Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

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DRW
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Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by DRW »

I'm looking for suggestions regarding a gameplay-related issue in my current game.

The gameplay is similar to those top-down run'n'gun games like "Commando", only that you use a melee weapon instead of a gun since it's set in an RPG-like fantasy world, but still as a linear game and not open-world.

Now the problem is that it's much easier to simply avoid enemies altogether instead of fighting them. In "Commando" and other games, this is no problem since you shoot at them and therefore, you try to keep them at a distance anyway. But if your option is to approach them or to stay away and let them live, avoidance is the safer option in my current version.

Do you have any good ideas how the player can be encouraged or forced to fight the opponents? I don't want it to be possible that you can circumvent the difficulty by simply walking between the opponents and never looking back.

The demo version of the game can be downloaded here:
viewtopic.php?p=285656#p285656
My game "City Trouble":
Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/Eee0yurkIW4
Download (ROM, manual, artworks): http://www.denny-r-walter.de/city.html
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by creaothceann »

DRW wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 1:28 am Do you have any good ideas how the player can be encouraged or forced to fight the opponents?
Encouraged:
  • Enemy weapons/energy can be used/consumed. (Mega Man, Metroid, Horizon Zero Dawn)
  • The player earns points which unlock features/characters/areas (Holocure) or background story details.
  • The player may practice certain techniques (e.g. movement patters) that are required later.
  • Enemies turn into friendly characters. (Sonic, RPGs)
Forced:
  • Progress is prevented until all/key enemies in an area have been defeated - e.g. doors/bridges that open/extend automatically or via an item that has to be collected.
  • Fighting certain enemies requires items collected from other enemies. (Mega Man)
  • Dead/immobilized enemies can be used as platforms. (Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger)
DRW wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 1:28 am I don't want it to be possible that you can circumvent the difficulty by simply walking between the opponents and never looking back.
This is often used by speedruns and may be harder than fighting the enemies.
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by nesrocks »

The combination of the "enemy size / movement pattern / movement speed" prevents them from being jumped over (or makes it difficult to do it) without taking some damage, assuming that is how the player can currently avoid them. Think Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, Megaman.

edit: oh so it's top down view. Then the enemies need to be more aggressive. Make them move faster and shoot.
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by zzo38 »

Another possibility would be if the path is narrow and everyone else (enemies) is in the way, so that it is difficult to go the other way.

(Note that I have not seen that game; this is a general idea.)
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by Drag »

I can think of two things:
- Enemies drop power-ups which make fighting easier, especially boss fights
- Enemies drop currency which can be used in shops to power yourself up

In both situations, the player can choose to completely ignore fighting, which will make things more difficult later, or can engage enemies to make things easier.

If all else fails, bring the enemies to the player. :D
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by Pokun »

The first thing I can think of is what Nesrocks and Drag both said. Enemies must be aggressive to put some stress on the player, chasing him at all times so that killing them quickly is safer than letting them live for too long. If you have many enemies you might not want them all chasing the player the exact same way the exact same time though so they all crowd together. Maybe they take turns, or they randomly chase you or something.

Next I think how Zelda 1 does it. Enemies typically move randomly and are not that aggressive, which means you survive longer if you avoid them and move to the next screen as quickly as possible. But the game often forces you to stay in a room in dungeons to solve puzzles or pick up keys or other items, so for this reason it is usually safer to kill enemies one by one so that you can solve the puzzle calmly without getting interrupted.
This does not work on the overworld where there are less puzzles in general. But this is not such a big problem because enemies are mostly easy anyway until you come to the Death Mountain and meets the Lynels.
Almost all enemies are generally only dangerous when there are a lot of them and there is a risk of touching them as they move randomly and you need to get through or you need to stay on a screen for a prolonged time. Killing a few decreases the risk and thus encourages engaging enemies in both the overworld and in dungeons.

I realize these all don't translate to a pure action game where there are little to no puzzles, but the basic idea is that having to stay with living enemies longer increases the risk of dying.

