July 16, 2012
Trudging
A couple of hours of work on Ninja Tree, some wasted time struggling with Stencyl, got a system working for spawning enemies so I can actually design a level now ... so nothing exciting to report, but some useful progress behind the scenes.
Posted by: gknodle at
09:25 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 44 words, total size 1 kb.
July 10, 2012
Thinking about shooter design
Thinking abstractly, a shooter has two main activities:
more...
- shooting enemies or other targets
- dodging or otherwise dealing with hazards (enemy shots, possibly walls, etc.)
Usually, if you do well at activity #1, shooting enemies, that results in fewer enemy shots, making activity #2 more manageable. Let's look at each activity in more detail.
Posted by: gknodle at
10:14 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 714 words, total size 5 kb.
July 06, 2012
Ninja Tree day 5
Added a second shot type, which can be sword-blocked although not reflected. Second enemy type, trying the idea of taking lots of shots, but only one reflected enemy shot. That works well.
Set a slight delay before shooting and swording as in S&P 2 (see below). Fiddled with parameters. The control feels pretty good now, so I'll leave it alone for a while.
Currently trying the idea of being able to destroy enemy shots with your shots. Not sure about it so far. It may make the action too focused on your shooting.
Overall, it's getting a lot more fun. I'm excited.
My next post will be an attempt to hash out the design ideas I'm going for here. I'm hoping that will help me focus on useful directions. I've realized that moving and dodging is a much larger part of typical shooters than I realized (and I already considered it a large part), therefore making a shooter with no moving is trickier than I expected. Next time I'll try to express some ideas for making fun situations and interesting (action) choices....
[UPDATE] Updated the online work-in-progress build, although it's currently more of a work-in-progress-in-progress (too easy).
Posted by: gknodle at
01:34 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 200 words, total size 1 kb.
July 03, 2012
Sin & Punishment 2 -- control study
I had been dissatisfied with the control feel in Ninja Tree so far, so I fired up Sin and Punishment: Star Successor for a bit of research. So here's how it works in Treasure's masterpiece.
(Really, if you haven't played it, go order a copy now. It's like playing a master class in game design.)
When you shoot (hold the trigger), there's a slight delay before shooting begins. This is interesting because I didn't remember any delay; I would have sworn that you shoot instantly. Even more interesting, there's also a delay on your sword (press and release trigger), which I definitely never noticed until I looked at it carefully.
Because there's a delay at the start of both primary actions, switching between shooting and sword-swinging has a cost. Whenever you switch, you lose a bit of attacking time. This adds interest to the fundamental fighting action (even if the player isn't consciously aware of it, as I wasn't until I studied it just now).
There's another important limit on the player's actions, and this one I had noticed before. With your sword, you're limited to three swings at a time, and there's a brief (under a second) cooldown afterwards before you can start shooting or moving again. So if you haul out your max sword combo, you'll be vulnerable afterwards. This is an important tradeoff that makes the "sword" decision more interesting for the player. (With no limit or cooldown, you could just spam sword continuously and be mostly invincible.)
These are both good design elements that I will borrow for Ninja Tree and see how it works.
Posted by: gknodle at
09:59 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 276 words, total size 2 kb.
<< Page 1 of 1 >>
12kb generated in CPU 0.0069, elapsed 0.0881 seconds.
31 queries taking 0.0835 seconds, 46 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
31 queries taking 0.0835 seconds, 46 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
