3 replies to this topic

[SkullSoft]

Hi, all!

I'm developing an epic gun game, all about guns. And I want your ideas!

It'll be kind of a roguelike action shooter, if you can picture that. You'll slaughter waves of monsters, (some of which will also weild random guns), and try to reach the top of the tower to get the Golden Gun.

The guns are going to be procedurally generated, with random attributes, random special abilities, and random attack types. The ammo will also have random qualities.

Basically, most of the fun will come from trying out an endless parade of interesting and zany guns; and by "trying out" I mean "killing monsters by the dozen".

What features would YOU like to see in a gun game? What features have you seen that are really cool? What have you thought would be cool, but never seen?

I'm especially looking for wacky attacks; for example, the high-powered shuriken attack in Guardians of the Light.

You can try out a (rather crude) prototype of my idea here: http://www.ludumdare...eview&uid=10251

It's only a 48-hour demo; finished game will have much more attack types and features, and much better monsters.

Please post some cool ideas!

[Yal]

Sounds wonderful. I'd like to play it, envisioning something along the lines of Contra or Sunset Riders except better.


Suggestions:

• Make the game as Arcade, pick-up-and-play as possible. While guns may have lots of interesting stats, you should try to avoid having the player fiddle with menus unless (s)he really wants to. I'd have a system like this:
  
  • You can "star mark" guns pretty easily. Star marked guns will be kept unless you explicitly sell it or something.
  • Guns not star marked may get dropped on the ground if you e.g. pick up another gun when you have a full inventory.
  • Every now and then you should fight an extra-strong enemy. Such enemies should use guns, and drop them when killed. Similar to the "power-up carrior enemy"s many shooter games use.
• Guns should visually give clues to how they will look in action. Color, size, and shape should somehow give you an impression to what they will do. You could do this with color blending and then randomly selecting handles, barrels, and random metal details from a list and then somehow give (x,y) tuples to them. I'd recommend just saving the "seed" of the gun (use with random_set_seed()) and then re-generate the gun when needed (e.g. when saving the game, or stashing away the gun in the storage, you may just store the seed and free the other data)
• So for instance a sniper gun would be long and thin, a rapidfire gun pretty bulky and short, and a handgun/pistol very short and pretty small. You could give the gun variables like "thickness", "decoration details" and "length" and then make the random choices of ammo, power etc affect these characteristics, and then you finally add some noise to it.
• This sounds like it could be a really good cellphone game, by the way.
• The game might focus a lot on the guns, but you really should have some colorful characters to play as. I'm thinking something like the classic bunch: [Fat comic relief tank guy],[Acrobatic sniper girl],[Average guy with spiky hair] and [Sepiroth/Dante].

Oh, and explosions are fun when done right. You should let guns have (or not have) a property called "Explosive". If true, the projectiles explodes for splash damage when destroyed. Each ammo type has a different explosion, so a normal projectile might frag-grenade-explode, a laser projectile in an electric flashbang, a fire projectile in a minor atomic bomb mushroom cloud, a water projectile in a big icicle that then explodes into loads of small ice needles, and so on. The size of the explosion could get bigger if Explosive is larger than 1, if you make it a sliding-scale instead of a boolean. Explosive shots drains more ammo, too.

Another idea: in later levels, the guns grow more powerful (and gets more points allotted to their stats). But you can also get cash and jewels (from slaughtering the monsters) to spend on manually upgrading your guns according to your tastes. Or, a fun idea: you can pay for a RANDOM gun upgrade, which takes less cash but gives a random stat boost.

[SkullSoft]

Thanks for your help, Yal!

Star rankings are a really good idea. I hadn't thought of that! I'll add it to the list.

I'm definitely planning to have it as pick up n play, menu-free as possible; as well as having gun upgrades. And I will have bosses and champion monsters with guns.

I also like your explosions idea! I've got some static explosions already that are bigger with higher bullet masses, (not in the version that I've linked to--will update that when there's a significant amount of new content) but your idea sounds pretty good.

Also interested in your take on ammo--I had it kind of a generic 'ammo' with random properties, but having actual ammo types would be cool too.

Edited by SkullSoft, 29 May 2012 - 10:46 PM.

[aaabbbccc]

Sounds wonderful. I'd like to play it, envisioning something along the lines of Contra or Sunset Riders except better.


Suggestions:

• Make the game as Arcade, pick-up-and-play as possible. While guns may have lots of interesting stats, you should try to avoid having the player fiddle with menus unless (s)he really wants to. I'd have a system like this:
  
  • You can "star mark" guns pretty easily. Star marked guns will be kept unless you explicitly sell it or something.
  • Guns not star marked may get dropped on the ground if you e.g. pick up another gun when you have a full inventory.
  • Every now and then you should fight an extra-strong enemy. Such enemies should use guns, and drop them when killed. Similar to the "power-up carrior enemy"s many shooter games use.
• Guns should visually give clues to how they will look in action. Color, size, and shape should somehow give you an impression to what they will do. You could do this with color blending and then randomly selecting handles, barrels, and random metal details from a list and then somehow give (x,y) tuples to them. I'd recommend just saving the "seed" of the gun (use with random_set_seed()) and then re-generate the gun when needed (e.g. when saving the game, or stashing away the gun in the storage, you may just store the seed and free the other data)
• So for instance a sniper gun would be long and thin, a rapidfire gun pretty bulky and short, and a handgun/pistol very short and pretty small. You could give the gun variables like "thickness", "decoration details" and "length" and then make the random choices of ammo, power etc affect these characteristics, and then you finally add some noise to it.
• This sounds like it could be a really good cellphone game, by the way.
• The game might focus a lot on the guns, but you really should have some colorful characters to play as. I'm thinking something like the classic bunch: [Fat comic relief tank guy],[Acrobatic sniper girl],[Average guy with spiky hair] and [Sepiroth/Dante].

Oh, and explosions are fun when done right. You should let guns have (or not have) a property called "Explosive". If true, the projectiles explodes for splash damage when destroyed. Each ammo type has a different explosion, so a normal projectile might frag-grenade-explode, a laser projectile in an electric flashbang, a fire projectile in a minor atomic bomb mushroom cloud, a water projectile in a big icicle that then explodes into loads of small ice needles, and so on. The size of the explosion could get bigger if Explosive is larger than 1, if you make it a sliding-scale instead of a boolean. Explosive shots drains more ammo, too.

Another idea: in later levels, the guns grow more powerful (and gets more points allotted to their stats). But you can also get cash and jewels (from slaughtering the monsters) to spend on manually upgrading your guns according to your tastes. Or, a fun idea: you can pay for a RANDOM gun upgrade, which takes less cash but gives a random stat boost.

That's a lot of good ideas lol