One idea is to have some enemies that are faster than the player so he needs to kill them. Or maybe enemies that gradually become faster the longer they stay alive so running away gets more and more risky.
I also think it's OK to have the easiest "Goomba" type of zako that the player can quite easily avoid if he wants, and then you gradually scale the difficulty of the enemies with the more dangerous ones requiring to be fought.

And since it's a typical arcade action game, a score might be a good idea if you don't have one already. Enemies should probably give enough points that killing them is more beneficial than the time bonus for completing a level quickly.
If you are competing for a score the player might be the one chasing the enemies. Think of the flying saucers in the beginning of Xevious, they engage and shoot at you then they purposely does an evasion maneuver to avoid getting hit by your counter attack and escapes out of the screen.
Enemies suddenly appearing, attacking and quickly disappearing is a pattern that might work for certain enemies (maybe a ninja/assassin). Especially if you need to hit them first to avoid the risk of taking a hit, it forces the player to keep on his toes and have good reflexes.
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by DRW »

Thanks for all the suggestions so far.


Regarding enemy weapons:
In my game, the enemies already drop certain items, including weapons. But if the safest way is to avoid the enemies in the first place, players have no real need of the items either since they merely help you in battle. (And for boss battles to be easier, all it takes is to collect one sub weapon that you like. After that, we are at avoiding the enemies as much as possible again.)

Beat'em up-like scrolling is not really what I want. That slows down the pacing unnaturally.

And I cannot make certain weapons a requirement of defeating certain enemies: If you can circumvent the enemies, we have the original issue again. And if you can't, then what to do if you don't have that specific weapon?
Also, I'm not speaking about the bosses at the end, "Mega Man"-style. They need to be fought anyway. I'm talking about the regular level. And in this, making porcupines immune to the sword and only be killable by arrow merely increases the issue that players might try to avoid them at all.

Making narrow parts in half of the game would make the level design quite boring.

Enemies that become faster the longer they stay alive would work in a single-screen game (where you can't flee anyway). In my game, this would merely mean that the player tries to scroll them out of the screen as fast as possible. And forcing them along with the scrolling would mean that you simply gather the easiest opponent right at the beginning and take them with you, so that no slots are free for the more dangerous opponents later.



I will probably try the more aggressive approach for now: Having the enemies follow the player more often.
In the moment, ogres follow you if you get too close. Wolves follow you only if you attack them. And slimes follow you always, with pauses in between and they're very slow.
So, the ogres will probably also throw stones. And the wolves will also follow you if you come too close. And maybe the porcupine will get a follow pattern that gets chosen randomly, apart from its movement that it already has.


Another thing is the score: Every enemy gives points. And with enough points, you get an extra life. However, this again doesn't compensate for the fact that running away makes you take less damage, so you probably only need the extra life because you were killed in battle before.

The score as a motivator just for the score's sake: Hmm, I don't think this is enough. Many people don't care about those raw numbers, unless maybe it's one of those really early arcade games. After all, who gives a crap about how many points you aquire in "Super Mario Bros." or "Mega Man 1"?

But some bonus stuff that you get with enough points might be another good idea. Only that it shouldn't be "with more points you get better fighting equipment or more energy". Because, again: This is the very thing that you don't need if you can just pass the opponents. Taking the risk of killing opponents to get stuff that helps you kill opponents is not an argument against not taking the risk to kill opponents.

So, maybe there can be some desirable item or mechanism or whatever that you get with a certain score, but that is not just something to increase your fighting abilities.
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by Drag »

I just got around to playing the demo; where exactly are you running into the issue where the player can just ignore everyone and run past everything? I'm having great difficulty in doing so, and I made it halfway past the second map before losing all my lives.

Edit: I've played a bit more (enough to beat the boss), and I think the map layouts provide enough situations where the passive enemies still block you and force you to engage. Your initial post made me think you could literally run past everything, and maybe a speedrunner could get familiar enough with the game to pull that off, but I wouldn't expect this to be something that everyone ends up doing. Maybe the way things are right now, where certain enemies are more passive than others, is fine.
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by creaothceann »

After playing the game I have some more comments:

The player and enemy movement (except wolves) feels a bit too fast and random. Together with some trees and high grass, and especially with projectiles, the player may feel frustrated by being unable to react to enemies adequately. This may be fine for NES veterans or for a higher difficulty setting though.

