Stroll Wars - Rumble in the Woods
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ID: NXKL3XCHN8
I had so much fun with "Archon" on a friends C64. And the sprite tutorials made me think, it should be possible ;-)
Too lazy to program the level I took a look at the Map Editor and I could not stop anymore, when I saw that I could really get there (I mean, to the point having something walk around in a kind of fighting arena ;-) ) in quite a short time. Result: another open WIP. Gosh! -
Very nice! I used to love Archon as well.
Looking forward to trying your game with the kids once it is finished.
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Never played it.
But it looks cool already. -
Almost there... but I thought the game programmer is always the best player of the game??! Looks like this is not true. ;-)
I am unsure about the cooldown after three shots. I saw this in games, but it feels not like "empowering" the player. My kids hate the cooldown too. But without it the players just stay in front of each other and try to hit the button as fast they can 😂
Any advice on best shooting frequencies? -
@spikey said in Stroll Wars - Rumble in the Woods:
Almost there... but I thought the game programmer is always the best player of the game??! Looks like this is not true. ;-)
I am unsure about the cooldown after three shots. I saw this in games, but it feels not like "empowering" the player. My kids hate the cooldown too. But without it the players just stay in front of each other and try to hit the button as fast they can 😂
Any advice on best shooting frequencies?One idea to make the players feel more empowered could be to add the ability for the user to charge a super powerful shot by holding down the fire button? Then there is a risk element added, since the player is vulnerable while waiting for the shot to charge...
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alternate the shots so player 1 shoots 3 then can't shoot until player 2 has spent his 3, might break the game or make it so the player tries to waste the other players shots by darting back and forth.
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These are some dangerous woods to stroll through! ;)
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Try a shield button that bounces the shots back and stuns them.
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You could have shots do more damage the closer you are to someone when you fire. That way players want to get closer to each other, but at the risk that the other player can also do more damage to them.
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Put a random powerup spawning on the map, like spreadshot or rocket launcher. They’ll all chase after it. When you get it, it doesn’t have ammo but rather a timer; so you can’t simply grab and squat waiting for your opponent. You need to chase them, use it or lose it.
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Put some pugs in it :)
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@toxibunny oh I like that some NPC that attacks everyone.
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@toxibunny Just wondering are you happy with the 8 direction movement and shooting given that the Switch has analogue sticks which would make it simple enough to allow for 360 degrees of motion. But maybe the 8 direitions is a design choice, if so fair enough. I was just wondering because somewhere I've got a similar project based on Tron Deadly DIscs which does have full 360 movement/aiming and I think that to a degree this feature would help a bit with the problem of button mashing whenever something crosses the line of sight because this way all directions are potentially hittable,
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Thank you, this was very helpful feedback. When I get back to my switch I do some tests, maybe I release it first. The only 8 direction movement is probably something that hinders the player. Sadly the characters graphics are limited, but maybe i can still allow the movement.
...and with the other ideas i can enrich the gameplay afterwards, like npc or items.
@toxibunny with pugs you mean the dog? Or is this slang for npcs? -
Yep, the dog. I think they’re hilarious :)
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The list of todo's finally shrinked to two: highscores (yay! @vinicity I guess I can also use the planned version with multiple game modes ;-)) and rounds, because revenge is sweet, I guess?
The keyboard controls (I know for a 5 player game, its an overkill, but I will update Smack Man afterwards) are a bit tricky:
When holding down a key, the key appears once in the buffer and disappears afterwards for 0.5 seconds, so I automatically re-apply the last key after 0.5 seconds, for one more time (because after that 0.5 seconds the key is reappearing every frame again in the key buffer. Problem left: diagonal movement, when pressing two keys at the same time are currently jumpy. Maybe its not possible to do keyboard control anymore, if I try the free-direction movement idea. -
@spikey If you are doing "wasd" type keyboard controls, can't you use separate keys for diagonals, like "q" for up/left, "e" for up/right, etc.?
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@vinicity thank you for your comment. The diagonal movement can be handled, because the buffer will just contain "aw" if both keys are pressed. But I think the player with the keyboard has a disadvantage because somebody controlling the character with the analog stick will be able to move in other directions as 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, etc. e.g. 60 degrees. With the keyboard I can only stick with multiples of 45 degrees. So, currently I will restrict the analog stick control. But thinking about why it was done like this in the early days, brought me to the point, that it was just not possible with the joysticks from C64 or Amiga (yes, in the arcade games, it probably was). So, I guess there is no reason to stick with this limitation if I not for the retro-style reason. The priority for this game is: max out the fun for a simple idea and adding later additional things (to extend the fun) like items or extra power, like all these cool suggestions above (thanks a lot by the way!), when it works.
The alternative way, would be to not directly use the input to move the character, but to move a direction pointer around the character and just move on a button press into this direction. But this hinders when shooting at the same time.
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It's like that loading progress bar that goes up to 99% pretty quickly then stays there for about an hour. Good luck with the last "2" things.
