The second prototype from my time at Phyken Media was planned as a lower scope research and development project.
I wanted to come up with an idea that was simple, but also something that didn't already exist. I put out there that I couldn't think of any intersection between the run and gun and cute 'em up sub-genres, which led to the ideas that gave rise to the second prototype.
Eventually, the shooting action was dropped in favor of more of a focus on melee combat, which gave me the chance to try implementing a system I'd wanted to try out for a while.
I wanted to come up with an idea that was simple, but also something that didn't already exist. I put out there that I couldn't think of any intersection between the run and gun and cute 'em up sub-genres, which led to the ideas that gave rise to the second prototype.
Eventually, the shooting action was dropped in favor of more of a focus on melee combat, which gave me the chance to try implementing a system I'd wanted to try out for a while.
I began working on scripting hit-boxes to play alongside animations on the first prototype. It wasn't in the build I demonstrated, but at one point the mech from had a melee attack.
The sample ninja from the platformer toolkit is hard at work once again, this time without any robot parts. His slide is used as the placeholder for all of the different melee attack animations.
Those animations and attacks are all part of a scripted combo system. The flow of moves into other moves and the positioning of all the hitboxes were all laid out in the Unity Editor.
From the earliest stage, I wanted to try to support a number of character-action style features, such as canceling attacks into dodges and jumps, as well as some form of dodge offset. At this phase, dodge offset was automatic, but I did have plans to make it something players could manually activate.
The sample ninja from the platformer toolkit is hard at work once again, this time without any robot parts. His slide is used as the placeholder for all of the different melee attack animations.
Those animations and attacks are all part of a scripted combo system. The flow of moves into other moves and the positioning of all the hitboxes were all laid out in the Unity Editor.
From the earliest stage, I wanted to try to support a number of character-action style features, such as canceling attacks into dodges and jumps, as well as some form of dodge offset. At this phase, dodge offset was automatic, but I did have plans to make it something players could manually activate.
Here we can see more of the combat in action, including the launcher. We can also see that the physical impact on enemies is scripted on a per-move basis, with some moves flagged as knocking enemies down. The floating enemy, who was part of the run-and-gun tutorial, is immune to knockdown.
The main feature on display here is also a hold-over from the run-and-gun version of the prototype, the level scripting. Those two red bars on the side of the screen would be hidden during the actual release of the game, and they represent barriers of the player's screen.
A series of triggers based on entering trigger boxes and defeating enemies determines how far and in what directions the screen can scroll. It can lock the player in to a combat arena, or limit how far they can backtrack.
I'm still not sure of the most efficient way to allow the player to drop down through platforms. This version of the game maintains a list of drop-downable platforms and flags the player as not colliding with them when they give the command to drop. Eventually, I hoped to script enemies to do this as well. However, as the game moved on to something that played less like Rolling Thunder, this became less of a priority.
While I was looking forward to pursuing the elusive feel of a character action game, the team would eventually set our sights on another prototype which would prove even more entertaining.
The main feature on display here is also a hold-over from the run-and-gun version of the prototype, the level scripting. Those two red bars on the side of the screen would be hidden during the actual release of the game, and they represent barriers of the player's screen.
A series of triggers based on entering trigger boxes and defeating enemies determines how far and in what directions the screen can scroll. It can lock the player in to a combat arena, or limit how far they can backtrack.
I'm still not sure of the most efficient way to allow the player to drop down through platforms. This version of the game maintains a list of drop-downable platforms and flags the player as not colliding with them when they give the command to drop. Eventually, I hoped to script enemies to do this as well. However, as the game moved on to something that played less like Rolling Thunder, this became less of a priority.
While I was looking forward to pursuing the elusive feel of a character action game, the team would eventually set our sights on another prototype which would prove even more entertaining.
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