Enemies can occupy the same space as the player, which makes it harder to avoid them after being damaged.

The slimes feel very aggressive and fast. They don't have to be; just let them see the player if s/he's on the same row/column (or let obstacles obstruct their view), and let them take out a larger portion of the player's health (less for higher-level player characters). The latter will make defeating/avoiding them much more important. (Personal anecdote: When playing Horizon: Zero Dawn, selecting a much higher difficulty level and seeing "easy" enemies kill me in the blink of an eye awakened my competitive spirit and forced me to change the way I played the game. As a result I became more immersed and had more fun.) You may want to implement a finer-grained health bar; either a pixel-based one or just e.g. a three-digit number.

Obstacles: they (or a subset of them) could block projectiles (including the sword blast), and as said above perhaps block the enemy's view. They could even be destructible. Entering high grass might disable enemy detection.

It's less realistic, and maybe I'm just used to Secret of Mana, but imo it would "feel" better if the player has to fill the SoM-like bar by holding the controller button. It would also allow blocking the enemies/projectiles by holding the sword in front of you. (Alternatively, projectiles could be blocked with a sword strike.) There's also no visual or audible difference between lower- and higher-powered attacks; maybe the sound could be changed accordingly.

Dropped arrows don't have a counter, so they actually act like a bow with unlimited arrows. Perhaps this could be reflected in the item graphic. A bow could be obtained from humanoid (bow-using) enemies and/or shops; the porcupines could drop arrows only after that. The number of arrows could be restricted, making proper aiming much more important.

(Visually speaking, diagonal movement could perhaps be represented via special graphics. That would be purely eye candy though.)

DRW wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 9:55 am In my game, the enemies already drop certain items, including weapons. But if the safest way is to avoid the enemies in the first place, players have no real need of the items either since they merely help you in battle. (And for boss battles to be easier, all it takes is to collect one sub weapon that you like. After that, we are at avoiding the enemies as much as possible again.)
RPGs solve this issue by implementing a level-up system. Defeating bosses and higher-level enemies with an underleveled player character that has no powerful weapons and protective armor is essentially impossible; the player needs to seek out and defeat enemies to get stronger. As a bonus this will make defeating lower-level enemies faster so the player isn't bothered by them, even give him/her a sense of satisfaction and progress.

DRW wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 9:55 am And I cannot make certain weapons a requirement of defeating certain enemies: If you can circumvent the enemies, we have the original issue again. And if you can't, then what to do if you don't have that specific weapon?
Mega Man will simply let you fail if you don't have a specific weapon; that's just part of the gameplay. Zelda - Link's Awakening (I refer to that since that's what I played as a kid) is nicer and "simply" blocks parts of the map if you don't have a specific weapon/item yet; defeating a boss gives you a new weapon/item, which you can then also try on regular enemies and objects.

DRW wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 9:55 am I will probably try the more aggressive approach for now: Having the enemies follow the player more often.
In the moment, ogres follow you if you get too close. Wolves follow you only if you attack them. And slimes follow you always, with pauses in between and they're very slow.
So, the ogres will probably also throw stones. And the wolves will also follow you if you come too close. And maybe the porcupine will get a follow pattern that gets chosen randomly, apart from its movement that it already has.
Let the ogres use bows and arrows, and implement enemy movement patterns that the player can memorize and exploit.
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by DRW »

Drag wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 10:50 am I just got around to playing the demo; where exactly are you running into the issue where the player can just ignore everyone and run past everything? I'm having great difficulty in doing so, and I made it halfway past the second map before losing all my lives.
I'm attaching a playthrough where I do just minimal fighting. Sure, I get hit a few times, but I guess it still shows the issue.
Choraleon - Demo Version 2023-01-06-0.fm2
(234.51 KiB) Downloaded 27 times
creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm The player and enemy movement (except wolves) feels a bit too fast and random. Together with some trees and high grass, and especially with projectiles, the player may feel frustrated by being unable to react to enemies adequately.
What do you mean exactly, esecially in regards to the speed? Do you think the enemies are too fast for the player? I always thought the player speed is adequate. But if you can specify, we might adjust the game.

