It's time to talk about something I have not done in the longest while!
Gameplay mechanics!
While the vision of a "2D retro platformer shooter" has kind of fallen to the side, at least in the "2D retro" department, I have still been doing some concepts for it, though world building largely took priority.
However, one of the things that I did do was trying to come up with an interesting and relatively unique skill system. I despise simple "energy+cooldown" systems because they feel arbitrary, limiting and not really all that engaging.
And for that, I've come up with a skill system I think sounds really fun, and to better demonstrate it, I've brought my design docs with me, even if they barely look like design docs. Check them out!
Overview of the system
(In addition, the player will lose combo points over time when out of combat for too long and when not performing any charge-gaining actions.)
Skill types
Active skills (hexagon) - their effects only happen when used.
Passive skills (circle) - they're active for as long as the player has charges allocated in them. Some are pseudo-active and can have their charges reset when a specific action is made (such as when the player attacks), usually with a certain active effect like bonus damage.
Ultimate skills (triangle) - they require a much bigger charge buildup and do go on a regular cooldown when used before they can be activated again (average CD is about 30 seconds but varies from skill to skill).
Each character has, excluding certain snowflakes, 2 active skills, 1 passive and 1 ultimate, as well as a certain innate which is not a skill per se but still affects their gameplay in a major way.
Example design docsSo far I've only really designed beast/mutant-type characters, since they're the ones I originally designed the skill system for but decided to expand it to others as well.
As you can see, they all can provide various unique playstyles and utilize the charge system in different ways.
(I'm not exactly pleased with Moth Beast's visuals though so I will likely redesign him in the future.)
I'll wrap this up with some visual concepts for the beasts from the docs, as well as some various objects for the Tank/Crystal Beast to chew onto.
(Crystal Beast is the Tank Beast from the gameplay doc while Insect Beast is the Moth Beast.)
Feel free to AMA about the skill system. Cheers!
Oh, also, here's some more re-posts from /r/worldbuilding...
Among the many pieces of scavenged pre-war tech, video games are found - this includes PC and various console games from anywhere up to 2022AD when the war supposedly started.
Popular and relatively common titles among the survivors include The Zone of Combat for PS5, which is a combination of RTS and FPS on an alien world and Cartena, a procedurally-generated third-person shooter.
The annihilation of the Internet (and therefore the digital distribution, popular at the time) made a lot of video games forever lost and they're now mostly limited to physical copies, few of which still remain in an usable state, and multiplayer games are mostly reduced to co-op titles or small LAN networks some of the more wealthy survivors can afford to set up.
The mages however, prefer more traditional games in their free time but other factions are known to play them on occasion as well.
Some examples include:
Rubikon, a 1v1 game where two players use enchanted Rubik's Cubes (which cause various spells to happen when one row/side/all sides consist of one color) to take each other out. Said cubes are also sometimes used by more skilled mages as actual weapons.
Furtum (Steal) is a 2v2 cardgame which is played with 2 decks per player - one deck contains "power cards" which are used to play regular cards from the main deck. Howevr, the power deck is shared between the two players in the team, while the regular cards are all placed into a single deck from which all players can draw from. The goal of the game is to eliminate the other team of players by reducing their "health" to 0 (each player starts with 50).
The core mechanic of the game is the titular furtum. Each turn, a player can sacrifice a card (on top of its specified effects that happen when furtum is used) to steal a card from one of their enemies.
On top of that, there are various unique "energy" cards which can have unique effects
Furtum cards are made of a specific, magic material which is only available to a few high-ranked mages and are therefore almost impossible to be forged.
The game is very popular even among the gunners and there are many famous Furtum duos across the wasteland who have collected a lot of very powerful cards and know how to use them to the best of their abilities.
General Lunnett, the first leader of the post-apocalyptic Cobalt Corps. His bold strategies, combined with harsh regime over the mercenary army is the primary reason why the Corps is so respected nowadays. It is said that some people refused to request help from the Cobalt Corps because of the infame that they have gained from Lunnett's actions.
