Ever played "Comet Busters!"? If you didn't know, it's an Asteroids clone/remake. I was playing it the other night when I realised something; What's really fun in that game is in the later levels when there's plenty of asteroids flying around, both large and small. You have to dodge, turn, twist and shoot violently to survive. It feels like they're after you. They're coming from behind, from the sides. It's a hectic dance of survival. Now on to my own idea and the problems I thought of. You play as a hero fighting of hordes of evil monsters, protecting either yourself or something else. The view is topdown, just like Asteroids. But instead an armed spaceship, you have your trusty sword & shield. Since these monsters are a tad more intelligent than asteroids, they'll be attacking you. But instead of simply homing in on you, they try to surround you, to bait you, to stab you in the back. They attack you from behind if they can and they try to avoid your attacks. You'll usually have some kind of terrain features to take advantage of, usually to avoid being surrounded. If you've seen when Tom Cruise is surrounded by the samurai in "the Last Samurai", you know what I'm looking for. One problem is the controls. At present I'm thinking of letting your hero move with the key arrows. The way he's looking however will be controlled by the mouse. A left click will make him swing his sword in the general direction of the mouse pointer. A right click will do the same with the shield. IIRC, this is the way Abuse works. If the sword or shield collides with anything, it will either parry or do damage, depending on wether there's an incoming attack coming from that direction. Kinda like swordplay in Thief. If your hero is hit, he'll first lose his shield. Second hit will wound him, making him a little slower. Third hit cripples him. Fourth hit kills him. Do you think this way will be playable and fun? The second problem would be animation. I guess the legs and the rest of the hero should be seperate animations. If the legs can walk forward, sideways and backwards, perhaps you can just draw the upper body on top, pointing in the right direction? Now I'd like to know if there's any clever tricks to solve the animation problem in a nice way? And is there perhaps a better way to handle controls? It'd be nice if the mouse could be discarded so that you could have several players on one computer. And most important of all, does this sound fun to you? Or am I strange?

Check out Crimsonland, it has the controls and character animation you're talking about except it's a shooter. The mouse+arrow keys combo is probably the best way to go, unless you don't mind having only four (or eight) directions to move/attack in. Instead of discarding the mouse you could let people play over the internet.

It sounds like fun to me. [smile]

Edit: You could also consider GTA2 type controls, but they are not as good for situations where you're likely to be surrounded because it's harder to turn around.

watch the movie called 'Equilliberium' and do the gun kata.
It wouldnt be that hard to implement

Nice genre, I'm doing similar game but not with swords and shields. It's very advantageous for a small team 'cos if you design graphics and other things well you can focus on gameplay.

Last I heard, this game was called Smash TV.

I think they also called it Gauntlet. ;)

Cynicism aside, I think that a tactical top-down hack 'n' slash would be a lot of fun, especially in multiplayer. I think a two-stick control, like the console controllers, would be best for this sort of thing, but keyboard/mouse is almost as intuitive.

The things that will make or break this sort of game will be AI, interactive environment, and character animations. For combat, I'm thinkin that a simple control set that leads to complex actions would be best. Think of Jet LI: Rise to Honor. Not a great game, but it allowed you to do wild kung-foolery with about two buttons. Fighting in every direction, no time wasted on target locks or specific sequences for "special" moves, and sharp, entertaining character movements made it worth playing, but after a while it became monotonous.

If you get some levelling, or some upgrades, or something like that, it would have better replay value. Your characterization of Asteroids makes me think you'd be more interested is power-ups and short-use items than in actual experience gaining or item hunting. I would agree with you in this instance. The newer Gauntlet games used levelling, and it took a little away from the game, since the player characters weren't always balanced, and sometimes the game would be extremely easy or nearly impossible based on character stats.

If your character is already super-tough, and more than a match for most enemy swarms, then it becomes less a matter of button-mashing and more a matter of keeping the upper hand. I'm not a great martial artist or anything, but if you want a very interesting technical dissertation on the ways in which a highly trained warrior can best apply his superhuman fighting prowess against single enemies or groups of various sizes, read "The Book of Five Rings" by Miyamoto Musashi. It might be "A Book of Five Rings", or "rings" might be replaced with "globes" or "spheres", or it might be "Go Rin no Sho", but it's all the same thing. I recommend the Thomas Cleary translation. It is clear and accurate, and he refrains from translating it into a handbook for Wall Street buccaneers.

Also, take a look at Ikaruga for either Dreamcast or Gamecube. It's a frenetic scrolling shooter, but it has an interesting tactical side to it. While your ship is super-powerful and has the ability to derive energy from enemy shots, the game is very difficult. For one thing, the later levels are swarms and swarms of enemy, firing clouds of plasma bolts and storms of ray beams. For another thing, in order to get top scores, you must treat the game almost as a puzzle type, rather than a shooter. If you build a slashing game that is based more on situational responses than on button mashing, you'll have a deeper game with more appeal.

This is a really neat idea, and I hope you get it done. Keep us posted on your progress.

Thanks for the input ICC!

On the AI, I agree completely. I've thought of a few things the AI should do.

* Braver when in a group.
* Try to surround the player. Would it work if the monsters try to move away from each other but towards the player? I imagine the would end up in a nice circle 'round the player, if you tweak the numbers right.
* Be afraid. Not too afraid, but they should back of when the players whack his sword at them. This would let the player keep the distance by waving the sword around in the air. 'Course, ut wouldn't work forever. Still, the monsters should be a lot more inclined to attack if they're facing your back.
* Realize when they're outpowered and when not. If the player have killed 95 out of 100, the last five would huddle together in a little group, whatch his movements and soil themselves if the player says 'boo'. If pulled of right, it'd be a great reward to the player to see them flee before him.

I haven't thought much of interactive envoirement, but there sure are a lot of possibilites. Cutting of the rope holding a pile of barrels in place would be fun...

As for character animations, I'll just have to wait and see. I have no idea how easy/hard it'll be to make good looking graphics for this kind of game.

I was thinking the same thing 'bout controls. My goal is to only use the two mouse buttons, nothing else. I was thinking of giving each button a primary and secondary action. If the primary is unavailable, you'll perform the secondary action.
Left button will have the sword swing as primary and a kick as secondary. Right button has shield and evading. Or something like that. The goal is to make all these actions flow into each other, making for complex movements, even if the player is just frantically clicking.

Hmm. Depending on the size of enemy groups, maybe some rudimentary flocking algorithms would be in order, or other group-movement heuristics. No doubt the folk in the AI forum could offer lots of good advice for this sort of thing. For other examples you might look at games like Pikmin for group actions or Halo for inter-enemy reactions. Grunts get ballsier in groups or in the presence of an elite, etc.

The player should be able to figure out what's going on, too. Some clues in motion or even shouted orders, etc. could really help make it seem like a higher-level conflict, with planning and strategy in place of simple stimulus-response fighting.

Neat stuff.