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm Enemies can occupy the same space as the player, which makes it harder to avoid them after being damaged.
Yeah, this is something we're about to change. Enemies will of course still be able to occupy the same space as you, but the patterns where an enemy follows you will only go in a way that the enemy follows you until it is in collision distance, not until it occupies your own x and y position.

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm The slimes feel very aggressive and fast.
I always thought they are the easiest opponents. Sure, they have a follow pattern, but they move very slowly and stop after a while.

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm just let them see the player if s/he's on the same row/column (or let obstacles obstruct their view), and let them take out a larger portion of the player's health (less for higher-level player characters).
Do you mean that if a slime detects you horizontally or vertically, he just walks in a straight line towards you, but doesn't adjust his position with your movement afterwards?
Maybe we can do this. I'll have to talk about it with my team members.

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm You may want to implement a finer-grained health bar; either a pixel-based one or just e.g. a three-digit number.
Yeah, we decided against that since it's just a hack'n'slash, not a full-blown adventure, so this wouldn't really fit. We keep it easy in the way that each enemy deals one hit, but in the end, you only have six hitpoints anyway.
(We're even thinking about turning it back to three hitpoints, without half hearts, to make it more difficult since you can easily clear the level with six hearts if you have a bit practise.)

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm Obstacles: they (or a subset of them) could block projectiles (including the sword blast), and as said above perhaps block the enemy's view. They could even be destructible. Entering high grass might disable enemy detection.
I write this down and suggest it to my teammates. Blocking the enemy's view would probably be too complicated, but the tiles blocking the weapon should be easy.

And we even already have destructible background elements: The brushwood.

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm It's less realistic, and maybe I'm just used to Secret of Mana, but imo it would "feel" better if the player has to fill the SoM-like bar by holding the controller button.
We had that originally. But the result was: People never do this. They just don't. You have enough to do with fighting and avoiding opponents, so you never think: "I will stop fighting now and keep pressing the A button because in two to three seconds, I want to shoot at that specific opponent over there." That's why we went for the "Final Fantasy Adventure" version (the precursor to "Secret of Mana").

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm It would also allow blocking the enemies/projectiles by holding the sword in front of you.
Then I guess people would never ever swing the sword, but simply hold it in front of them for the entire time.
Also, this would require more player graphics. We already wasted more banks, so that only the sprites for one direction of each hero is on a bank at once, so that we can have more of the always-necessary graphics available. Having each hero with new graphics where they walk and spread out the arm at the same time would require many more banks.

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm (Alternatively, projectiles could be blocked with a sword strike.)
I wrote it down. Let's see what the girls say.

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm There's also no visual or audible difference between lower- and higher-powered attacks; maybe the sound could be changed accordingly.
What do you mean with lower- and higher-powered? Each player weapon has its own distinct sound: Sword slash, axe slash, sickle shot, ball shot, arrow, laser spreadshot.

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm Dropped arrows don't have a counter, so they actually act like a bow with unlimited arrows. Perhaps this could be reflected in the item graphic. A bow could be obtained from humanoid (bow-using) enemies and/or shops; the porcupines could drop arrows only after that. The number of arrows could be restricted, making proper aiming much more important.
I would gladly use stuff like bows as items, but if you have a look at the graphic banks while you play, you'll see that sprite bank 1 and 2 are already brim-full. That's why the weapons themselves are used as items. Bank 4 might have some empty slots, but that's only because it's just level 2. We have many more opponent graphics in later levels, I already calculated it. That's why there isn't any more room.

