D: MecHero
Hi there
The idea is that the player will control a mech in a 2D world, collecting coins, and either confronting or avoiding obstacles. players will have to manage their mech's systems to keep it from blowing itself up. The mech will feature 4 different weapons that will be fired by key press combos.
Each Combo consists of a series of 3 key presses of the left and right arrow keys. adds up to 8 combos, as well as normal walking and jump jet controls.
The game is played with the left and right arrow keys.
Menu: left arrow to scroll through options, and right arrow to select.
Game: left and right to move, both to use jump jets, and combos to fire guns. watch your heat!
Build v0.4.5: https://www.dropbox.com/s/huu6natm9lj9dk8/MecHero_v0.4.5.zip
latest changes:
-lots of arty stuff added
-credits added
-mech responsiveness fixed(hopefully)
-3 new combos (shield, repair, auto attack)
-some other stuff
-made "heat" the main resource
there are lots more that i wanted to get to, still lots of broken stuff and things that could have been better, unfortunatly time is up :(
Combo list:
left,left,left = 3 auto cannon shots to the left
right,right,right = 3 auto cannon shots to the right
left,right,right = railgun to the right
right,left,left = railgun to the left
left,left,right = missile
right,right,left = shield activate/deactivate
right,left,right = scanner/auto attack activate/deactivate
left,right,left = repair armour
In hindsight I could have made the combos much more varied and interesting.
The idea is that the player will control a mech in a 2D world, collecting coins, and either confronting or avoiding obstacles. players will have to manage their mech's systems to keep it from blowing itself up. The mech will feature 4 different weapons that will be fired by key press combos.
Each Combo consists of a series of 3 key presses of the left and right arrow keys. adds up to 8 combos, as well as normal walking and jump jet controls.
The game is played with the left and right arrow keys.
Menu: left arrow to scroll through options, and right arrow to select.
Game: left and right to move, both to use jump jets, and combos to fire guns. watch your heat!
Build v0.4.5: https://www.dropbox.com/s/huu6natm9lj9dk8/MecHero_v0.4.5.zip
latest changes:
-lots of arty stuff added
-credits added
-mech responsiveness fixed(hopefully)
-3 new combos (shield, repair, auto attack)
-some other stuff
-made "heat" the main resource
there are lots more that i wanted to get to, still lots of broken stuff and things that could have been better, unfortunatly time is up :(
Combo list:
left,left,left = 3 auto cannon shots to the left
right,right,right = 3 auto cannon shots to the right
left,right,right = railgun to the right
right,left,left = railgun to the left
left,left,right = missile
right,right,left = shield activate/deactivate
right,left,right = scanner/auto attack activate/deactivate
left,right,left = repair armour
In hindsight I could have made the combos much more varied and interesting.
Thanked by 1Bensonance
Comments
I'm sorry. This makes the second mech-based game on the forums this week. I'm beside myself. :P
I'd implement the proposed heat system sooner rather than later, myself. Given its limiting effect on guns and abilities it can have quite an impact on gameplay, and that's a thing you want to test right off the bat.
EDIT: THIS IS IMPORTANT! I forgot to add instructions. The game is played with the left and right arrow keys.
Menu: left and right to switch between options, left+right to select.
Game: left and right to move, both to use jump jets, and combos to fire guns. watch your heat!
Firstly, I need to ask how you're doing your movement - are you adjusting for time elapsed between frames at all? The reason I ask is that mech movement and input in your game tend to vary depending on my frame rate. At maximum detail, I felt that input was lagging, with too much friction on the mech (holding down direction keys without result and having the mech suddenly move a second later) and keystrokes not registering, but when I cranked the detail to minimum, my mech shot straight through the walls and off the edge of the map in about two seconds flat. It's essential that you make your movement and weapons time-dependent instead of frame-dependent, or the game's going to play very differently on different machines and detail levels. :P
That said, ignoring that issue, I quite enjoyed the basic game. I liked having to input combos on the fly, and the selection of weapons was cool. I especially liked how you expressly displayed combo entry on the screen, so the player could see what they'd done and learn them. Any chance of giving feedback on which weapon each combo fires? I wasn't sure until I saw the ammo counts decreasing what guns had been fired. Another option would be to have the combos for different weapons shown next to their ammo though, just so that I could get a feel for what was what without trial and error.
I also feel that you need to show weapon cooldown - after firing weapons I was sometimes unable to input combos. I assume this was because my weapons were cooling down, but I wasn't sure.
Are the enemy mechs (which look rad, btw) firing lasers at all times, or is that just a debug thingum for you to test the AI aiming?
I think you have the makings of a cool mech platformer/fighting combo game here, but you really need to fix that timing/movement bug, because unfortunately that's been a bit of a game-breaker for me. :(
mmm see I didn't test on other configurations, my bad. I'll get that bug sorted out.
