Unnamed game (Codename: Riddled Haven)

UltimateAgent wrote:

Alex wrote:
Agreed. I think that, if Halo (CE) did anything right, is was making a balanced, fun starting weapon. The main issue was that half the other weapons were nerf guns.

The pistol is slightly unbalanced. After all, it is the only weapon that can kill hunters in one hit.

I'm guessing those black blocks are filler graphics for the walls?

Those are filler. In the actual game the walls won't actually be drawn because of the top down perspective.

And I didn't say the CE pistol was perfect. It was either under or overpowered in SP.

For the levels, I was thinking of drawing each room either by hand or in photoshop, and then create a mask for each one, so the level design is more organic. I'll have to see how it looks first though.

When you said gas grenade.. I assume it's a smoke grenade. How will it work? Smoke grenades blind your enemy, sure, but they are only meant to blind a section off. Smoke grenades aren't meant to be thrown at the enemy.

Here's some suggestions for the 3rd grenade:
-Molotov cocktail
-Flashbang (this sounds easy to code)

The gas grenade is a poison grenade. It spews gas for three seconds, and infected enemies will be damaged for 10 seconds, receiving up to 60 damage (for a reference, weak enemies have 50 HP, stronger ones have 100, and the player has 100 HP and 50 shield). The gas bypasses energy shields, and the grenade has a larger radius than the standard blast grenade, making it more effective for damaging multiple foes.

Thus, it would fill a similar role to the molotov cocktail (spews fire for several seconds and does fire damage?). And although flashbangs would be great for disorienting enemies, there is another weapon that fills a similar role.

The third grenade was originally going to be an EMP grenade, disabling enemy shields. However, I recently made a design change giving the player and shielded enemies less shield than health.

If most of the player's "health" is in a rechargeable shield, then the game is too easy. However, I think its important that the player always has enough "health" to get through a fight. There's few things more frustrating than going into a new encounter with 1 HP. So, 100 HP and 50 SP seemed like a solid compromise.

I was considering an adhesive grenade that spews a sticky liquid that freezes opponents, but that's just a dumbed down version of a flashbang.

Whatever it is, it'll be original, and you won't know what it is until you find them in-game.

I read your article. You sounded concerned about the learning curve. All I can say is...

Tutorials, tutorials, tutorials. Even the most generic shooters out there have them. Lots of them get in your way or the story's way, so you should design a tutorial that's fun and somehow blends with the story. Then you won't have to worry about the learning curve being completely overwhelming.

I've already planned a companion character for the protagonist, a pilot named Margot Scott, who I already am going to have provide information when the player encounters new equipment, weapons, etc. She will do very nicely for explaining things to the player; thanks for the suggestion.
Of course, a good learning curve is very similar to a tutorial: They introduce each aspect one at a time, and then demonstrate how each aspect influences another.

I'm more concerned about the difficulty at the peak of the curve rather than the curve itself. Nothing that playtesting can't fix.

I really need a project to work on...I haven't contributed anything to the site since...Blocky 1 hour...gawd...

Anyways, nice to see the game is coming along. I'll be sure to get excited about it after I'm finished being excited over the An Untitled Story major update.

I remember you lost the game-making bug a while back. How long ago did you make the Blocky games?

I'll include some screenshots with the next update, by the way. Weapon, grenade, equipment, player and HUD design and coding is just about done. I've started on the hazards and enemies. Once that's done, I'll take care of Sledder 1.5.

So, this is coming along much more quickly than I've anticipated.

The Blocky games...geez...umm...Blocky's Adventure was submitted to YoYo on September 23 2007, so..yeah. REAL long time since then. My first game was my best game...

But I've been thinking about doing something else. If I can get it to work right, I might have something.

Work on the game has been on hold.
Not only have I had a shitload of schoolwork during the past two weeks, but my hard drive just kicked the bucket. It'll be a few more days before its retrieved.

Aw man... hard drive crash... I've had my computer for almost 3 years now, I'm scared of my drive crashing Well on a good note solid-state drives are progressively becoming cheaper now (slowly) so soon we won't have do deal with this anymore.