We consciously decided against limited sub-weapons and went with the "Contra" approach. The main reason is that there's no more room in the status bar:

The status bar is implemented in an unusual way. Instead of stressing myself with updating the status bar background tiles in a vertically-scrolling game, I simply have an interrupt that does nothing but disable the background rendering at a certain scanline and switch out one sprite graphics bank. Then the status bar is done with sprites. But in this case, the status bar can only consist of eight sprites horizontally. These eight sprites also serve as a means to prevent characters from moving over the status bar: If they move into it, they aren't rendered due to the 8 sprites per scanline limit.
And with the three hearts, the life number, the weapon icon and the loading bar, we already have four sprites per player. More stuff would require a higher status bar, taking away more from the visible playfield.
That's why we simply decided that you can use the secondary weapon until you lose a life, just like in "Contra".

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm (Visually speaking, diagonal movement could perhaps be represented via special graphics. That would be purely eye candy though.)
For weapons: Again, limited simultaneous graphics, so not really possible.
For the heroes: It would require too many graphic banks. I don't want to be too wasteful with cartridge space, but do it in a realistic manner that would have been done back in the day. I don't want this six level game to be 2 MB in the end.

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm RPGs solve this issue by implementing a level-up system. Defeating bosses and higher-level enemies with an underleveled player character that has no powerful weapons and protective armor is essentially impossible; the player needs to seek out and defeat enemies to get stronger. As a bonus this will make defeating lower-level enemies faster so the player isn't bothered by them, even give him/her a sense of satisfaction and progress.
We actually tried to do a full-blown action-adventure like the SNES and GB "Zelda" games. We worked on it for four years. Then we gave up because even though we did make steady progress, it would still haven taken us many more years until everything would be finished.
This game here is our compromise: Same fantasy setting, mostly the same characters, but a linear, level-based game that we can actually finish as a hobbyist project.

So, while the visuals clearly give off a JRPG vibe and I try to include some RPG-like stuff into it (particularly the fact that you can talk with NPCs in the inn and that the story is told through in-game cutscenes instead of dedicated "Ninja Gaiden"-like artworks), the mentality of the main gameplay itself is closer to run'n'gun games like "Commando", not the open-world exploration, solving puzzles, grinding, buying items, equipping your character stuff from the RPGs.

Also, since the levels are tied to the game's plot, there is no "Mega Man"-like level select where you can collect major weapons in a tactical manner.

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm Let the ogres use bows and arrows
I guess they'll use stones instead. Arrows can only be shot in eight directions, unless I also include some semi-diagonal graphics which would be too much. Also, they're wild creatures, not just slightly uglier human-like characters.

creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm and implement enemy movement patterns that the player can memorize and exploit.
Do you have any concrete examples of possible exploitable patterns?
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by SNES AYE »

DRW wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 1:28 am I'm looking for suggestions regarding a gameplay-related issue in my current game.

The gameplay is similar to those top-down run'n'gun games like "Commando", only that you use a melee weapon instead of a gun since it's set in an RPG-like fantasy world, but still as a linear game and not open-world.

Now the problem is that it's much easier to simply avoid enemies altogether instead of fighting them. In "Commando" and other games, this is no problem since you shoot at them and therefore, you try to keep them at a distance anyway. But if your option is to approach them or to stay away and let them live, avoidance is the safer option in my current version.

Do you have any good ideas how the player can be encouraged or forced to fight the opponents? I don't want it to be possible that you can circumvent the difficulty by simply walking between the opponents and never looking back.

The demo version of the game can be downloaded here:
viewtopic.php?p=285656#p285656
Well, based on the speed your enemies move towards the player, avoiding them takes effort of its own, so I don't think you need to worry about whether the player is going to fight them or not. And I believe allowing the player the freedom to choose how they want to play is often much better game design than forcing one specific way on them when not entirely essential. I think you should create your game in such a way as to make both options viable and fun, with different reasons why someone might choose one or the other, and let your player enjoy the game how they choose to enjoy it.

And, I'm not going to go into specific details as to why I think your sword attack here should be on Y--see the other thread about button mapping for my thoughts on that--but, please, add a button configuration option if that's the setup you are going with.

