Rate my project(on a game design perspective.)

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Pospos
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Rate my project(on a game design perspective.)

Post by Pospos »

Ok, so lately i have started a new project with love2D, in the idea of creating a mobile game, for the play store of android.
I have recently started to see some potentials problems in my project, and i wanted to know your opinion on a game design perspective.

So it's a fighting game, where you have two fighters in an arena, and they don't move. Instead, they can use a left attack, a right attack, an uppercut, a faint attack, and dodge.

EDIT : The controls are simple, and adapted to mobile devices. Right is done by tapping right of your screen, Left by tapping left, uppercut by tapping up,
faint attack by tapping twice the left of your screen, dodge by tapping down.

They have a bar of stamina and a bar of health. Stamina is lowered by all the moves, mostly by faint attack and uppercut, but it refreshes over time when you are doing nothing.
Left attacks can't be performed if there is already your opponent making a right attack, same thing for right. Faint attack can't be performed unless the opponent is not moving at all.
There are different characters(i'm planning to make 10) with different power, stamina, health. Also the characters are dogs, with the name of famous boxers with the nationalities corresponding to the dog's origin.

This is a drawing of one of the characters i made
Image
Last edited by Pospos on Mon Apr 30, 2018 4:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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raidho36
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Re: Rate my project(on a game design perspective.)

Post by raidho36 »

First of all, you're doing the pitch wrong. You're explaining details and not the principle. This is wront because details are pointless, it can be tweaked to be literally anything in one day.

So, what you're pitching is an elaborate rock paper scissors game. Simpler games work better for mobile so you're on the right track. But it actually doesn't matter, all you need is to make it addictive and throw in some ads, play countdowns and gacha to get the money going. The addictive part is accomplished by providing some sense of progression and competition, i.e. where you accumulate power level, bonus points if you can use it to gank people online, such as clash of clans. You can also throw in sunk cost like it is in farmville. Another option is much harder to pull off but a lot of people can appreciate it too, it is to do away with progression entirely and just tie success to raw player skill, such as in flappy bird. Anyway people will come back to the most ridiculous gameplay mechanics if they offer some sense of accomplishment. This is entirely subjective but as I said, there are two main ways to get there - resource accumulation and difficulty curve.
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Tjakka5
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Re: Rate my project(on a game design perspective.)

Post by Tjakka5 »

Sounds like a neat game. I do wonder why you're only limiting yourself to Android and don't want to support iPhone.
Have you tested the concept already? Your game seems to revolve around stamina, so that players will have to be smart, but does this work in practice?

You already stated you ran into some issues, but didn't mention them.
Mind sharing them with us?
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Pospos
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Re: Rate my project(on a game design perspective.)

Post by Pospos »

I had real trouble with the IA, and it's still not finished yet, It's such a pain beacause IA has to be clever, and it really isn't. Also, i really have trouble with the graphics, i really want to make beautiful graphics, but my art skills and my shaders skill are inexistant. I've also been experimenting because the prototype i'm making isn't really fun yet. It's a prototype with only the left and right feature.
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Pospos
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Re: Rate my project(on a game design perspective.)

Post by Pospos »

Also i'm not planning to do a multiplayer, but instead a daily fight and reward. I'm going to make patches and new characters.
And if one day i own a Mac, i'm going to make Iphone version.
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ivan
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Re: Rate my project(on a game design perspective.)

Post by ivan »

Was expecting to see a download link when I clicked on this thread.
Not having a prototype changes the tone of conversation completely. :)
I don't think you should be concerned with having an ingenious gameplay idea.
First, make a small but cool prototype - then we can playtest and "rate" it.
Who knows, you might discover better ideas during prototyping.
Making a game that matches your vision from the top down is MUCH harder, especially when you don't have any experience.
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Pospos
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Re: Rate my project(on a game design perspective.)

Post by Pospos »

Ok i'll post one but i have a few bugs that i have to fix.
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xlr8877
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Re: Rate my project(on a game design perspective.)

Post by xlr8877 »

Fighting games can be complicated but you've taken a pretty simple approach, if you are starting out the best thing is to find a niece that is simple but has a good firm mechanic that feels good, like what raidho said, you need to have a big picture of what your game evokes in people if you intend to put it up on google play, like when I go to F-Zero I want the constant feeling of speed and looseness on the car, or if I go to something like Binding of Issac I'm trying to go for topping my run, being more efficient, and not making the same mistakes, these things both take skill but they develop it in different ways. Not that this is going to be the case for your game, but lets say each dog does have the left, right, feint, uppercut, and dodge/block. So say the main aspect of that game is enemy patterns (Because you said it's offline), it would be principally similar to punchout, let's say every dog has those punches, you put the control scheme how you said, so assuming all this the base aspect of the game is that you have to almost get in the rythm of your punches and follow the pattern, maybe each dog has slightly different punches that still follow the same idea (for example one has a high damage uppercut with a few extra frames on the windup), just get one idea and build on it, how will your players develop skill?
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Pospos
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Re: Rate my project(on a game design perspective.)

Post by Pospos »

I will answer the last question that you wrote beacause this is the only one i think i might be able to answer. The player will be able to get more skilled by learning how to push the opponent to his limits, while still watching for his stamina. He'll also be able of learning to master the characters who all of them have different characteristic, stamina bar, and frame delays.
Also, you are punching stronger if you punched last 5 frames, it's a combo system. so this encrourages the player to be offensive, even if he cant't afford to, so he ;) has to be careful
And, if he beats the opponent throwing a lot of punches, he gets a bigger reward at the end, which may allow him to unlock characters.
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Pospos
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Re: Rate my project(on a game design perspective.)

Post by Pospos »

And also, i want to make punching feel satisfying, but my animations skills can't really do that. I think i'm going to do the graphics from all the beginning.
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