17. I've canceled my order from Gameplay. I can't wait, I've had a bit of a Tumiki Fighters phase playing it quite a bit, I can't wait to start building famous sh'up ships like the Vic Viper, R-10 and Ikaruga!

Meh, all the existing ones have been done already both in 3D and as sprites (colored blocks arranged like pixels).

Also R-10? Which game is that from? I know in R-Type 1 and 2 you pilot the R-9 but which added the 10?

R-10 is in Delta and Final I believe.

I take it that you think TF was a superior game? Glad I'm not the only one!

I like BlastWorks. It can be tons of fun. But Tumiki Fighters is (IMHO) a lot more polished as a game. The attachment mechanism is more balanced, the sound effects are better, and the enemies don't crowd the screen so badly.

IMO they should have stress-tested their tools by implementing those four ported games using their engine in order to make sure that the tools are versatile enough to create different designs. I suspect the developer was simply incompetent and only got lucky to some degree because they got their design document handed to them.

Uhh... you must not live in the USA because it's been out here for a very long time + the price dropped to $20 new. It's not such a big deal, although it is an okay game.

Well, this IS a thread about the PAL release date. I got the game as an NTSC version from a UK online store back when it was new in the US but most people here are looking for the PAL version.