I'll also Improve the interface like you suggested, and @tbulford mentioned that those on screen arrow buttons may be copy righted, so I'll have to draw some "shiny" new ones :P
well the lines are supposed to be scan lines, so if you manage to avoid them you can kinda play the game as a stealth game :P
I'll have to make them pretty some how.
The mechs are the work of Paul Loubser (http://weaponlogic.wix.com/dreamrunning). My art skills extend to stick men.
The sounds were made by Allen Purkiss.
I think you need a rev counter to show that holding down a key does something because there's a delay before the mech moves.
I also think the player's mech needs to shoot automatically rather than relying on some coded input; and the enemies need to be a lot weaker.
Your mission selection screen should have mission brief so players know what to do. Even if it's the same mission brief all the time. And there should be a HUD element showing how many orbs I've collected and still need to find.
It's probably debug information but I like the scan rays of the enemies because I use them to sneak past them; and I'd like my mech to have one (in a different colour) when I've locked onto an enemy.
You've got the "heavy" feel of a mech down and the rest will come with graphics but considering the input constraint you need to do more for the player and provide lots of feedback.
1. The feedback of movement is hard to see - you have to really get used to "revving up" to start moving. If the mech had animation that might help.
2. The key combo input to shoot... It feels like a good idea at the time - but the implementation doesn't quite cut it. Maybe you need a base attack that doesn't require combo craziness, because it's next to impossible to jump/dodge incoming shots and still fire what you want at the same time. I think if the combos are reserved for executing some special move when a power meter's charged up or something, that might be interesting, but for every single shot it's pretty overkill, especially when you need your movements to avoid incoming fire. The inability to fire and move together makes the player feel stupid if they could jump in and dodge and avoid... But have to stand there and take it when they want to shoot.
3. Speaking of which - do the different combos wield different results in shooting directions? I don't quite understand how the shooting works. Does it auto aim? Does it aim according to your combo?
4. The input of combos is quite iffy - sometimes it just doesn't seem to pick up inputs. Some more feedback around how that works from the interface would be good.
5. I do like the scanlines :)
Cool stuff, some good ideas, my fav are the scanlines and the button combos, but they need to be refined more for an enjoyable experience :)
Rad!
Oh and perhaps more on-screen instructions at the menu - it really shouldn't be hard to figure out a menu, yet I had to go find documentation :P
Combo entry does feel a bit iffy, but I think it's something you can work on to feel more streamlined. I still really like the combo mechanic because it makes it feel like a brawler, but I agree that there needs to be some form of "cheap" attack that can be used without too much effort on the player's part. Now that you're free of the two-button constraint, perhaps you can look at that. ;)
@aodendaal's comments regarding user feedback are super important, and tie into my original comments. Remember that unless you show them, players have no idea what's going on under the hood of your game. You need to make the info they need visible somehow. That sort of feedback is something that takes time and loads of user-testing to get right. ;)
Combo requirements in-game. Please. Somehow. The days of referring to a printed-out moves list pulled from a BBS are over. Street Fighter IV allows you to pull up the moves list at any time during a match to check out combos. Why not Zoidbe.. er... MecHero?
I'm still up in the air about linking cooling to the blue pickups. I realise that we're meant to manage our heat, but linking it to a pickup feels unfair. What if I needed to fire a lot to get rid of certain enemies previously and can't continue without exploding? As a player, I'm not going to just sit there and wait a few minutes to cool down. I would suggest either increasing cooldown rate to make heat-management a shorter-scale endeavour, or else having limited "coolant packs" or somesuch to give the player a bit more control while emphasising the resource management aspect of the heat system.
Also, remember what I said about frame-dependence? Something in your heat system isn't time-based. At lowest detail I heatsploded after a single jump. :(
Props to your sound guy, BTW. I loved the background music.
I hope you folks keep working on this. You have some great ideas and the potential to make a fun and unique shooter-brawler-mech-sim-thing. :D
Yeah there were loads I still wanted to get to, but the deadline caught me. But I'll keep working on it when I get the time to do so. I think the 2 button constraint was awesome, BUT I did go for a wrong type of game for 2 buttons. Having said that I will most likely move away from the two buttons, mouse input in menus for a start :P I'm quite happy with how the combos came out with the NON-polish I gave them :P so just to get clear feedback, after the last build the movement worked well?
The time I spent on MecHero and the research I did got me entusiastic about old 2D platformers.
I think the only issue I have now is that enemies can shoot me while they're still off screen. Can I suggest shifting the camera's centre focus by a proportion of the player's velocity? I.E. if I'm moving to the right the camera focus shifts to the right so the character is in the left half of the screen and I can see more of what's coming up ahead.
@aodendaal yes I will work the combos quide into the game at some point, have been having some ideas how to move the camera, could probably slap in a temperary solution :) I also want to limit the range the enemy mechs can see, and make them smarted movement wise, so the challenge is not that they can just snipe you :P
@Gazza_N thanks, easy to fix the heat now :)