#gamedevelopment
WASD vs WAXD?
I've been figuring out twin stick keyboard controls for C64, and WAXD+UHMK works well with the keyboard matrix restrictions.
What do you think of WAXD instead of WASD? The big advantage is that you can place your thumb on X, so all four direction keys are simple presses. With WASD, you must shift your middle finger between W and S.
With WAXD, you can intuitively "steer" in all 8 directions as if you were tilting a pad under your four fingers.
I'm going to start posting random development thoughts on my current project, "Rivers Of Impossibility", a sort of MC Escher inspired hybrid of Realm of Impossibility and Gauntlet.
First off, my isometric perspective inspiration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OC6vJaeExk
This C64 BASIC program shows an interesting random isometric maze generator. Unlike true isometric, the dihedral angle is a steep 45 degrees (it should be 30 deg for true isometric). But there are a number of mathematical and geometric conveniences to this 45 degree isometric perspective.
Random game idea - turn based Roguelike/Atari 2600 Adventure hybrid
Like many, I was enchanted by Atari VCS Adventure, but at the time I had no idea how to program it on my VIC-20. However, I have since realized that even slow BASIC could have done the job, using turn based Roguelike movement instead of arcade style action.
So, you have 8 keys for directional movement, and SPACE to act as the fire button (which lets go of an object). Running into an object grabs it. Unlike the original, all objects are a single character tile in size, and all movement is aligned to the character grid.
Gameplay revolves around grabbing a weapon in the direction it will be needed in, or dropping the weapon and guiding enemies to run into it. Different weapon types are:
SWORD - Like the original Adventure sword. It can be used any number of times.
DAGGER - Unlike the sword, pressing SPACE throws the dagger rather than just dropping it.
SHURIKEN - Like dagger, but it can only hit one enemy and then it disappears
Another aspect is light management, similar to the C64 game Tenebra. You can grab and drop torches, which affects where you can and can't see enemies and objects.
I've got so many ideas and stuff I haven't been posting, so I just felt like posting a random one.
Vangauntlet - game idea for forced scrolling Gauntlet clone
A game idea I've been kicking around is a hybrid of Gauntlet and (NES) Section Z, with a bit of (TRS-80) Sea Dragon ... basically a Gauntlet clone but with a difference. The game uses forced scrolling, like Section Z. Some levels scroll very slowly, so you must endure attacks with no option to quickly rush to the exit. Some levels scroll very fast, so you can barely do much more than dodge.
Most levels scroll at medium rates, which puts pressure on you to navigate the maze and push through or around enemies to keep up. This radically alters the feeling of the action. Also, you buy power ups with treasure, so you really need to learn how to harvest treasure from each level efficiently. (You can replay levels, but each play halves the amount of treasure available.)
Some other ideas to mix things up:
There can be any number of enemies on screen, but only 6 of them move at a time. This introduces a "speed up" factor I really like. Also, the speed of enemies depends on their strength:
GREEN = 3 hit points, slow speed
YELLOW = 2 hit points, medium speed
RED = 1 hit point, fast speed
So, it can make a lot of sense to try and dodge around strong enemies to try and get the generator first. Or to just try and bypass as many enemies as you can and concentrate on grabbing treasure.
So what's a better title for my WIP: "The Obligatorian" or "The Obligalorian"
Basically, it's a Star Raiders type game with space trading, but you can also punch raiders on invaded space stations. (Normally, the raiders in Star Raiders destroy a Starbase permanently, but in my case they will just infest them and you have to punch all the raiders to liberate the base.)
There may be a side story involving rescuing a Youngling or whatever maybe also.
The title of the game is inspired by a swipo/autocorrect. Someone write "the mandatory story" instead of "the Mandalorian story". Well, I think it would be fun to make a name based on "obligatory" instead of "mandatory" ... so which is better, "Obligatorian" or "Obligalorian"?
I'm thinking that the protagonist's clan's catchphrase is "Sailor Vwah", but even they don't know what it means. However, players might guess when they see the door to the long hallway you have to rescue the Youngling from. It is labeled "LA VOIE". In other words, "Sailor Vwah" isn't a person, it's French (C'est la voie). I think that's funny, but my sense of humor is weird.
I'm pondering a metroidvania MOBA based on 8-bit Bruce Lee. The grunts are ninjas, and "pixel rivers" replace towers. Grabbing all nearby lamps flips flow.
Powerups are new moves, such as the ability to jump diagonally, slide attack under obstacles, and move left/right while falling, as well as speedups, jump height.
When hit, you lose powerups in reverse order. You recover all powerups when respawning.
So, you usually want to slow down enemies rather than kill them...
Random game design idea - hybrid Metroidvania MOBA. Plays like a Metroidvania, where character advancement revolves around acquiring new movement abilities to unlock map shortcuts. The movement abilities give you a combat edge as you can better disengage to grab health/ammo/etc.
But as a MOBA, you're in an advancement race with an enemy team. So, it's all about trying to speedrun advancement while thwarting the enemy from doing the same.
Made little sense to have a desert planet without sandworms, so I swapped out that two legged rhino-unicorn-thingy for a big worm-looking guy. Also I think it works better because I wanted the blue creatures to be twice as strong as anything else on the planet, and sandworms in fiction tend to be big strong fellas.
This is a bit of the flavor-text I'm going for. I'm trying not to have any of that "conversation" that so many games start with. Everything's just gonna get detailed dynamic flavor-text that'll tell you a little bit about the the asteroid-pirating that you're doing. #gamedevelopment
Here's "Desert Planet" populated from the panel I posted earlier. I'm facing a purpleberry that'll heal five points of damage (which I don't currently need because I'm at full health).
I can grab the blue energy, but my gun can only hold one color of energy so I'd automatically sell all ten charges of white energy.
I could enter the cave, but I don't have a Fulgoid Fungus to reveal what's in it. Thus I don't know if it's full of jewels or full of monsters.
Actually a good move is to shoot that gray monster southeast of me. My current hero, Pax Protagonist, has enhanced range and does 1/2 damage to whatever's one square on the other side of what I shoot, so I'd do 7 damage to the Superior Gray Blob and 3 damage to the Space Cactus, killing both of them.
I need to make the blue monsters stronger. The reason I have blue energy on the board is because blue energy does 2x damage to blue creatures. So I want overpowered blue creatures on this board so you'll have an incentive to collect up blue energy. #GameDevelopment
Here's how I define the population of a planet. Each "Proportion" number represents how much of the whole the character takes up. So an "EnemyBlob2" with an 8 is 8 times more likely to appear than an "ItemRevealCave" with a 1.
So at runtime I just add up all the numbers, pick a random in that range, and grab whatever lives in that part of the range. #GameDevelopment