Hey everyone, long time no see.
I’ve finally have gotten to a point where I can dedicate some time to game development and would like to work on a project that I’ve been working on conceptually for some time.
I’m taking a lot of inspired from Mark Brown’s Game Maker’s Toolkit about Doom:
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In the video he talks about a “dance” that occurs due to “orthogonal unit differentiation”.
So taking that concept I’m looking to design a handful of enemies and weapons that create interesting scenarios.
And with lots of time to think on the matter I think I’m going to go for a Diablo-esq fantasy setting with the player controlling a Battle Mage.
Here are some core concepts that I am honing in on, let me know what you think.
-Player-
-The player will move at one speed and there will be no sprinting, crouching, swimming, or climbing.
-There will be no zooming or “iron sights”.
-They will have four magic types that have their own mana pools: fire, water, air, and earth.
-Drops will include mana (red, blue, yellow, green, and white. One for each magic type and white will increase all mana pools evenly), health, and temporary buffs.
-Buffs will include invisibility, invincibility, quad damage, unlimited mana for each type.
-Spells Mechanics-
-Spells will be gathered like weapons and be limited to a few spells per magic type to keep it streamlined and avoid overlapping mechanics.
-When a spell is cast it will use up 1 part of the mana permanently and 10 parts temporarily. This is to encourage variety and act as a “cooldown”.
-I am debating if there should be a spell in each type that does not permanently lower the mana so they can always be used.
-Each spell will work like a weapon and two spells can be equipped at the same time.
-Each spell can be equiped by two button presses. One button to select the type, one more to select the specific spell.
-List of Spells being considered-
-(fire) Fireball- Acts like a rocket launcher from Quake 3.
-(fire) Flames- Acts like the Pyro’s flame thrower in Team Fortress 2.
-(fire) Firebolt - Acts like Quake’s plasma rifle. Can be fire slowly at no cost if out of mana.
-(fire) Engulf- Acts like a Molotov cocktail.
-(water) Beam- Acts like Halo’s Sentinel Beam (or Quakes Lightning Gun), but stuns.
-(water) Frost- Acts like the TF2’s Pyro’s flame thrower, but stuns.
-(water) Ice Storm- Acts like Diablo 2’s Ice storm. Has a high cost and clears out most minor enemies.
-(water) Healing- Heals the player a little for a high permanent cost. It is not meant to be a staple, but rather a last resort.
-(air) Lightning bolt- Acts like Quake’s railgun.
-(air) Gust- Pushes enemies and can be used to “Rocket Jump”.
-(air) Nova- Acts like Quake’s BFG, but weaker.
-(air) Thunder Strike- Zips the player to the enemy and does a high damage strike, like Halo’s plasma sword.
-(earth) Stone Blast- Acts like Unreal’s Flack Cannon’s primary fire.
-(earth) Stone Blossom- Acts like Quake’s Grenade launcher.
-(earth) Deadly Swarm- Acts like Halo’s needler.
-(earth) Wolf Form- Transforms into a werewolf.
-Enemies-
-Each enemy will be designed with a certain sound, shape, color scheme, and animation in mind to make them unique and stand out.
-Enemies act in predictable manners, but have a good size behavior tree.
-Enemies will be broken into 3 groups: Demons, Undead, and Nature.
-(demon) Fallen (warrior, slinger, and shaman)- Fallen are small demons much like Diablo 2’s fallen demons. They work in teams and aim to surround the player and do feign attacks, retreating whenever another enemy is killed. Warriors move in cautiously and use melee attacks, slingers do raycast based attacks and put pressure on the player to act, and shamen cast slow moving fireballs and resurrect dead fallen.
-(demon) Imp- Imps fly in a flanking manner and throw fireballs at the player, while making sudden movements in all directions and always retreating from the player.
-(demon) Bull Demon- Bull demons are charging tanks similar to the tanks in Left4Dead. They sweep around the area, require the players attention, and take some time to take down.
-(boss demon) Demon Lord- Demon Lords have huge amounts of health, move slowly, and throw very heavy ranged attacks at the player.
-(undead) Skeletons (warrior, archer, and mage)- Skeletons act independently of one another and do not respond to other enemies dying like the Fallen do. They hop about the area adding a lot of verticallity. Warriors move forward with a shield covering a part of them and use melee attacks. Archers roll sideways and shoot with raycasts. The mage throws bursts of fireball spells.
-(undead) Wight- Wights move towards the player and explode upon dying or touching the player. Once exploded they may spawn more enemies.
-(undead) Wraith- Wraiths fly about the area and phase in and out. They can move in any direction and move through walls. They attempt to move up to the player and do massive melee damage.
-(boss undead) Lich- Liches move about quickly, summoning and resurrecting skeletons. Tons and tons of skeletons. When they are beaten down their bones scatter, but their skull but be destroyed before they resurrect. The longer they are active the harder it is to take them out and can quickly become unbeatable.
-(nature) Ent- Huge lumbering trees men with huge amounts of life and does heavy melee damage.
-(nature) Giant Spiders- Swarms of fast moving spiders that run on walls and leaps at you.
-(nature) Giant Wasps- Fast flying enemies that swarm you and do melee damage that increases with each hit.
-(boss nature) Fairy Queen- Inspired heavily from the Fairy Queen from Seven Soldiers of Victory. Fast moving and flying she fires spells at you and keeps her distance while summoning ents, spiders, and wasps.
Any suggestions so far?