On Apr 10, 2004, at 12:28 AM, KirkIsrael@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Heh. Overall your game idea sounds very cool, especially the
"alien abduction" part there ;-)
Thanx :)
(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. )
Forgot about that. I used to play it on my C= 64, it's been a while
though so I'll check it out again.
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 ;-)
I've seen a number of complaints of "Atari went joystick only for the
later games, this one would have been better if it had used xxx
controller". Though the numeric pads are probably less common than the
paddles.
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.)
Yeah, it's a "big deal". I'm planning on a heavy dragon with inertia,
similar to ice variants of Indy 500. I'm also thinking left/right
flaming only - which would also make teleportation useful for avoidance
of thread falling directly on top of you.
The alternative control method is an interesting idea. It'll probably
be less exact in that it would just teleport to the "next spot over" in
the direction the joystick is held.
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.
Not a problem, from what I've seen, feedback from the Stella list helps
to make for a better game.
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
(popping in Indiana Jones) Sorta like that, though probably not quite
so large. I want to be able to have numerous waves of thread on
screen.
Thanx for your feedback!
--
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
Darrell Spice, Jr.
http://www.spiceware.org/
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