Also, what I will say is that if this is the start of your game, the difficulty is way too hard way too soon imo. Maybe you could start off much gentler than that and ease the player into the harder difficulty after a few levels or more. And, right out that gate as a bit of gameplay feedback, I definitely wouldn't freeze the player on the spot when they take a hit for sure. I think that's a bit too unforgiving, and it makes your game feeling like something that only the most hardcore gamers are supposed to enjoy. You're already limited to a tiny audience by virtue of this being a retro title for an old console, so it might be a good idea to bring in as many players as possible before ramping up the difficulty.

By the way, your game in coming along very nicely in general, despite some of my gripes.
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by creaothceann »

DRW wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 7:33 am
creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm The player and enemy movement (except wolves) feels a bit too fast and random. Together with some trees and high grass, and especially with projectiles, the player may feel frustrated by being unable to react to enemies adequately.
What do you mean exactly, esecially in regards to the speed? Do you think the enemies are too fast for the player? I always thought the player speed is adequate. But if you can specify, we might adjust the game.
The player is moving a bit faster than what I'd expect (Zelda for GB), but I checked with Zelda for NES and it's only a little bit faster:
Image

The enemies are also much faster than those in Secret of Mana or Link's Awakening. It's mainly an issue of reaction time, I guess. If the player can't evade enemies and projectiles quickly enough, it feels unfair. Especially with several porcupines and butterflies shooting projectiles at the player, and the porcupines moving randomly around. Remember, diagonal shots take up a lot of space.

The difficulty feels almost like playing Pocky & Rocky (except that there you could aim diagonally). But perhaps that's just me.

DRW wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 7:33 am
creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm just let them see the player if s/he's on the same row/column (or let obstacles obstruct their view), and let them take out a larger portion of the player's health (less for higher-level player characters).
Do you mean that if a slime detects you horizontally or vertically, he just walks in a straight line towards you, but doesn't adjust his position with your movement afterwards?
Now that I played the game a bit more, I'd say their detection and movement is fine, but they could move and spawn a bit slower. It's hard to handle them too when there's already a lot of other enemies on screen.

DRW wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 7:33 am
creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm It would also allow blocking the enemies/projectiles by holding the sword in front of you.
Then I guess people would never ever swing the sword, but simply hold it in front of them for the entire time.
In Secret of Mana it reduces your walking speed, and in Link's Awakening you lose time whenever you're swinging your sword (also blocks movement).

DRW wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 7:33 am
creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm There's also no visual or audible difference between lower- and higher-powered attacks; maybe the sound could be changed accordingly.
What do you mean with lower- and higher-powered?
At the moment there are only low-powered attacks (when the power bar is not filled) and high-powered ones (when it's filled). Having a low-power sword attack inflict less damage would prevent random sword button mashing. But you said you don't want to use RPG elements...

DRW wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 7:33 am
creaothceann wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:23 pm and implement enemy movement patterns that the player can memorize and exploit.
Do you have any concrete examples of possible exploitable patterns?
Anything that's not just a random "wait x frames, then go into a random direction, even diagonally" like the porcupines. For example: "look into a random direction, wait x frames, then go into that direction" is much more predictable. A shooter game like Pocky & Rocky has a mixture of enemies following the player, following fixed paths, and moving in a fixed sequence of steps.
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by DRW »

SNES AYE wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 7:47 am And, I'm not going to go into specific details as to why I think your sword attack here should be on Y--see the other thread about button mapping for my thoughts on that--but, please, add a button configuration option if that's the setup you are going with.
I understand your issue when it comes to buttons where one is supposed to be tapped and one is supposed to be held:
"Super Mario Bros.": Hold B to run, tap A to jump.
"Contra": Hold B to auto-fire (if available), tap A to jump.

In fact, this is a major issue I have with all kinds of racing games: Who thought it would be a good idea to make A the acceleration and B the brakes? The other way around it would be much more logical: I hold the B button with the tip of my thumb to accelerate and sporadically move down my thumb's middle to tap the A button to activate the brakes. In the current setup, the tip of of my thumb mostly hovers over the A button, ready to brake, while the middle of my thumb is constantly pressed down, giving me a cramp.

