The (Tentative) Plan for Pyggy
Akake on 2009/05/10 15:06
of The Laser Samurai
Here's what I've been thinking of doing:
-Completely redoing graphical assets (Making characters and terrain look better, mostly)
-Possible elimination of wall-jumping (It didn't really work all that well, so I may dump it, or at least make it less of a focus)
-Sloping terrain
-Proper backgrounds (Not just filled-in with blue)
-Multiple playable characters (Not sure how many)
-Multiple enemy types (Also not sure how many)
-More sophisticated enemy AI (Something that's a bit less ruthless)
-Additional tilesets (Such as a forest or cave tileset)
-Additional terrain types (Such as water and ladders)
-Bosses (Maybe 4 or 5 of them)
-A "Commander Keen"-style world map (With some added things, like battles with wandering enemies)
-An actual HUD (Rather than a bunch of text)
-A menu system
-Save-game support
-A level editor (That also edits maps)
-Music and sound (The former done in LMMS, the latter probably from FreeSound)
-Customizable controls and joypad support
-More efficient level loading (The current level loader is way too slow)
-Refined combat mechanics (It's good now, but I can make it better)
This is a tentative list, but I don't exactly have a busy schedule, so I should have lots of time each day to work on it.
Anyhoo, that's the list of features that I have planned for the Pyggy release of Rose Ninja.
If anyone has any suggestions (Other things to add, things to take off, ideas for characters or enemies), I'd love to hear them!
---Akake
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Comments
Akake on
2009/05/10 15:51:
cyhawk on
2009/05/11 07:00:
claxo on
2009/05/11 08:46:
I wonder if capitalizing on First Person Shooters reflexes( movement in WASD, atacks with mouse, but here only the click mathers, not the mouse mouse move) will do better ?
Its too confusing mixing movement and atack in the same hand.
A quick test slowing the time-flow to 1/2 of actual feels a lot better
And remaping jump to K_UP, and the atacks to K_a , K_d makes a huge diference.
Now movements are in one hand, atacks in the other, and the atack keys are in the same row, near but not side by side, wich feels ok.
oh, and I like walljumping (after slowing and rebinding)
Akake on
2009/05/12 11:33:
I admit, most of my testing wasn't at full-speed, because the game couldn't maintain that framerate till I shrunk the window. I didn't have time to rebalance it for full-speed, so I probably should have just dropped the framerate.
Ah well, I'll have plenty of time to tweak both the framerate and the balancing in the levels for Pyggy.
The wall-jumping will actually probably be staying. I like implementing it, and want to fix it up.
I really should have had other folks test the game during the compo. It's surprising how much being used to a game can mess up your perspective on its difficulty! X-D
I'll definitely consider slowing the game down. That's something I should have taken time with. ^^;
As for the controls, they were hard for me to do right, I admit. I'll probably make them customizable, and also add joypad support.
I'll also try to separate movement and attack. I'm not quite sure where I can put the jump and run keys by default, but I might just have the player set up their controls the first time they play, anyway.
I've decided to scrap multiple characters. Instead, the game will feature a range of weapons, such as spears and bows.
In keeping with the ninja theming, though, I'm only going to use weapons that existed in medieval Japan. Not necessarily only ninjutsu weapons, but only medieval Japanese weapons.
Some may be creatively repurposed, though. We'll see.
I've also decided to clean up my base code (Entities, etc.) and turn it into a library once everything is up and running. I may also be releasing it. We'll see.
In addition, I'll be optimizing the display code. I want to break up the images a bit more, so that the camera isn't blitting a whole mass of pixels it doesn't have to.
The level loader will operate in steps, allowing for an animated loader. This will also allow me to display the progress in loading levels. This will come in addition to increased efficiency in level loading.
There will be a level editor, but I am not sure whether I want to use Pygame for it, or another library. I think a GUI library may simplify much of it, but I don't want to depend on everyone having that library.
Then again, it's just the editor. Plus, PyGTK and Tkinter are (For the most part) cross-platform. Hm.
Well, I'll have to think about it.
I'll also be adding in difficulty settings:
-Very Easy (Enemies ignore you until you attack them, Player attacks do 2X damage, Enemy attacks do 0.5X damage)
-Easy (Enemies ignore you until you're right next to them or attack them, Player attacks do 2X damage)
-Normal (All things are normal, though the speed it taken down a notch)
-Hard (Enemies act like they do now, Enemy attacks do 1.5X damage)
-Very Hard (Enemies act like they do now, Game runs at the speed it does now, Enemy attacks do 2X damage, Player attacks do 0.5X damage)
I've planned out (In my head) what will be on the world map between levels. I'm going to try to focus on refining in-level gameplay first, though.
There will be some additions to this (Increasingly long) list, though, if I have the time.
Anyway, thanks for the response! Keep 'em comin'!
---Akake
Akake on
2009/05/10 15:50:
I'm having trouble finding a way to make multiple characters meaningfully. I just can get it to work right.I may change the plan to simply putting additional weapons into the game. Hm...
Not sure yet what I'm going to do. But, that's why there's a (Tentative) in the title of this thread, I suppose.