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Topic: SuperMelee Clone (Beta II In-Progress) (Read 54348 times)
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xenoclone
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Okay, sorry for lack of responses. School was killer for a few weeks there as we tried to crank out a conference paper based on my thesis research... then job interviews, birthday parties, etc, etc....
Anywho, I've added a HUD to the split screen that I think works. I'm going to eventually build in higher resolutions, such that the HUD takes up less screen space. But below you can see a pic that shows the lowest resolution with the energy bars and pilot pic.
So now onto RTyp06's question.....
Those are some pretty good ideas. What do you think about goal orientated levels?
I thought about, perhaps, protecting colony/civilian ships or something for a level. I like the idea. I just haven't gotten to that point. I've also thought of a level that could take place over a city, where it's air force sends out little jets to attack you... sort of like nuisance elements in there.
As far as joystick control, I actually agree that I need to make it more computer user friendly (keyboard, mouse). So even though I originally managed gameplay all with a stick, I shouldn't keep it that way completely.
So here's a question I have... what do people think of Street Fighter style combo moves? Or is the weapon + special ability style from SC enough?
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xenoclone
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Okie doke. No combos. It was just a random thought.  I certainly had no plans/code in place for it.
Right now I'm in the process of shrinking the game. Basically, I felt that I let the infamous "feature creep" take over. So quite a few features and some of the content is being cut back. The plus side is it makes the game significantly closer to completion, and allows me to focus on polishing it off to a professional level.
One major change is the selection screen. I loved my old screen. But many people found it unintuitive. And it was a mess in the code --many features needed to be fixed. So I scrapped it in favor of a simple drag-and-drop interface.
Perhaps of note is that I'm only going to "launch" with 12 ships. It was steadily becoming a nightmare to balance/debug/finish 27 ships with 3 configurations each (81 ships!). So it's down to the 12 with 3 configs each. As such, we're going to add three more species and ship styles.
I'm thinking 3-4 levels. The green one in the beta, the purple planet one in the pics, and whichever others turn out right. (We've got 3 other candidates... and none are ready.)
There won't be any fleet saving/loading.... and fleets will only comprise of 3 ships instead of 6. And, of course, I'm going split screen with a "soft" boundary around the level instead of wrapping.
The goal is to make the game much more "pick up and play"-able.
UPDATE: made thumb click-able to full-res pic.
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« Last Edit: January 15, 2008, 12:45:08 am by xenoclone »
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evktalo
Frungy champion
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Less ships is a wise choice. Easier to create the content and definitely easier to balance into an enjoyable selection of ships!
--Eino
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RTyp06
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Anything new? (trying not to make the bump too obvious) 
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xenoclone
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No news at the moment. I changed jobs and bought a house between my last post and now. So programming hours got replaced with packing hours and so forth. Things are starting to settle down though. (We just moved in like 2 weeks ago.) There's been a tiny bit of progress on the art, but that's about it. I should be able to get cracking again soon.
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xenoclone
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Here's an internal debate that I've been wrangling with. What's more desirable: a Star Control style 2 player game and camera? Or a 4 player game, but one that's limited within a bounded arena?
I'm at this crossroads where I feel like I'm just going to have to use what I've got (~9 ships, 3 levels) and crank something out. So for me, I'm starting to lean toward just doing a 2 player game, SC style, start with the limited content and wrap things up fast. Thoughts?
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RTyp06
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Any reason to "wrap things up fast"? Some sort of time constraint ? I suspect you're having some major problems with the four player idea? I don't know about "desireable" but a 2 player game might be alright although it's already a pretty crowded arena. Check out Timewarp for an example if you haven't already.
Timewarp
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Shiver
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Wouldn't I have to pay a little to play this? You'd best throw extra sprinkles and a cherry on top of this game if you expect $$$ for it.
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xenoclone
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I think the major problems with 4 player are:
1- it partially breaks rock-paper-scissors balancing that works well in SC
2- it breaks the SC style camera
3- various annoyances thanks to 1 and 2
On the flip side:
1- I personally love 4-player games
2- it's not commonly done in this genre
I have seen Timewarp and, obviously, I'd like to 1-better it. As far as charging goes... it's totally up in the air. It really depends on where it goes. I've always figured that even if I charged I'd just give it away free to everyone whose given me feedback. I think that's fair.
So, I dunno. This has been a funky project. It started out small, then ballooned into something too big, and now I'm trimming it down again. I want to re-focus it... I just don't know how. 
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Shiver
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My $0.02 again:
I'd rather have a four player game. Rock-Paper-Scissors using a string of different ships is pretty much what UQM net melee is already. Balance the ships so that they work best in a free for all. Give players an incentive to attack each other so the best strategy isn't to stay out of the fray. For instance, maybe every ship could have an extra ability that only turns on once that ship has scored a kill.
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« Last Edit: May 04, 2008, 12:22:51 am by Shiver »
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RTyp06
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Have you explored the possibility of 2 vs. 2 ? This might aleviate some of the problems of an independent four player melee, but I realize does nothing for the camera issues. Four players on one machine is a tough one to pull off.
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