However, I don't understand the same sentinent in my game or in "The Legend of Zelda": Both buttons are just tap buttons. So, why is it important that the sword is on B? You use the sword in the same way as the arrows: Tap on them whenever you need them. Why does sword objectively belong on A and arrow on B? Why can't you simply hold your thumb in the way you want to and use the sword on A in the same way you would use the arrows if the controls were reversed?

In the other games, using A and B is done in fundamentally different ways: One is usually held, one is usually tapped. But here, both are just tapped. So, why do you have an issue with the sword on A that wouldn't also be an issue if the arrows were on A?

SNES AYE wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 7:47 am Also, what I will say is that if this is the start of your game, the difficulty is way too hard way too soon imo. Maybe you could start off much gentler than that and ease the player into the harder difficulty after a few levels or more.
It's actually the second level, but yeah: It should be a little hard. This is not a game with 20 levels. We only have six or so. And we don't want it to be a "Kirby's Adventure"-like pushover. One tester who streamed his progress managed to play through the entire level after the third attempt. And even though I had problems myself at first, I can now easily play through this level without too much hassle.
So, if anything, I'm thinking of reducing the energy to three hitpoints, making the game a bit harder. But in no way can I make the game easier. Especially since it is going to have passwords, so you don't even need to start from the very beginning after losing.
I might make the first level, the beach, a pushover level, though. That one will be shorter anyway.

SNES AYE wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 7:47 am I definitely wouldn't freeze the player on the spot when they take a hit for sure. I think that's a bit too unforgiving, and it makes your game feeling like something that only the most hardcore gamers are supposed to enjoy.
This one I don't understand. If you get hit and the game freezes you for a moment, you cannot get hit any further while in this state. After being frozen, you can move around with mercy invincibility for a few moments where nothing can hurt you either. So, what's the unforgiving part here? Would you prefer if the player gets hit and simply keeps walking, so that your health is drained, but there's no "physical" indicator of it? Or do you mean something else?

SNES AYE wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 7:47 am By the way, your game in coming along very nicely in general, despite some of my gripes.
Thanks.

creaothceann wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 1:17 pm The player is moving a bit faster than what I'd expect
[...]
The enemies are also much faster than those in Secret of Mana or Link's Awakening. It's mainly an issue of reaction time, I guess.
So, would you say I should decrease the speed of both the player and the opponents?
What do the others say?
(I have to talk about this with my teammates.)

creaothceann wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 1:17 pm The difficulty feels almost like playing Pocky & Rocky (except that there you could aim diagonally). But perhaps that's just me.
Well yeah. Please remember that this is not supposed to be a "Zelda"-like action adventure, despite the graphical and thematic style. Sure, in those action adventures, you cannot have hard as balls enemies since they are huge games with exploration, puzzle-solving, item shopping and all that stuff. But my game is a linear purely action-oriented game. It might look like "Zelda" and "Final Fantasy", but its mentality is more "Commando" with a melee weapon.

To make a side-scrolling comparison: This is not "Faxanadu", but "Ninja Gaiden" with "Faxanadu" graphics.


I made a note regarding the speed of the slimes. Let's see what my teammates say.


Holding the sword in front of you requires too many graphic banks (for walking with stretched out hand) and is not a possibility. Also, it would make the game too easy, even if it decreased your walking speed. You would have a constant shield in front of you.
There is an item though that, for a limited amound of time, hovers your primary weapon in front of you automatically, so that it attacks incoming opponents and you can still use secondary weapons regardless.

creaothceann wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 1:17 pm At the moment there are only low-powered attacks (when the power bar is not filled) and high-powered ones (when it's filled). Having a low-power sword attack inflict less damage would prevent random sword button mashing. But you said you don't want to use RPG elements...
That's actually kind of the case right now: The sword is weaker than the shot that you do with a filled power bar. Having the sword itself be different in both situations would be redundant because whatever enemy runs into the sword during a filled bar gets most likely hit by the shot anyway. And secondary weapons aren't related to the bar at all.

