Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 3:53 am
Okay, this is what I just typed in my text editor:
DEATH ADVENTURE (just a working title!)
outline of game:
similar to Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair in gameplay
Sidescrolling. Left to right. Automatically scrolling for half of the levels. The other levels (every other level) will be sidescrolling shooting.
Sidescrolling shooting does not need to scroll up or down at all (that is, when your player/ship approaches upper or lower areas, the screen does not go further up or down.
Able to handle large characters (many sprites put together).
Simple HUD at top for displaying score and lifebar, how many lives left. Like Wonderboy III's (Genesis, not the Master System game).
The regular sidescrolling levels feature platforming (or jumping). You can fall down pits and die, and you can land on spikes and get hurt, and you can land on enemies and get hurt, and you can't swim, and you sometimes have to jump to get items that appear or jump over an enemy, jump on a moving platform. Sometimes platforms move up and down. Sometimes they drop really fast when you stand on them, while others act like elevators.
Typical platformer stuff.
Buttons: B shoots (attacks with sword also, if your character doesn't have projectile weapon)
C jumps
A is special
Special attacks... not sure. Mainly I would like to see some kind of SUPER DRAGON -type monster appear across the screen, destroying a ton of enemies in a big fiery blaze, like the aforementioned Amazon warrior's special in Golden Axe 1.
Should support high quality sound effects. This was the Genesis' weak point, in my opinion. Some games DID have good sound effects (like the Streets of Rage series and Sonic) but most didn't. They sounded "farty" and stupid. Hopefully this game can have some good digital sounds. Maybe they all have to be recorded (DAC?) I don't know.
Parallax scrolling would be nice, but isn't mandatory. Still though, that was one of the coolest features of games back then.
(You know, layers of clouds or sunsets in the background, that kind of thing, changing as you move... although since this will always be automatically-scrolling, in both types of stages, any parallax effects will not adjust according to where you are on screen).
Basically, that's it. It will need to support a lot of enemies on screen at once, and of course bosses. I don't want to take the Treasure route of making really elaborate bosses that take forever to kill (I don't find that fun), but just the normal big-enemy that you shoot at a lot until it changes colors until it dies kind of thing. You know, first it's green, then it turns blue (or parts of it do) as you keep shooting at it, and then it starts to turn purple and then finally it explodes or fades to black and sinks downwards off the screen and the music changes to "victory" and then the computer automatically moves your sprite off the screen to the right and cuts to a score table that tallies up your score for that page.
So we'll need one of those: a score table at the end of every stage. Not sure how to work out the score just yet, but how about every 10,000 points you get an extra man, and every 25,000 you go to a very short bonus level (I don't like long bonus levels). The bonus levels will just be crazy shooting stages where you can't die and you mainly collect fruit.
This game will need to have good music. I'm thinking of making a fairly DARK game (that's why I called it "Death Adventure") but maybe something kiddie would be better instead. I really don't know. Personally any graphics I draw will probably not succeed at being very kiddie. I dunno. But they'll still be colorful, I think. Even if the color is, you know, a lot of RED, or something.
I do want the game to be fairly hard, but since I can't afford to pay anyone who works on this project much money, and you'll basically be working for free, and that already pretty much damns this project from the start, I will say that we should just do one difficulty setting and make it hard.
I *would* like to have this game programmed and designed so that it actually works on real Sega hardware, that it can actually be put on a flash cart and played in a real machine, but if that's too difficult, and no one's going to do that anyway (sans the Super Fighter Team guys who might be interested in such a project -- who knows), then I guess we should design it so that it plays well in Gens, Fusion, etc.
Yeah, yeah, I know, Fusion is the best. But I like Gens. Sentimental reasons, perhaps. I don't know.
Anyway, what other information is needed? Is this enough?
How about how high can you jump? Not very high. I say copy Wonderboy III: ML, like I've suggested, for the "physics" of this game (how high you jump, how fast you fall, how fast you run, how fast you move around the screen in the shooting stages, how fast items appear that you can collect, how fast your projectiles shoot, how fast enemies and enemy waves come at 'cha... etc Just kind of, at least for the moment, if anyone is actually going to work on this, just follow that game as an example, as the rubric.)
Doesn't have to be exactly the same as that game. Just a working model to start things off. I may want to do things like adjust sprite sizes later or something. Who knows.
Is this enough? I can go on...