Lunnett was particularly known for directly participating in combat, often going in first with his heavy chaingun, tearing people, buildings and vehicles to shreds. Throughout the many years he spent as the general of Cobalt Corps, hundreds upon hundreds have died from either his own hand or from the hands of many mercenary soldiers under his command.
Hm... Alright, I guess I've got enough time for this.
At first it sounded like yet another assault order. You know, go to this town, kill out all the birds, destroy their airship, typical stuff. That was until we actually arrived at that place.
Those feathered bastards put up quite a fight, especially with their fancy magic. I think I saw one hurl a solid rock at our convoy mech and almost destroyed it.
In any case, I knew that we had to destroy their airship, Force of Nature I think it was called. The anchorladder was guarded by two freaking sharks, I knew I wasn't gonna get past that. I grabbed a nearby hoverboard and tried to get up there that way but damn, that thing was hard to steer. I got the hang of it after a while and managed to get onto the airship.
The place was full of birds but I was plowing through them with ease thanks to my plasma shotgun. Pretty fancy piece of technology, my great-grandfather was working on it during the war before, well...
Anyhow, I was too busy killing those birds before I realized I was out of plasma cartridges and I don't think I saw any extra on the board so I had to switch things around and pulled out my trusty old shovel. It's not a chainsaw, but it's not a knife either. I had to find the reactor room though, and that seemed like a problem considering I know basically nothing of airships. I mean, it's not like I ever get to be on one, right?
Down on the ground, we were massively overwhelming the avian forces, but at the same time, I knew something was just not right.
I was right. I was making my way through the ship when I heard a loud metallic roar somewhere outside, followed by an afterburner sound. I could only assume what this could be, until the floor below me collapsed and I saw this giant robot dragon about to rip Force of Nature to pieces.
It was the Rocket Dragon himself. I only heard stories of him destroying entire cities but damn, I always thought that was just stories told by some drunk old frogs.
I knew that I shouldn't be spending much more time on the ship so I jumped out and activated my jetboots.
Of course, I had to land on Dragon's back. He was still chewing on the airship when I climbed onto his head. I found a weak spot, a crack in his cold-as-hell armor. I took a swing with my shovel and pierced it through and into his head, and almost fell off after he started to wiggle around and fall to the ground, all while almost making me deaf with his crying.
I jumped off him in the last second as he crashed straight into the ground and created a load of dust around. The airship crashed soon after and exploded, which killed off the remaining birds.
I came into Alphamine expecting the usual stuff, what I've got was not only that, but the defeat of the greatest beast the PA era has seen. From my own bloody hands no less!
...Now I need to restock on plasma ammo though.
-Lt. "Givera" from Convoy Ironhead of Cobalt Corps, The Storm of Alphamine City, 3rd of June 151AA
[/spoiler[
[spoiler=Wolf Point]
While not technically a city, Wolf Point is in essence a flying self-sufficient carrier the size of a small city, and serves as a mobile central base of operations for the mercenary group of gunners known as the Cobalt Corps.
The nuclear bombardment of the world's largest cities and thus the eruption of the Nuclear War (according to some sources, 2022AD if the old calendars are to be believed) signified the beginning of the new age, measured as Anno Apocalypsi (AA) or simply Post Apocalypse (PA).
This was also the year when the ancient vaults containing the magic energy were broken, thus releasing it into the wild again.
While functionally indifferent, Anno Apocalypsi is mostly used by the mages (who tend to use a lot of ancient languages), but the rest of the world sticks to Post Apocalypse. (which means there's no real difference between 133AA or 133PA)
Any event that happened before the Nuclear War is referred to as Before Apocalypse (BA), and the BC/AD dichotomy is no longer in use (therefore 2014AD would be 8BA instead).
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Topic: Gun Francisco (conworld) - deviantArt, attention split etc. (Read 11642 times)