creaothceann wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 1:17 pm For example: "look into a random direction, wait x frames, then go into that direction" is much more predictable. A shooter game like Pocky & Rocky has a mixture of enemies following the player, following fixed paths, and moving in a fixed sequence of steps.
I took a note. Let's see what we can do.
My game "City Trouble":
Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/Eee0yurkIW4
Download (ROM, manual, artworks): http://www.denny-r-walter.de/city.html
SNES AYE
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by SNES AYE »

I wouldn't say there's any objective way buttons absolutely should be mapped, but I personally think using Y on SNES for the action you're going to hold or tap most often just makes best sense (in most cases). One reason is that natural resting position you mentioned, where everything else it just that tiny bit more crampy in my opinion. So I'd just personally go with the resting and tapping position that feels most comfortable. My presumption based on the demo is that sword is the item you will be tapping the most in the game, probably by far, so I'd want to map it to Y purely to make sure I don't unintentionally make the potential of finger discomfort/cramp that little bit higher for no genuinely good reason (B requires just a tiny bit more of a thumb bend and pull pack to press). I also think Y is just the most intuitive button to press on the entire controller too, so I'd always want to put my main item/action on it for that reason as well (usually). And I think this is also why almost every good modern game uses X on the Xbox as the main button and square on the PlayStation too (I think).

Well, okay about the difficulty. I guess it's one way to try to give the game a bit more play time if it's not that long otherwise.

I just don't like either freezing the player on the spot or knockback damage when they get hit. I think those are old and bad game design conventions that we should have designed our way beyond now. I'd probably flash the player red when they get hit (for me, when it comes to indicating damage, flashing red indicates blood/flesh/living things, yellow is for things that might have electricity or energy sources powering them, and white is usually for inanimate/solid objects--that's just how I think about it), and maybe give them a small damage animation/frame, but still let them move (and keep them still invulnerable for a while like you are doing and flashing the sprite on/off, as is pretty standard). And I wouldn't say it's unforgiving to freeze the player on the spot when they take damage so much as it doesn't feel good/fun/satisfying imo. As a player first (in my heart, as Iwata once said), I always think about what feels good/fun/satisfying above all. And I think you can still achieve that even when you're indicating to the player they messed up and are being punished with damage or whatever.

Hopefully that all makes sense, but feel free to ask any questions if it's not clear or you just want to respond to any of my comments there. :)
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DRW
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Re: Gameplay suggestion: How to encourage the player to approach the enemies

Post by DRW »

SNES AYE wrote: Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:22 am I just don't like either freezing the player on the spot or knockback damage when they get hit.
I once played a homebrew where the character simply lost energy when getting hit, but kept moving as if nothing happened. It felt completely weightless and without impact.
If a player character gets hit, he needs to get stunned for a moment. Simply moving on is not good in my opinion. If you walk along the street and someone jumps at you and kicks you from the side, do you simply keep walking, without being stopped even for a moment?

SNES AYE wrote: Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:22 am and maybe give them a small damage animation/frame, but still let them move
Damage frame + possible movement would mean a whole bunch of graphic tiles:

In the moment, each hero occupies three 1 KB sprite banks: One for each direction.
The other stuff on these banks (items and weapons) needs to be saved redundantly since I cannot store graphics in less than 1 KB chunks on MMC3.
Each 1 KB sprite bank has 32 tiles (since I use 8x16 sprites). Only 10 of them are used for the hero. So, the other 22 are already redundant. But it's alright since it allows me to have more of the stuff that is always there. And after all, it's only two additional banks per hero.

If I enabled a hit animation together with the ability to walk while being hit and if I also enabled walking while swinging the sword, this would mean each hero would waste nine sprite banks: 3 for the directions * (standard + attacking + hit) * 2 heroes. 18 banks with a huge bunch of redundant graphics.
That's why I can't combine every walking animation with attack animation and hit animation etc.
I mean, sure, I could. But I don't want to be so wasteful with ROM space and only do the game in a way that would have been realistic for such a game.
My game "City Trouble":
Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/Eee0yurkIW4
Download (ROM, manual, artworks): http://www.denny-r-walter.de/city.html
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