it’s me, the creator of that one game you didn’t play and probably wouldn’t have enjoyed anyway.
I’m currently thinking about making a little 2D top-down stealth game thing and doing a bit of prototyping. One thing I want to achieve is a game flow that rewards isolating enemies and taking them down one by one. It’ll contain guns and be played with WASD + mouse, with the mouse used as an aiming reticle.
Now, what I think this sort of game flow needs is a mechanic that ensures shooting at enemies is far more effective when you take your time and hit them before they see you, and far less effective in an open firefight. The way this would be in a 3D environment is, of course, with headshots. Thing is, headshots don’t really work in a 2D environment.
I have a couple of alternative ideas: a simple timer that increases shot damage the longer you hover the reticle over your target before actually firing, or a damage bonus for stealthy attacks, or simply increase the impact of movement and re-targeting on shot grouping (which would be highly luck-dependent).
None of these seem particularly organic, though. They are ideas worth prototyping and I’m gonna do that for sure, but still - maybe somebody has a better idea and is willing to share? Thanks in advance!
How about a cool down on the gun when you miss? So if you miss you have to wait x seconds before you can shoot again but if you hit you can shoot again in half the time or maybe no time at all.
[Edit] could call it adrenaline reload, which would mean getting a kill triggers this special skill that allows the player to fast reload or ready their gun.
I don’t actually care to aim with a mouse in top down games. Either I can shoot the exact pixel I want, or everything is so frantic that I lose the cursor.
One thing you may want to consider is not having aiming play a roll at all. Especially for a stealth game, what can be more important is time and timing. Make it so the character targets an enemy, then takes two to three seconds to fire a headshot. If the player moves, then it resets. This way you actually introduce risk into the action.
Change the reload rate of the gun based on whether you hit or not.
For example, if there are 5 enemies, and you hit 2 shots, lower the reload from 3 seconds to 2. The better “hit streak” you have the lower the reload gets. The longer your hit streak is also the larger punishment you get if you miss. So if you hit 6 shots in a row then miss, raise the reload to 10 seconds. That way every shot you fire lowers your reload rate, but missing is more disastrous.
Basically, hitting many shots in a row improves your rate of fire, but missing after hitting many shots is a disaster.
If the player doesnt just adjust the angle but also the range of the shot, you could introduce a bit of wander in the aiming reticule if mouse input velocity drops below a threshold. Mouse down triggers a brief “hold breath” that stops the wander for a moment. Mouse up during this period will fire. Continuing to hold will cancel the shot.
I don’t think mouse should even be used in a modern shooter, should be dual stick, with mouse as fallback. Using mouse velocity in any way is doomed to failure due to the vast differences in dpi, sensitivity etc and different hardware.
Here is how I would create a rewarding mechanic including headshots for a top down game:
Your hud has a portait like this
Whenever you keep still, you see a crosshair get closer to the center of the head. When you move, it moves away. Thus you get the headshot accuracy in a visual way by keeping still and professional. So if you were moving, and still hit the enemy, it would’ve been a body shot. But if you took your time you’d see it was a headshot. You don’t need to use a portrait, there’s many ways to represent that accuracy / movement relationship.
No, seriously, I like that idea and will definitely give it a shot (no pun intended).
Anything that relates to just reducing the rate of fire kind of introduces the good old “the enemy has better weapons than I have, so why don’t I just take theirs” problem into the game design, though. Not sure if I like that.
(Oh, and dual stick is kind of out of the question. My target platform is Newgrounds.)
Make sure that waiting doesn’t become a mechanic on its own. You can make it a challenge (as in the player will need to make sure they have enough time to aim carefully without getting caught by a patrolling guard), but take care not to make it just some unnecessary requirement.
In a stealth game, you should focus on rewarding the skill of preparation, not just the virtue of waiting. Have your players take the time to gather unknown information like where the enemies are and the available routes, as well as whether there are cameras and whatnot, and devise their own plan for infiltration.
To meld this idea with your proposed headshot mechanic, you probably should add another layer of setup to the action, perhaps by making headshots zero-in more quickly when an enemy is stationary or distracted; your players will then need to come up with some plan to divert their attention or slow them down without being noticed. This preparation is the kind of caution that seems to feel fun.
Sorry if this seems like a bit of a departure from the topic…
So you could have two states – idle state the enemy is not aware of you he’s doing an idle animation, if hit in this state he will die instantly, active state the enemy is aware of you, if he gets shot in this state he wont die instantly.
Suppose theres 3 enemies in the idle state, I use an uzi to kill the first one it alerts the other 2 in the area (they are now in active state). If I instead use a silencer the other 2 enemies might remain in idle and I can sneak around and kill the other 2 without losing any health.
So all you have to do is play with the health and make him a glass cannon where he packs a mean punch but cant take even 1 hit (hotline miami) and stealth is the way to go.
Here’s the thing - I really hate it when stealth games make combat so hard it’s almost impossible to even carve out an escape route once an alert is triggered. That’s my most favourite thing about MGS V, it gives you enough room for doing actual combat in order to keep alert phases challenging and keep a proper shootout an option worth considering - at least once you’re down to just two or three enemies.
That’s why I’d really prefer to reward carefulness, as opposed to punishing recklessness, if that makes sense to you.
Regarding the zooming-in waiting period… my gut tells me a 1-second timer or similar will be enough to greatly impact gameplay, without boring the player. Thanks for your concern, though, @Hyblademin , it’s definitely a point I’ll have to pay attention to once the prototype is somewhat ready.
