Re: [stella] got my homebrew idea!

Subject: Re: [stella] got my homebrew idea!
From: KirkIsrael@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: 10 Apr 2004 05:28:39 -0000
> You're flying a dragon fighting thread, err, umm, something like 
> thread.  Don't want any legal problems with Mrs. McCaffrey :-)
> 
> The controls will be a joystick in the left plug and a numeric pad in 
> the right.  The joystick to fly you around, the fire button to flame 
> attack. The numeric pad is used to quickly teleport to different 
> sections of the screen.  The top 9 buttons will correspond to 9 
> locations in the air, while the bottom 3 will take you to sections on 
> the ground for "refueling".  The bottom of the screen would be green 
> farmland that get scorched as the "stuff" falls on it.  Game over if 
> all the farmland is scored, or if you loose all your lives.
> 
> While Pern has you associated with a single dragon, I thought I'd color 
> your dragon based on the difficulty level.  White would be highest.
> 
> For bonus rounds, I thought  it might be fun to "feed the dragon".  
> Swooping down on the herds and all.   Moooooo.

Heh. Overall your game idea sounds very cool, especially the 
"alien abduction" part there ;-)

(You might want to check out the old atari 8-bit official
Dragonriders game, if you don't know it already:
http://home.nexgo.de/cybergoth/gamesc/dragonridersofpern.html --
oh I see that's on cybergoth's site, heh. )

This might be a minority opinion, but I don't like the 
(non-optional) use of hardware that
A. fewer people have, limiting the appeal a bit
and/or
B. I never remember the dang keys for it in Z26 ;-)

If teleportation is a "big deal" to your game play concept
(and I haven't read the books, so I don't know if it's a big
part there) perhaps an alternate control scheme, where a 
button tap burninates, and a long hold plus a direction on
the stick teleports would be nice.  (you could support both
simultaneously, or have an option to remove the joystick based
teleport if it got in the way of the thread burninating.)

Though again (and I know, maybe this is too much "tough love" 
and I don't mean to be picking on your idea when it's still
at such a tender age ;-) is teleporting going to be 
more convenient than just flying to the other part of the 
screen? (is your concept largely 'fixed single screen'? 
that's what it sounded like) I guess it depends on your 
control scheme, if your VCS dragon is a big, heavy thing 
that moves by shoving air with its giant leathery
wings, teleport would be very useful, but if you have quicker 
nimble dragons, your player might end up ignoring the teleport
most of the time, since like "Hyperspace", you have to regain
your bearings and figure out *exactly* where you are.

But if the threads came down a bit like a snake in 
Indiana Jones or Saboteur, and you had this big old dragon
to burn 'em....and then later you played cow swooping
(both of these game play ideas might benefit from a "heavy"
control scheme that had a learning curve)--that sounds like 
very promising territory for a new game


-- 
KirkIsrael@xxxxxxxxxxxxx    http://kisrael.com
DEFEAT "For every winner, there are dozens of losers. 
          Odds are you're one of them." --Demotivators, http://despair.com


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