I'm making a simple shoot 'em up just for fun; any ideas like power ups, maps, how you die (hp vs. one-hit death w/ lives), weapons, how weapons work (limited time vs. limited ammo vs. infinite time)... I've gotten a lot of stuff from Dead Ops Arcade (yeah, I know, I should be original, but I thought it wouldn't hurt). I can't say I'm a veteran coder but I'm not an absolute beginner either... Oh, and I want to keep the simple graphics theme, and it's enemies are more like zombies (they don't shoot at you, they chase you)... link: http://shapeshooter.x10.mx/
heres an idea straight from a classic old game that i feel doesnt get enough attention.. drugs mode!
go look it up it was used in carmaggedoon basically the player you hit the powerup then lose all mobility control and the screen would change colors ahahah made for good times.
Idea: Use a "rank" system. This works by increasing the challenge for how greedy the player is. If they grab a lot of power-ups, make the enemies get much harder (and reset to "default" difficulty at that part of the game when they die) but also make them worth more points. Basically, if the player can keep up with the consequences of grabbing/stacking power-ups, i.e. increasing range, bullet speed, amount of bullets, possible "slave" ships which follow your actions (think the Options from Gradius or the Bit modules from R-Type), etc... then they reap the rewards. The only shmup I've seen limited ammo work well, off the top of my head, was Einhander.
Idea: Use a "rank" system. This works by increasing the challenge for how greedy the player is. If they grab a lot of power-ups, make the enemies get much harder (and reset to "default" difficulty at that part of the game when they die) but also make them worth more points. Basically, if the player can keep up with the consequences of grabbing/stacking power-ups, i.e. increasing range, bullet speed, amount of bullets, possible "slave" ships which follow your actions (think the Options from Gradius or the Bit modules from R-Type), etc... then they reap the rewards. The only shmup I've seen limited ammo work well, off the top of my head, was Einhander.
pills4louis
this is good idea.
another helpful tip rather than look to good games and see what made them successful, look to mediocre games or poor games to see what made them worse than the rest or what gave them a select charm to them. urban chaos: riot response is a fine example of what im talking about. it has a riot shield & tazer mechanic which makes for some pretty satisfying combat and made it easily one of the best police based fps's ever written in terms of gameplay.
another wise idea would be to hook up with cafe studio's their an indie developer that made a little known unreal engine fps called sanctum. its on steam atm for 10 bucks. anyway they have a PR person here on gamespot im certain theyd be willing to give a few pointers. i cant find the last time they psot but they did it in either the GGD ot pc & mac games.
Idea: Use a "rank" system. This works by increasing the challenge for how greedy the player is. If they grab a lot of power-ups, make the enemies get much harder (and reset to "default" difficulty at that part of the game when they die) but also make them worth more points. Basically, if the player can keep up with the consequences of grabbing/stacking power-ups, i.e. increasing range, bullet speed, amount of bullets, possible "slave" ships which follow your actions (think the Options from Gradius or the Bit modules from R-Type), etc... then they reap the rewards. The only shmup I've seen limited ammo work well, off the top of my head, was Einhander.
ionusX
this is good idea.
another helpful tip rather than look to good games and see what made them successful, look to mediocre games or poor games to see what made them worse than the rest or what gave them a select charm to them. urban chaos: riot response is a fine example of what im talking about. it has a riot shield & tazer mechanic which makes for some pretty satisfying combat and made it easily one of the best police based fps's ever written in terms of gameplay.
another wise idea would be to hook up with cafe studio's their an indie developer that made a little known unreal engine fps called sanctum. its on steam atm for 10 bucks. anyway they have a PR person here on gamespot im certain theyd be willing to give a few pointers. i cant find the last time they psot but they did it in either the GGD ot pc & mac games.
These are also good ideas. For the record, the concept of "rank" has been used in several shmups by Cave and Raizing, as well as other companies. Toaplan's Grind Stormer and their infamous yet fun Zero Wing, and Konami/Treasure's Gradius V, for example, used a system which made the game harder for however long you went without dying. Even the original Gradius ramped up the difficulty when the player equipped more than two Options. However, there has never been an arena shooter (i.e. a twin stick shooter, or mouse/keyboard shooter, like OP's example) which utilized this, to my knowledge. So, if he's going for an arena shmup with his game, it would be a nice twist on the genre. I've played a lot of Geometry Wars & Smash TV clones on the XBLA and PSN, there are some fun ones but a lot of them are forgettable except for their (usually) awesome music.
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