Blogs - Meedoc

<!-- So, I have an avatar who has to shoot in order to move. Well... what a thing! Let's have a look on the choices I've done.

Shoot everyday and every night?

The first parameter I had to specify was the action's limitation, or the lack of limitation.
This choice is really important because it affects the whole game design : depending on that choice, I will have more a shooter game, or a platformer.
After several tests, I decided to implement an energy system. It's quite basic but still efficient.
Shooting costs an amount of energy, which is regain over time. If the player drains all the energy, the recharge will be stop during few second.
This way, the player has to be careful no to spam the shooting input =)

This choice has been accompanied with the add of the gravity. At the beginning I wasn't sure to apply gravity on the avatar, but with the energy system, it seems better to me.

I've got a big rocket launcher!

Sorry for Quake's fan but you won't in this game. No rocket jump... It's more like a mini-gun which propel you. Why did I make this choice? Well, there is a great consequence on the pace of the game.
The first gives a game where each shot provokes a huge movement of the avatar, and has a heavy cost in energy. Anyway, it is in my mind. I built an exe available here, to test it in an empty room, and in a short level.
The second one is based on accuracy. The players has to shoot more frequently to adjust the avatar's movement. Besides, I can implement a skilful system based on the duration of the click to create two kind of movement with only one action. On the one hand, you can do an unique click to propel your avatar faster in a direction. On the other hand, you can do clearance click to be more accurate in the deplacement of the avatar. It may look confusing, but I hope you will understand by testing the demo linked at the end of the article.

Once I fixed the type of weapon, and so the type of propulsion, there was another thing to tweak the pace of the game.

Bouncy collision?

At the beginning, I started classic collision : walls blocked avatar's movement, reducing its speed to zero. But I felt that the game was too slow... So I tested a few solutions, and finally I felt in love with bouncy collisions =)
I saw through this as a way to widen the range of the gameplay's situation included in the level design. So I worked on it to get smooth and funny bounce. Actually, the bounce is closely linked to the physics. The force is dependant of the friction and the gravity applied to the avatar as well as the speed of the avatar when it collided.
I still don't know if the values are the best one, but I will based my first level design on it. I think, it will be easier to tweak it when I'll have some gameplay situations.

The demo

If you download this demo, you could play two little level, without level design elements. I just built them with walls, trying to find funny situations with nothing else than the avatar's restrictions.
Remember, visual is totally temporary, don't focus on it!
If you have any comment, I'll be glad to read them =)

How to play?
Use the right click of your mouse to shoot. That is going to propel the avatar in the strictly opposite direction: you have to adjust the position of the mouse to tweak the movement. However, the distance between the cursor and the avatar is not important, the gameplay focuses only on the position.

The end's word

I'll back really soon to talk about a level design I though of Wednesday morning, when I had my breakfast ^^ It will be a short level design article about "how to create lots of situations by exploiting only one element and a shape of level".
Have a nice day, and thank you for reading!

Few words

Two years ago I studied Boss Design from Scott Roger's works as well as Luis Barriga's intervention at the GDC in 2004 (I can't find the link...). From that point, I decided to focus on Scrolling Shooter, and to go on further about the design of a Boss. Finally there was a list of vital components needed for a Boss Battle, plus trends involved by the market.

I was working on a learning game dealing with Boss Design but I realized I missed experience to complete it. The goal was to offer a game in which the player could observe the impact of the different components on a boss battle.

For example, the player will just change the arena to notice the impact on the battle, or wether the evolution of the boss' pattern during the fight, etc.

Anyway, I suspended this project, to launch one in order to acquire more experience, and finalize this one later. And right now, after this long introduction, this is about the new one I want to talk.

Mains purpose

Shot to Move
I want to build all the avatar movement around this rule so the avatar can't move without shoot.

Only one action
The second thing driving me for few months is making a game in which the player can only use a single action : here is to shoot.

Concept

The avatar has to shoot to move in order to cross the different levels scattered with obstacles

Art

For the moment , I haven't any visual orientation. So I can't tell you more about this point right now, except that the first demo will be made with ugly place holder =)

Technology

I'm using GameMaker 8, which is a good tool<!-- Moreover, there are already useful features =)

Development

I just began to develop the avatar's movement and the different elements of the level design. Thanks to GameMaker, I already have a functional collision system, and so I can focus on gameplay features. During the following weeks, I will develop the wholeness of the game elements, and then I will continue with an analytic phase focused on level design.

This blog

I'm going to post frequently about the progress of the development. Moreover, I'm going to write article focused on a game element dealing with its tweaking, its attributes and why I chose to put it into the game.

I'm going to begin with the avatar's movement as soon as possible, and the next article will come with a demo illustrating my words.

The end's word

To finish this first article, thank you for reading the whole article and sorry for my poor English...

See you soon!