Hi Dark, Dark wrote:
Take a look at this table. it lists the number of screen or rooms in each level for snes prince of persia, and the number of enemies found on those levels. My reply: Yeah, i just did. That's exactly what I'm talking about. The mainstream games I've played like Prince of Persia is way more complex than MOTA. There are several more rooms, enemies, and the traps in Prince of Persia are totally awesome. The metal jaw trap is one of the cooler ones that come to mind. That's why when I held my Logitech game pad in my hands playing through MOTA the thought occured to me that I'm totally dissatisfied with the game. It was in a word "lame." I played better games than this. I played games for the Atari, NES, and SNES, that I couldn't put down. the replay value in some of the mainstream games was fantastic, and I started to think about what gave those games replay value. Complex Traps --- All of the games I like from Prince of Persia to Tomb Raider make extensive use of difficult traps like vanishing platforms, spinning gears, rolling bolders, you name it. You usually can't just press jump and avoid that trap. You have to try a number of times to actually get past it. Puzzle Elements ---- This can be anything from a certain key or lever that unlocks door x to something more safisticated. I'll have to take a bit of look at some common puzzles to come up with a cool list of these to employ here. Level Design --- Nobody expects a walk along beat-m-up like Batman or Double Dragon to employ mazes. However, games in the Prince of Persia, Montezuma's Revenge, Tomb Raider genre often use some bit of a maze type level to get around. It is a widely excepted part of that style of game genre. Dark wrote: As for map design, I'd personallly say write all new ones, ----- afterall, montizumas revenge is a completely separate game afterall. My reply: Good point. I was just asking since a lot of people preordered expecting Montezuma's Revenge and thought I'd throw that idea out there for those maybe looking for something a bit similar. Dark wrote: Rather than just dumping the work you've got thus far though, how about keeping the original first level, sinse it provides a very good and easy intro to the game, but then afterwards getting creative with the mazes etc. My reply: Well, there are both practical and technical reasons I don't want to do this. On the technical side of things I setup and initialize the size of my array etc to make every level a fixed size I.E. same width and height. I can't go from a 300 by 20 level to a 100 by 100 level in the same game. Therefore what Ineed to do is set a standard format for the levels and draw the maps according to that format. On the practical side I just plane don't like the first two levels of MOTA. Oh, they are okay, but I know they could be better. Make sense? Besides creating new levels is the easy and fun part. What took me so darned long before was all the low-level stuff that goes into an engine like base classes, input support, a window manager, audio support, and so on. Getting that stuff out of the way is a huge load off my shoulders, and now I can actually work on the game for real now. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
