- Main Combat Game-play -
Purpose - the main purpose of the below described mechanics is to add complexity/depth to the combat system.
Note - weapons don't just deal damage, they may cause status effects as well. (e.g., slow-down or modified paint color).
- Tile Ownership - which tiles you own (or don't own) may result in different triggered weapon effect types or alternatively, the power of the weapon. (e.g., the number of owned connected tiles that you're standing on, may influence the fired weapon result.)
- Tracing Tiles Walked On - I thought it would be visually interesting to see the tiles that the character walks on be tracked (by highlighting the edges of the tiles). More specifically, we're thinking that the tiles that the character has walked on for a certain previous time duration should be tracked. Again this can influence the fired weapon result. I'm still pondering if it should be possible for an opponent character to cut off the trail.
- Mind-Game - For the game-play experience, we're thinking there should be some sort of mind-game. That is, some game mechanic that allows players to predict, guess and try to figure out what the opponent is doing and/or trick the opponent into believing the player is doing something they're not. (e.g., Street Fighter 3 has the parry system; even the regular fight mechanics has this mind-game element, since the speed of some attacks/throws are too quick to react to, so reading the opponent's patterns/habits become important.). For this aspect, we don't have any clear detail yet.
- Hitpoint Recovery - some form of hitpoint recovery is probably necessary, because we don't want the case where one player is left with little health left until time starts to run out, at which time the other player shoots him to erase all of his painted tiles. A couple of possible solutions are listed below:
- auto-regenerate - the hp auto-regenerates. We're leaning towards this solution, since it reduces the necessity to remember a player-character's hp, which means we may not need a constantly displayed health bar on the screen.
- items/weapons for regeneration - there's items or weapons that can aid the player in recovering hp.
- NPC Robots - we talked about NPC robots possibly being modified, upon being shot, to paint the tiles in the color of the shooter. (My personal thoughts: I think the rules/logic behind the NPCs should add some unique/distinct flavor to the level/map. But I have no clear detail in mind for this yet.)
I want to point out that I think we should use how we want the game to visually look to influence our design decisions.
ReplyDeleteFor example, when the character dies, I think they should possibly be sent flying (instead of just, say, falling/collapsing down), because I think it would look better. Not as extreme/crazy as in Smash Bros., but I'm thinking the fly distance should be based on the strength of the weapon effect.
This is just a thought I want to put out there to think about in the coming future...
Changing my approach to design, I'm basically using some core fun game-play elements as a basis for design. Right now, considering 2 elements:
ReplyDelete1) Spatial/Visual Pattern Formation - looking at popular games such as Super Puzzle Fighter, Bejeweled, etc., it seems that people like forming visual patterns (which includes me too to some extent). More on this later.
2) Betting/Gambling - elements of betting can be found (in varying degrees) in pretty much all action games. In Street Fighter, using the EX moves depletes the Super bar, so in a way, the player is betting that the EX attack will result in something beneficial; similarly, to a lesser degree, a strong attack costs time (rather than depleting the bar). I'm pondering what if we expand this concept and make it prominent in our game... Note - the only requirement to satisfy this concept is that there's some form of cost.
Referring back to Visual Patterns, I'm currently thinking the idea of just automatically painting tiles by walking on them isn't such a great idea.
1) It's not very conducive to allowing the player to manually form patterns.
2) It's a bit lame that players can just "immediately" repaint a tile that changes color by just moving away and back onto the tile.
However, I do like the simplicity of it which makes it easy to get into. Currently, considering what if the player had to manually change colors; for example, by pressing a button to color all tiles on the trail, at which point will reduce the trail back to 0 tiles and include some other repercussion...