5 replies to this topic

[The Legend]

This is just a game idea I'd like to maybe attempt after my current project. The whole idea is that the game is one giant boss level. and everytime you play it, it is different. Let me explain:


When you click "play" the AI (AKA Cydia) creates itself a body by drawing pixels at certain points. It then assigns itself weapons and stats. Then it builds itself a platform world for the challenger to traverse in in order to fight Cydia. Cydia could create drones to help protect it or perhaps take control of some of the floor blocks and remove them or throw them at the player. The basic idea of the game is that it is a new challenge every time you play. Maybe one time, you'll face an evil wizard, maybe the next time you'll face a robot. An attempt to create massive replay value. Just an idea. Feel free to give input.

[A saurus1]

Sounds difficult to code, but that could just be me and my lack of experience with procedural generation. Actually, this would be kind of fun if you could get it to work. The only problem I could see would be the learning curve. Usually boss levels are very very difficult, so you'd either have to make the learning curve very steep or make the pre-boss part very long.

[FoxInABox]

You need to check out the game Warning Forever, it features a boss that you beat over and over, and depending on how you did approach it, the next round it will have improved defence against your last tactic ..

but yeah, boss rush could indeed be interesting with variation, as it should be possible to reward the player in many diffrent ways ( achivements, break rewards ) so even if the player don't manage to beat it then there may still be the feeling of progress .. or just for the points as WF did (tho' they show the progress as the boss dies with explotions and parts that goes off)

[cantavanda]

Interesting, will be VERY hard to code. But I know it is possible!

[TsukaYuriko]

There are three genres I could imagine this system in, being platformer, RPG and SHMUP. I think I listed them from hardest to make to easiest to make. Since you're talking about a platformer, this is going to take a long time to develop properly, especially if you want to attach a stage part...
For RPGs, it would be way easier unless world generation is involved. Random stats, random weaknesses, random spells, maybe somehow connected here and there...
As for SHMUPs, I've actually seen a game do this, Fractal Fighter by cactus. While the possible parts of the boss ship are predefined, the game can create randomized layouts of these parts. Of course, it's a bit limited right now, but could well be extended to include as many parts as Fraxy, for example. If those games were combined...

Also, does Cydia have any special meaning? When I read the topic, it strongly reminded me of Aisa, a character in pretty much all Shatters of a Soul games (= my current series of games). Her name is short for Advanced Intelligence System Adaptoid, and as this suggests, she can create a complete AI based on her opponent. Of course I'm aiming to make her even more of an adaptoid by allowing her to change her strategy mid-game if she starts to notice that she never hits the player, but the player usually hits her. She's sort of like the opposite of Cydia, who forces the player to adapt to her (the name just sounds like a girl's name to me...) play style, while Aisa adapts to the player's. If you want to simplify things, this could be an approach... let the player select equipment/weapons and make Cydia prepare accordingly. But I guess that's not a solution if you really want to go with the original plan, which is a great idea and sounds like fun, but... yeah, really complicated to make.

While the concept sounds simple, fighting Aisa actually isn't (have you ever tried beating yourself? ). In one game (a SHMUP), she is the final boss of one of the game's chapters, but at first, she only uses the three basic attacks your character can use. The three attacks the player can use per character usually include a strong attack with limited horizontal range, a weaker homing attack, and either an even stronger attack with even less range than the first one (or even charge time) or a defensive attack (read: bomb, or a powered down version). While this concept isn't totally randomized like the game you want to make, Aisa does react to what the player does, so if you use homing attacks at her and she has a bomb with low cooldown... it's not very effective. The same goes for when she has a strong attack that has a limited vertical range - she'll chase you around the screen whenever she uses it. And if you happen to fight her with the one character whose homing attack is actually a full-screen attack... you better beat her quickly, because there's no way to protect yourself from that as said character's defensive move doesn't include invincibility of any sort.

It's needless to say that the player's attacks are meant to hit most of the time and are usually shot directly at the target. You basically fight against yourself, and your opponent has all the abilities you do, but uses them differently. During this phase, Aisa will move around like the player and attack like the player, except that she shoots downwards. No fancy spells that look beautiful yet. Just pure SHMUP action fighting against... a playable character, basically, also known as definitely overpowered. If you somehow happen to beat your clone (and you will once you figure out Aisa's traits, or if you know a lot of background story about the character you're playing as... because I'm recreating certain personality aspects during this spell), depending on whether certain conditions are fulfilled (for example, you must have survived the clone assault ), Aisa transforms into the beta version of your character. This basically means "old concepts of the corresponding characters I still have lying around", and they usually vary slightly in appearance, personality, abilities and relationships (and sometimes, name ). By creating a mix of the current clone and the beta clone, Aisa creates a clone that is capable of using the abilities of BOTH versions, and that's where the real fun starts: She recycles spells that were used by both versions (either in previous games or in the Shatters of a Soul novel) and adds in the abilities of the new version. Although it's only a single spell during which she does this, that spell packs quite a bunch, comparable to the true final boss of the game, whose spells are comparable to a mix of Touhou's Extra and Lunatic difficulty if I had to rate them (she actually starts off really simple, but once she transforms into her goddess form...). Oh yeah, said true final boss herself is a playable character in the game, so I guess you know what to expect when you face Aisa while playing as her. If you gave Cydia the ability to remember how she was beaten before and take counter-measures the next time (like in the game FoxInABox mentioned), this would officially be the least repetitive game ever. It could also help with the difficulty curve problem, since she would pretty much start out "dumb" and learn how you try to beat her over time... but that would be even MORE complex than your plan.

Since I mentioned the term "difficulty curve" now: Instead of adding a difficulty setting, you could adjust it based on other things, for example the amount of times you won divided by losses, based on your character if there is more than one (which sounds like a good idea as well, since Cydia pretty much is EVERY character you can imagine). This certainly sounds doable - just replace trickier things with easier ones, don't let the random generator generate them if the player is considered "bad".

I could imagine a mix between the Cydia concept and the Aisa concept to work out well, and it wouldn't be as complicated to program as the "all random" way. You'd have to program a whole brain for her, whereas you'd only have to define certain parts and how they can be used in conjunction with other parts if you went with the mix. It would save you a lot of work, not to mention that this game would actually have a chance at being released in the near future.


...I feel like I just wrote an entire scene for my novel. I guess that's a sign that this is enough for one post.

[The Legend]

Lol that is the longest post eva!