Tuesday 22 July 2014

Design decisions and cool moves in Land Control

Design Decisions:
  - The destroying land completely thing is to force an endgame eventually. Destroying land is optional however so perhaps I should balance the characters so there is more insentive to destroy land. Or, I could add another insentive to destroying land...

- The decision to keep the bar charged when a player dies is intentional. This is based of the assumption that the dieing player has more of their charge bar charged upon death, giving them a slight advantage when they re-spawn to keep the game close and interesting.

I actually thought of a way better solution just now:
When a player dies, only the dead player and the dead players land should re-spawn. This way, the killing player has less land than the deceased player to navigate, giving the deceased player an advantage. This solution ALSO incentivises the idea of destroying the opponents land. This was something I've been wanting to incentivise more because it gives the players side goals. The point of the game was to focus on controlling land too, so double points.
I might go and implement this now...

- the laser beam is available at 8 charge bars. In that time, the opponent can fire 8 shots, which is a change of 16 walls above the opponent.
If the laser is fired accurately and strategically though, it can take out > 16 walls although average not-optimized shot is ~8 walls. Therefor, the weapons are balanced but the laser beam has a higher risk/reward, which is interesting.

Cool Moves:
Whilst testing I found some cool moves the players can pull off which make the game more interesting, even at a high level.

- The laser-shot combo - If you let your charge bar charge to 9 bars or more, you can fire both a normal shot and a laser beam at once. The laser beam clears all the land in front of the player so the shot has a free path directly into the opposing player.

- The waterfall - If the opponent has land above you, you can shoot it to make it change to your own color and fall one at a time. You can use this falling land to 'swim' upwards from falling block to falling block.

- The flying shotgun - You can successfully jump off your own land directly into the opposing player and shoot them from point blank range. This move is very risky however because whilst you're over your opponents land, you have no walls to shield you from their shots, whereas you have to get right in their face to shoot them (unless you have lots of charge and rapid fire whilst in the air). Another risk of this move is that once you've left your own land, it's very difficult to turn around and get back on it (unless you've pre-prepared land for you to land on). A good solution to this problem is the flying waterfall.

- The flying waterfall - If you're above the opponents land, you can fire a single shot to change the opponents land into your own. You can then jump off this falling land to safety.

- The God-Ray Attack - If you jump above the opponent whilst they're on their land and fire a laser beam downwards, you can cause them to fall to their death with no walls directly below them. If executed well, this move can take an opponent by surprise and kill them outright. This move is very risky because if you miss or the opponent manage to get back onto land, you will probably fall to your own death.

- The Flying God-Ray Waterfall Attack - If you execute a God-Ray Attack whilst on the opponents land (but still above the opponent) you can combine it with the Flying Waterfall to survive.

- The Flying God-Ray Laser-shot waterfall combo - To successfully pull this off, you need 10 full charge bars. It is essentially the combination of the laser-shot combo with The Flying God-Ray Waterfall Attack. I'll let you figure it out.





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