View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0017950 | Starward Rogue | Suggestion | Dec 7, 2015 4:19 am | Jan 12, 2016 11:46 pm | |
| Reporter | Pepisolo | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | considering | Resolution | won't fix | ||
| Product Version | 0.201-0.202 | ||||
| Summary | 0017950: Ship Selection Overhaul Idea (attribute point spend customization system) | ||||
| Description | As wary as I've become about posting ideas that could potentially be out of scope, especially on a project like this with a pretty short deadline, this idea seems like it would improve the game on a few levels while still being in the realms of feasibility. The basic idea is that the choice of ships would be replaced by an as-simple-as-possible ship customization attribute point buy system. At the moment, you press new game, and choose from a selection of pretty disappointing palette swapped craft. However, if instead you were to be a shown a single ship that had a variety of customizable skins, this is far more intriguing. Even though this is essentially the same thing presented differently, psychologically, the latter is far more interesting than the former. Now, this is a bit of a simplification, as customization would need more options than just a skin swap in order to do what the existing system does in providing the player with a choice of different starting gameplay options. This is where the attribute point spending system comes in. We've all seen systems like this. You get a pool of points to spend on various attributes in order to customize your “character” to your liking. SR seems to have a variety of easily tweakable stats for its ships that would lend itself well to a system such as this: Speed, Afterburner Speed, Health, Shields, Attack Power, Fire Rate, Shot Speed, and Range. I don't think I need to go into more detail on how this would work, but I do need to sell what the benefits of this system would be. 1) It would transform the current disappointing palette swap style ship system into a far more exciting, but still palette swap style system. The only way to make the current ship system more exciting is by expending extra money on art resources in order to provide more satisfying ships and also by using more coding resources on giving the existing ships greater gameplay differentiation. Even then, I'm not sure if the current system would compete with the fun factor of a ship customization based approach. 2) Playability and replayability. Customization in itself is fun and can provide an enjoyable experience. Selecting Standard Blue is not and does not. Most of us have probably spent a lot of time tweaking our characters in games in order to get them just right. In a game like SR that is run based, runs would be much more replayable as players try out the various different combinations of stats available. 3) The game is called Starward Rogue. This kind of customization is prevalent in many rogue-likes, although the stats are usually called Strength or Constitution or whatever. This change would give the game a stronger rogue-like identity. 4) Provide greater differentiation from other games in the genre. At the moment, the game could be disregarded by some as a space based Binding of Isaac clone. I would not describe it as such, but the addition of an opening customization mechanic would certainly help provide something different, pushing it that little bit further away from the celebrated title. 5) To help bridge the disparity between keyboard and joypad controls in a natural in-game manner. No matter what you do, it is not possible to completely balance the keyboard and joypad controls in a twitch based SHMUP style game such as this. If ships were enjoyably customizable, this customization would provide a finer control in allowing players to play the game in a way that they feel more comfortable with. Afterburner too hard to control using the keyboard? No problem, just dial that down next run. Ship too sluggish for your crazy joypad skills, add a few more points into speed next time. This would provide some fun in-game solutions for a tricky input balance problem. 6) I touched on this earlier, but the current system is a more art-oriented approach with limited scalability, tweakability, stretchability, whatever you want to call it. The customization system would be more code-oriented, which is Arcen's forte, and it would provide more opportunities for expansion further down the road. Things could be continually programmed into the customization system. Let's say that you added a bullet colour change option. Code it in, arrange for some palette swapped alternatives (which is art yes, but very low resource). Want to create an option to save points by making your missiles dumbfire rather than targetable. Code it in. Want to add the ability to be able to spend extra points on making your missiles homing and targetable. Code it. Want to allow the player to be able to customize their turret colour, palette swap and code it. Adding and adding to a system like this seems like a very Arcen approach. I'm going to wrap this up now as it's getting late, but I had to post this tonight. I've tried to take into account the feasibility and difficulty of this potential improvement, and yes it would probably be hard to do, but I think that the benefits are there to be seen. Thanks to anyone who took the time to read all this. Cheers. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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I feel like this gets far too complicated too fast, particularly for new players. However, THAT said, the AP system that was implemented with you able to pick your first gun, etc, does lend itself to this sort of thing sort of. |
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One last thing I would say on this, though. Maybe consider a custom mech option post 1.0 alongside the normal choices. Just think how fancy the option would look "white gloss mech, hotrod mech, paladin mech....custom mech. Custom mech....hello!". |
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Sure, it's definitely possible if the game is getting a lot of traction. It wouldn't be a high-priority addition in my opinion, but it could be interesting. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 7, 2015 4:19 am | Pepisolo | New Issue | |
| Dec 7, 2015 4:23 am | Pepisolo | Description Updated | |
| Dec 7, 2015 4:26 am | Pepisolo | Description Updated | |
| Jan 12, 2016 7:23 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0044076 | |
| Jan 12, 2016 7:23 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => closed |
| Jan 12, 2016 7:23 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Jan 12, 2016 7:23 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => won't fix |
| Jan 12, 2016 9:03 pm | Pepisolo | Note Added: 0044095 | |
| Jan 12, 2016 11:46 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0044103 | |
| Jan 12, 2016 11:46 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | closed => considering |
