FAQ:What is Danmakufu and where can I get it?Danmakufu is an engine built for shmup fangames that works well for making individual boss patterns, whole fights, stages, and whole games if you want to. Danmakufu is used for games like Hollow Song of Birds (and other Kaisendo titles) as well as many Western fangames. Danmakufu has no interface – it’s just writing code. This may seem like a steep learning curve at first, but start small and work your way up – nobody got to where they are now without starting at the bottom. We’re here to answer questions should you need the help.
Please refer to the Danmakufu links section above for acquiring Danmakufu – I’ll give you an extra tip and say use ph3sx. It's much newer and relevant. It’s going to work out a lot smoother, trust me.
What if I don’t want to use Danmakufu to make shmups?A few years ago I would’ve said that you would have to make your own engine (which is still a very viable option, if you’re tech savvy) but there actually is an alternative: LuaSTG. Personal opinion aside, it has been used to make a lot of the Chinese fangames we are now seeing, and it’s pretty powerful. There’s even a graphical interface if the straight code is a bit too intimidating for you. The biggest problem is that it’s very unexplored and the original Chinese documentation is still being translated, so our side of the world hasn’t had the best experience with it yet. Should you still want to try it, here’s the wiki which has a section for how to get started:
http://en.luastg.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_PageWhat if I don’t want to make shmups at all?Unfortunately, I don’t have an easy answer for you. Use whichever tool you feel comfortable with! I started with
GameMaker:Studio and that’s an easy recommendation for any kind of 2D adventure – it’s easy to learn too! If you want to make RPGs,
RPG Maker is probably your best bet. If you want to go the visual novel style, I’ve heard
RenPy is probably the easiest way to do that. If going for 3D is what you need, I don’t think there’s much better than
Unity for that. You don’t have to follow my recommendation to the letter though – use whatever framework/tool you feel comfortable with. That’s the biggest takeaway here.
How do you make your own stages using ZUN’s engine (like custom Phantasm stages, etc.)?While it has been previously stated that it is not supported in this community, I’m pleased to state that after a long process of reverse engineering, some very awesome people broke down the whole ECL scripting format that ZUN uses for stages and enemies and there’s an ongoing effort to reverse engineer the rest of the custom formats.
I would like to stress that this counts as a mod (unless using all-new assets) and should accordingly go in the Touhou Projects subforum – make sure it goes in the right place. That said, it is very welcome here.
What’s up with Woo? What happened to ph3?Mkm, the original Danmakufu creator, left the source code to ph3 on his website for people to tinker around with. I took up the mantle alongside a couple others to modify the source code and try to optimize it a bit and potentially add new features, and that ultimately became Woo. It’s looking like mkm has left the engine in our hands, so I don’t think we’ll be getting a ph3 update any time soon.
Are there other ways of getting help with my game besides the Q/A thread?While I personally don’t use the IRC chat to know how active it is, so feel free to give that a try!
Server: irc.ppirc.net
Channel: #danmakufu
Main MotK channel: #shrinemaiden
Should you need more focused help or with another framework that isn’t Danmakufu, I have no better recommendation than the Bullet Hell Engines Discord server -
https://discord.gg/bhenginesHow do I install other scripters’ creations for Danmakufu?Some scripts will come with a standalone version of Danmakufu, so you can have it in its own folder. If you just see a bunch of folders and scripts, unzip the package it came in into the script folder in your Danmakufu installation.
If that script is a custom player, be sure to put that in the player folder instead.
I want to create my own stuff, how can I learn?I’m glad to hear you say that! Make sure you have what you need before continuing – for Danmakufu, all you’ll need is Danmakufu itself and a text editor (I heavily recommend Notepad++ or Sublime Text, but Notepad, Mousepad, or your OS equivalent still works). For other programs, make sure you have whatever tools you need to work in them. There are some tutorials that exist for Danmakufu and ECL, and the LuaSTG community is in the process of creating some tutorials. I’ll be linking as many resources I can under the resource links above. If you need help, be sure to try the Q/A thread or one of the other resources in the above question!
My script keeps giving me an error/crashing! What do I do??Odds are, you made a typo somewhere. Danmakufu isn’t the best when it comes to telling you exactly where your errors are, but it will tell you the majority of the time what the error is. Be sure to triple check all your lines and be on the lookout for misplaced braces, parentheses, semicolons, etc. If it still doesn’t run right, we have a Q&A thread for Danmakufu and the like.
How do I release my fan creations?If it’s Danmakufu, it’s certainly welcome on Bulletforge! (See the link above.) That’s the main hub for new scripts.
Otherwise feel free to upload it to whatever site you typically use! The most common upload destinations are Dropbox, Google Drive, and Mediafire. Bear in mind that our community is not in any form responsible for you or your work.
More questions will be added as necessary.