I'm putting together an indie local multiplayer Xbox top down space shooter. The 'story' behind the concept is mostly based around the idea of the player being a mercenary, doing everything from escorting other ships, carrying goods, and some combat based objectives as well. The mercenary aspect really leaves it pretty open for the objectives I'd like to implement. The controls allow the player to navigate their ship 360 degrees on the screen, having the screen scroll with the players as they move towards the screen's edge. The ships are pretty tiny in size to allow for more movement on-screen before the scrolling takes place, so that it's not overly crowded by having 4 players on-screen at the same time with half a dozen to a dozen enemies. Ships are also limited to their rotational speed (which accelerates to a maximum rotational speed), and the same thing is being applied to the actual thrust/breaking system on the ships. This allows for some semi-rpg like modifications to the ship, to increase these stats of the ship. The weapon/shield system is also to be customizable in that there will be multiple weapon/shield types, and the player can control how much power/strength will be diverted to each aspect of the ship prior to launching from their 'mother ship' and/or base. The real problems I'm running into has little to do with music, sound effects, or graphics. I'm having difficulties adding in the details of what you are typically doing after launching into a mission in such a way to keep the player(s) entertained long-term. Upgrades and customization of the ship(s) add a nice layer to the complexity of the game, but the actual usage of what the player has created seems a bit lacking. There are/will be a lot of levels (potentially hundreds), player involved storyline, randomization, multiple endings, etc.. but the gameplay itself is lacking. Do any of you have any suggestions on how to take a 2D top down shooter to the next evolutionary level (not that you'd want to reveal your secrets, but figured it couldn't hurt to ask)? I've played several games that have a lot of addicting elements to them, but rarely have I played any top down shooter for more than 30 minutes or so and thought "Boy, I'd love to spend all my free time playing this".

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Original post by Mythics I've played several games that have a lot of addicting elements to them, but rarely have I played any top down shooter for more than 30 minutes or so and thought "Boy, I'd love to spend all my free time playing this".

Go play Escape Velocity Nova - as a kid, I did spend all my free time playing it. Of course, part of that was the scarcity of games available on the Mac, and part of it was not owning a dedicated video card, but the game was (and still is) a very enjoyable experience.

While the game has its flaws, the combat is enjoyable, the exploration and trading is fun, and the story is surprising in its ability to draw the player in (despite being mostly cliché and often poorly executed).

Engage the players in the world by having it evolve with their actions. For example, Space Rangers 2. It puts you in the shoes of a mercenary helping the various governments liberate their worlds. You can do whatever you want and your actions have some impact on the world. If you go out with the military, you help liberate systems sooner. If you aid in research, you can get higher tech gear and so on. The overall polish of that game is a bit lacking, but the ideas are there.

What can you add in the way of ambient activity? I'd echo swiftcoder in recommending that you take a look at Escape Velocity. They've got some very simple ambient NPC/AI activity that really opens up gameplay opportunities and encourages investment and exploration in the game world. Miners fly around collecting minerals, merchants jump in doing trade runs and outlaws of varying strengths show up randomly.

The real genius is that there are varying factions in the game which the player can join and units from the different factions show up randomly and duke it out. This gives players the chance to get involved or vulch dying ships for goods. Military ships also randomly fly out and patrol, making smuggling missions and illegal outfits more of a risk.

You can probably get a lot of mileage out of not just upgrading ships but creating different play styles based on hulls. In multiplayer this could be really good because you could get a variety of situations if your ships are tactically varied enough-- for instance, long range hitters might need to be countered by fast moving fighters as one combo.

Depending on how much effort is going into the project I've love to be able to make your own ships with parts bought/traded/stolen/found from the story line part of the game and then duke it out in local multiplayer with various game modes.

Being able to equip all your guns on the left hand side of a giant frigate ship thats slow and can't move could pay off if you had the same ability to assign shield protection to just that side aswell.

Letting players become each others content is what I love ^^

Ive been toying with the same multiplayer-topdown-shooter idea for years. Besides the huge amount of googled spaceship art ive never made any progress. I didnt even make a GD account for almost 10 years, but at least your post finally convinced me making one ;)

My original idea was a 2d version of the browser game Space Merchant with the classic Asteroids gameplay. Space Merchant was a turnbased browser space game where you could upgrade your ship, trade goods and fight other players, it looked a lot like Space Merchant Realms. TDZK was another similar browser game which featured an amazing spaceship design mechanism, each upgrade made your ship exponentially more expensive. So you had to choose between shields/armor/weapons/speed etc... Sadly TDZK isnt online anymore, but i'll try to find a link which shows the shipbuilding mechanism. (EDIT: link added)

For the actual topdown gameplay i suggest you give Subspace Continuum a try, Subspace is a multiplayer topdown shooter which features several CTF like games with around 40 other players. It has been around for over 10 years and still has a pretty active community :)

For artwork suggestions, just google for Homeworld conceptart or look at these books, which feature some earlier art of the same concept artists.

If you need random spaceship ideas, just look at Wavinator's post history which is made of pure awesomeness :D

Combine the above together and you've created my favourite game ^_^

[Edited by - Vandaahl on September 16, 2009 5:40:16 PM]

If you are having multiplayer support, then it could be an idea to allow players to team up. FOr this to work properly you need to make it that players can specialise their ships for a particular purpose in the team.

I can see 3 main ship types:
1) Interceptors: Fast ships capable of moving quickly around the field of battle but are not very tough. They are good at taking out slower, less manoeuvrable ships or being able to get to where Long ranged hitters are stationed.

2) Long range hitters: These are moderately fast ships designed to strike at targets from a long distance. They don't need to be fast or all that manoeuvrable, but they are heavily armed with powerful long ranged weapons. This makes them poor at close quarters fighting but they are excellent for sitting back and torching the enemy from a range.

3) Capital ships: These ships are not fast or manoeuvrable, but are armed for short ranged attack and heavily armoured/shielded. These are used to form a defensive line between the enemy and your long ranged hitters. Their main purpose is to act as a screen against the Interceptors, operate as command centres and support (repair, rearming and refuelling).

Interceptor are good at defeating Long ranged Hitters, Long Ranged hitters are good at defeating Capital ships and Capital Ships are good at defeating Interceptors (it is a Scissors/Paper/Rock relationship).

Within each category there can be sub roles. Some interceptors might be good at interfering with the attacks of long ranged hitters, Capitals could be designed more for defence than attacking interceptors and so forth, long ranged hitters might be designed for target acquisition and communication.

The idea is that different abilities of ships can combine to give a better overall result. As an example, Long Ranged hitters (LRH) might need to have a line of sight to the enemy, but only the line of site of that ship is usually considered (although an allied player might be able to see the enemy ship the LRH can not and so can not target it). However, if you have a component a ship that allows the sharing of targeting data, then a ship with this component will be able to share its targeting data with another ship.

This will allow a smaller, faster more manoeuvrable ship to get in close to an enemy and this would allow your LRH ships to target that enemy. Controlling and managing targeting zones would be an important tactic for multiplayer play. Player might even specialise as scouts that have weak weapons, be fast and have the "share target" component (you probably would want a receiver component as well in the LRH ship).

Capitals could also become "Factory" ships that produce smaller ships and items (ammunition), so a Factory type Capital ship might be constantly building new ships for other players on their team (and so would be considered a major strategic target in battles) Which means that even if an other player's ship was destroyed, they could respawn from this factory ship.

In single player games, the players will probably be more generalist (but not be as good as as a specialist could be in their chosen role) so as to be able to handle more situations by themselves. If you can allow the player to hire (or produce with the factory ships) AI "wingmen" then this will be mitigated somewhat.