I'm working on a concept game design where the character will be able to switch at-will between a melee "martial arts" mode and a ranged combat mode (this is for a 2D platformer/explorer game). The in-game explanation will be something along the lines of putting on combat armor. It's easy enough to make a stylish melee fighter - just give 'im lots of moves involving flips and insane acrobatics, make certain that enemies can get stunlocked, and you're clear. You can balance things with recovery times and the fact that you need to get in close to apply most of the moves. But how do you make a stylish and balanced ranged combatant? The player will be able to collect upgrades as they go along; some of the things I have in mind are upgraded munitions (e.g. piercing or wide-angle firing modes), slow-recharging capacitor arrays to allow burst firing, missiles (which require ammo a la Metroid), various elemental effects, et cetera. But how do you make those stylish? The only thing I can really think of is having some kind of combo counter that increments if you manage to hit the enemy many times in rapid succession, but that would then require having some use for the counter (e.g. earning points to buy upgrades), and I can't find a way to cleanly integrate that into the rest of the game idea. Should I just rely on nice visual effects and players' love of overkill? I suppose this is mainly "how do I encourage players to try to be stylish" instead of "how do I make it possible for the game to be played stylishly", but they're both relevant. What do you think?

Look at Ikaruga. Elegantly blasting enemies without missing and absorbing their shots into your polar energy grid not only offered huge point bonusses, but charged your super-guns for busting up bosses or clouds of baddies.

A combo system, like the one seen in Devil May Cry or Tony Hawk-style skater games, rewards difficulty and precision but penalizes for repetition, so players won't just figure out the highest-scoring combo and use it exclusively.

Okay, I should have specified the overarching gameplay a bit better. The game's supposed to be fairly similar to the Metroid/Castlevania series, so there aren't really any "points", nor do I have planned any kind of store at the moment. So I'm trying to think of incentives to be stylish that don't depend on point-based rewards. At the moment, the best I can come up with is that combos do enhanced damage (more than just the sum of the parts), which means that busting out huge combos becomes the best (only?) way to deal with nasty enemies. This does help keep the player from feeling like he has to maliciously overkill every grubworm he runs across, too. I don't know that it's enough, though.

I don't know about that...
I usually don't like the feeling of seeing a foe and keeping myself from blasting it right now because I could wait for some others to come up to charge something up
in a 2D game, I want relentless action, not waiting for people to arrive while I'm dodging Bob's attacks
but that's just me...it depends of what kind of feeling you want the player to have

from what I understand, you're trying to figure what else than performing combos would be stylish
that I don't know...maybe an "on fire" approach, like when you use your guns a lot without missing, your artillery gets more and more powerful, but with no time constraints...
use your sword and oops, long range loses its "fire state" but melee get more powerful
that would open doors to stage design as to what enemies appear in what order to make the player think "hmmm...I'd blast at that bird but if I slash it up my sword is about to level up"

just an idea though

That sounds like plenty.

You'll have to work at it, though. Make sure it's intelligible to players, so they can understand what's expected of them, but don't make it easy to exploit.

I recommend a damage multiplier. Offer temporary points based on performance, like a charge meter. You get three good hits in, then do a backflip and hit him with a fourth shot, and your gun starts to glow red. Double damage. You bounce off the wall and fire eight more shots into him while you sail over his head, and the gun glows yellow. Treble damage. Slide under his attack, reverse one of his energy bolts back at him with a well-timed shield pulse, and your gun glows white for 4x damage. Some more spectacular ultra-violence causes your whole character to radiate blue light and do 5 times the normal amount of damage. Taking a hit or going a few seconds without kicking any ass will drop you down a tier, until you're just normal you, walking down the hall.

Call it "adrenaline" and have it unlock more and trickier moves that will boost you even more. You could even release it in charges, either as a devastating hellstorm of projectile attacks or a brutal rush of melee carnage.

Edit: SlashOwnsU makes a good point, though. If players are always forced to meta-game, and wait for a sufficient pile of enemies to stack up to make it worthwhile to defeat them, then it'll wreck the game's flow.

If you rally want to encourage style, though, I recommend a mostly 1-on-1 situation, where you're usually faced with just one fairly tough enemy. You'll never be stuck at a low level against an enemy that is supposed to be faced with huge bonuses already in place, but it won't necessarily be a cakewalk, either.

Ahhh, I like the level-up-damage approach. "Adrenaline" is a good concept, and as an added bonus, it translates well for the melee mode. Nice!

I've already got the "must wait for several enemies to show up" issue solved (I think) - enemies won't die until they go for a second or two without taking any hits. So as long as you can keep laying down the firepower, you can charge up as much as you like on a single enemy. There are limitations, of course - you'd drain your batteries quickly if you just stood still while firing normal shots, so you'd need to take advantage of special abilities that give "free" attacks through various positions (e.g. standing under an enemy that's been launched into the air), as well as your ammo limits. I'd like the game engine to be good enough that you can just find some poor slob at the beginning of the game and just completely lay into him, and have fun doing things like that in addition to actually exploring the world. It always aggravated me that I couldn't make enemies live forever in various other games, because I had way more fun hitting them than I did killing them.

I haven't yet decided how the enemies should be laid out in-game. I think mostly I'll just want to scatter them about reasonably densely (e.g. several on-screen at any time), with the occasional "challenge" room and even-more-occasional boss fight. Since the only reasons to kill enemies are to get them out of your way or to get the recovery items they drop (health/ammo), you shouldn't feel obligated to try to max out every squad you run into. However, the style system will be there when you need the extra power against nastier foes.

I like it. I like it a lot.

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Original post by Derakon I haven't yet decided how the enemies should be laid out in-game. I think mostly I'll just want to scatter them about reasonably densely (e.g. several on-screen at any time), with the occasional "challenge" room and even-more-occasional boss fight.

that makes me think
I think the greatest 2D game that could be achieved would be some kind of mixture between your stylish system, some Metal Slugg-ish enemy dispatching and a Castlevania SOTN exploration style...
that's pretty much what you have in mind I think - sure would like to see it happen

Quote:

Original post by SlashOwnsU Quote: Original post by DerakonI haven't yet decided how the enemies should be laid out in-game. I think mostly I'll just want to scatter them about reasonably densely (e.g. several on-screen at any time), with the occasional "challenge" room and even-more-occasional boss fight. that makes me think I think the greatest 2D game that could be achieved would be some kind of mixture between your stylish system, some Metal Slugg-ish enemy dispatching and a Castlevania SOTN exploration style... that's pretty much what you have in mind I think - sure would like to see it happen

The original goal was to merge Metroid and Castlevania, hence the switch-between-melee-and-missile concept. It's acquiring new things as I keep thinking about the idea, though. I'm adding "style" because it gives me a good perspective to use while designing the player's combat capabilities.

Regardless, it'll be a while before I get this puppy out there, as I still have a lot to work on engine-wise (e.g. fast and detailed collision detection, dynamic level loading, saving game state).

Well, it sounds like it'll be a blast. If it's going to be fast and furious, I recommend a fairly simple visual style. Nothing worse than a cluttered screen when you're trying to pull off a triple-backflip megacombo on a moving target.

Keep us updated on your progress.

Oh, believe me, it'll start out with stickfigures. I'm not about to attempt to animate anything more complex myself.

Come to think, a visual style similar to N wouldn't be entirely amiss here...hmm. Ragdoll-based animations would save a ton on the artwork budget, too.