Level Ideas
Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - 20:43
I'm working on my first game, and could use some ideas for level design. The game is a side scrolling space shooter type / dodge the obsticle where you play a delevery witch and where you get points for how quickly you complete the level rather than how many enemies you kill.
I have finished the first two levels but am looking for ideas to do more, keeping in mind that the game doesn't take it self too seriously.
Attachments:
--In the arctic, flying over penguins and narwhals
--on a resort island, bothering tourists
--in a factory, flying through conveyer belts and machines
--in a volcanic cave, dodging lava flow (think Alladin in the giant sand tiger cave)
--Flying through the olympics, dodging tennis players and javelin throwers
That's the best I got.
Thanks, very helpful. I was going for inside factory, but switched it to twilight industrial where you have to dodge black bats. Quite difficult as you are going fast and those bats are hard to see. I will try some of the other ideas later.
I did fire coming from the sky in this one. Level looks much easier than it is as I slowed down to shoot the falling rocks.
If anyone else has ideas let me know
add enemy attack your char from btm
more depth:
add power up item speed up your broom(room game)
power up for shotting projectille bigger/more damage or etc
add additional enemies flying around (spawn enemy)
add pet follow characters shoting 5s or etc
wish my dream cames true
Thanks for the input. Pretty basic stuff for a space shooter, however I had forgotten my game had some of those elements in it, so it will help. Here is my level where enemeis activally seek and attack you.
This level is actually surprisingly difficult and fun.
Well, it took me ~4 hours, but I finished the victory screen the system for giving the player money:
I have finished level 15, out of the 30 I want to do, so I am halfway done!
Also added particle effects and a nice shop screen whose UI needs some work.
Anyway if you have any more ideas let me know.
Looks like it is coming along well! Can't wait to see how it turns out.
Got some new levels: candy level, mt. penguin, and ninjas
Levels don't look too bad considering my overall game budget of $200 (thank you OGA and Kenny)
I got my shop up and running. For the most part. One powerup requires getting the random level select up and running. I will do that after I finish level 20. Then I should be about ready to release a demo. Hopefully will get there by Saturday.
I found it insteresting that he shop pretty much only uses CC0 elements. I re-used some of my own artwork, but I had released it before under CC-0
Finished the random level select. It is so random that even the text that tells you what level you are playing next is only correct 90% of the time! Which is a feature, definately not a bug...
Sigh...
Alpha demo is live!
https://melaniko.itch.io/broomstick-delivery
This is an online version of the game; however, the final version will be offline only. This means there are 2 issues in the game in this medium that won't be in the final cut.
1. Delayed time until music loads.
2. Text appearing in the wrong spot on non-Chrome browsers.
Anyway let me know your thoughts and for best results try with Chrome.
Hi Melaniko, the main thing that struck me was the lack of sound effects. Some ambient environmental sounds would be a start, but sounds in reaction to events would be a big addition. In particular, air rushing in reaction to changes in your acceleration, sounds of the bats dying and the vehicles going past. It would generally increase the impact of player actions.
keep it up!
Thanks for the feedback. I have heard the sound effects issue from a couple of people. I had some on there, but didn't like them, so I took them off. I will start looking for better ones after I finish optimising for slower machines (it turns out using 5-6 layers in construct is a bad idea).
I hope to have an update out next week.
Hey Melaniko congrats on getting a working demo for your game! I would totally agree with p0ss that sound effects are desperately needed, they would provide a lot of life and movement to the game. Other things I noticed were that there was a graphical glitch with the loading screen at the start, and the quit button wasn't working. I'll play again when I get a chance and see if I can find any other improvements that could be made.
Thanks for the feed back. There should be some more improvements coming next week. I recently made a lot of changes to improve preformance (cut down processor use by 2/3), but I introduced a lot of bugs.
Thanks for pointing out the glich, I fixed it on my local copy and will upload it with my next update. There should be a few sound effects in place now on the shared link.
Anyway I am pretty happy to have gotten to the point of getting something sharable even if it does a quite a bit of work to get it to marketable quality.
Finally released an update. I have been busy with work.
https://melaniko.itch.io/broomstick-delivery
Contains a new level:
Desert Delight
Hey Melaniko. So, I played 3 levels and actually failed all of them. I think the game is too hard in its current state. Either having more responsive movement, shorter levels, or having fewer obstacles might help with this.
There was a part on the tree level where an alien was patrolling the top and a big tree blocked the bottom, so it took me like 30 seconds to get past. In the original version, it felt like a race to get to the end, this update made it a bit more frustrating because instead of going fast and dodging, it felt like I constantly had to stop and wait patiently for things to get out of my way so I didn't get hit.
Also, I don't know if this was the same in the last patch, but the knockback from colliding with objects seems maybe a bit severe. I would get knocked back really far if I caught a chain of objects. In the level with the candy canes for example, if the bouncing ball things could move you /forward/ instead of just backward, that could add another element of strategy to the game and make it a bit more fun. Just a suggestion, I know coding things takes a while and sometimes it isn't worth the time. But all in all it felt like there were maybe a few too many objects on the screen to dodge considering how loose the player movement is.
The game is coming along well, I love the level design and it looks a lot more polished from the last one. Keep up the good work. Maybe putting in an easy/hard setting could fix this up.
I have been busy, but found some time for updates to the game:
1. Tighter Control at Beginning
2. More time to complete levels
3. A new level
4. Knock back reduced a bit
Do note that you can shoot through enemies that flash when you shoot them by hitting them 4 times. Enemies that don't flash don't die.
https://melaniko.itch.io/broomstick-delivery