Now, I'm making a game that is similar in style to the old Smash TV, and I figured before I finalize the engine, I'd ask, what does a good top down shooter need?
Is it massive waves of enemies, cool weapons, etc. etc. Post your thoughts here.
The 'wave' enemies, who come at you with sheer force of numbers, like the Flood in Halo. But also have smarter ones who come in packs of two or three, but are much more sophisticated.
@Dines - Got em,
Enemy types
Zombie - Flood
Red Trooper/Green Trooper - they shoot, and the red guys will flank and try to strafte you.
snake/spider - Flood
Cool. Have behavioural patterns for the enemies, especially animal ones. This was what made Halflife so great.
Headcrabs, for example, would always be in dark corners. It got to the stage where you could think 'hmm, a dark corner - I bet there's a headcrab around that bend' and needless to say, there was.
Most monsters, especially bullsquids, would instinctively feed on nearby meat. So to lure out a monster you could kill a soldier and leave his body for a while - come back, and you should find Mr Bullsquid chowing down on it so you can snipe him off at a distance.
Have the monsters use various behavioural patterns of their own - if there's a carcass nearby, why don't they try eating it? This could make them less alert to their surroundings. Maybe one of them would stand guard? What about water, would they naturally go to drink if the coast is clear?
Imagine if David Attenborough were doing a documentary on each of your monsters - what would he be saying? Then try and implement those ideas in your AI.
191 / 9999 * 7 + 191 * 7
Assault Andy Administrator
I make other people create vaporware
Registered 29/07/2002
Points 5686
15th February, 2005 at 01:22:25 -
Even though it's meant to be retro like smashtv, does it have 360 degrees shooting?
You should use some lightening effects if you have zombies. Like flashing lights so that you cant always see the zombies. It would be a cool scary effect to make it harder to kill the zombies
I think action games like that are good, when the screen is LOADED with enemies, and you kill them all, and wonder how the fuck you did that on your own.
Although 90% of the time you'd die in that situation. I think a smaller number of tougher or smarter enemies is preferable over a huge hord of boring morons.
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