DEATH ADVENTURE (just a working title!)
outline of game:
similar to Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair in gameplay
Sidescrolling. Left to right. Automatically scrolling for half of the levels. The other levels (every other level) will be sidescrolling shooting.
Sidescrolling shooting does not need to scroll up or down at all (that is, when your player/ship approaches upper or lower areas, the screen does not go further up or down.
Able to handle large characters (many sprites put together).
Simple HUD at top for displaying score and lifebar, how many lives left. Like Wonderboy III's (Genesis, not the Master System game).
The regular sidescrolling levels feature platforming (or jumping). You can fall down pits and die, and you can land on spikes and get hurt, and you can land on enemies and get hurt, and you can't swim, and you sometimes have to jump to get items that appear or jump over an enemy, jump on a moving platform. Sometimes platforms move up and down. Sometimes they drop really fast when you stand on them, while others act like elevators.
Typical platformer stuff.
Buttons: B shoots (attacks with sword also, if your character doesn't have projectile weapon)
C jumps
A is special
Special attacks... not sure. Mainly I would like to see some kind of SUPER DRAGON -type monster appear across the screen, destroying a ton of enemies in a big fiery blaze, like the aforementioned Amazon warrior's special in Golden Axe 1.
Should support high quality sound effects. This was the Genesis' weak point, in my opinion. Some games DID have good sound effects (like the Streets of Rage series and Sonic) but most didn't. They sounded "farty" and stupid. Hopefully this game can have some good digital sounds. Maybe they all have to be recorded (DAC?) I don't know.
Parallax scrolling would be nice, but isn't mandatory. Still though, that was one of the coolest features of games back then.
(You know, layers of clouds or sunsets in the background, that kind of thing, changing as you move... although since this will always be automatically-scrolling, in both types of stages, any parallax effects will not adjust according to where you are on screen).
Basically, that's it. It will need to support a lot of enemies on screen at once, and of course bosses. I don't want to take the Treasure route of making really elaborate bosses that take forever to kill (I don't find that fun), but just the normal big-enemy that you shoot at a lot until it changes colors until it dies kind of thing. You know, first it's green, then it turns blue (or parts of it do) as you keep shooting at it, and then it starts to turn purple and then finally it explodes or fades to black and sinks downwards off the screen and the music changes to "victory" and then the computer automatically moves your sprite off the screen to the right and cuts to a score table that tallies up your score for that page.
So we'll need one of those: a score table at the end of every stage. Not sure how to work out the score just yet, but how about every 10,000 points you get an extra man, and every 25,000 you go to a very short bonus level (I don't like long bonus levels). The bonus levels will just be crazy shooting stages where you can't die and you mainly collect fruit.
This game will need to have good music. I'm thinking of making a fairly DARK game (that's why I called it "Death Adventure") but maybe something kiddie would be better instead. I really don't know. Personally any graphics I draw will probably not succeed at being very kiddie. I dunno. But they'll still be colorful, I think. Even if the color is, you know, a lot of RED, or something.
I do want the game to be fairly hard, but since I can't afford to pay anyone who works on this project much money, and you'll basically be working for free, and that already pretty much damns this project from the start, I will say that we should just do one difficulty setting and make it hard.
I *would* like to have this game programmed and designed so that it actually works on real Sega hardware, that it can actually be put on a flash cart and played in a real machine, but if that's too difficult, and no one's going to do that anyway (sans the Super Fighter Team guys who might be interested in such a project -- who knows), then I guess we should design it so that it plays well in Gens, Fusion, etc.
Yeah, yeah, I know, Fusion is the best. But I like Gens. Sentimental reasons, perhaps. I don't know.
Anyway, what other information is needed? Is this enough?
How about how high can you jump? Not very high. I say copy Wonderboy III: ML, like I've suggested, for the "physics" of this game (how high you jump, how fast you fall, how fast you run, how fast you move around the screen in the shooting stages, how fast items appear that you can collect, how fast your projectiles shoot, how fast enemies and enemy waves come at 'cha... etc Just kind of, at least for the moment, if anyone is actually going to work on this, just follow that game as an example, as the rubric.)
Doesn't have to be exactly the same as that game. Just a working model to start things off. I may want to do things like adjust sprite sizes later or something. Who knows.
Is this enough? I can go on...
Well, I say shoot for the stars. I don't understand the fun in just making tech demos, etc., and shooting and platforming is what the Genesis did best, so this project really should be quite appropriate. 