Shoot-em-up ideas
Monkey Forums/Monkey Programming/Shoot-em-up ideas
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| I'm working on a shoot-em-up, but the player ship needs to be mouse controlled. For some reason, it just feels wrong, but maybe it's not the mouse control that's the issue. Just a straight left/right movement (firing is continuous) with aliens at the top of the screen. Has anyone got any basic tips for making shoot-em-up games? I think I played one which was mouse controlled once and it was ok, but I can't find it now. To be honest, if I switch to keyboard control it still doesn't quite feel right, so are there any tips for this kind of game? Or is it maybe just a case of constantly tinkering with the speeds/movement until it comes together? |
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| It depends on your game. We can't give tips unless you provide a demo of some sorts to play with. |
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| heres one i experimented with just to see what it was like to create one http://www.gamecentaur.com/space-invaders-.html in flash mode it uses the arrow keys to move but in the android version you can just touch the screen and the ship moves there automatically.I found that worked quite well in android.As for speeds and movement i think that just comes down to personal preference.I tinkered with the speeds a little but only enough so that the ship didnt become stupidly fast. |
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| A little more info would help, but I have made a number of shooters in the past and currently working on the one in the video bellow. If your just looking to use mouse, are you matching the ships X to your mouseX if so that will give you fluid speed control over your ship and can feel a little over powered for a shooter, I suspect you want to control the speed your ship moves so its a fixed speed. You need to check the direction the mouse is moving in, and then add your speed value to your ships x, so if the mouseX is bellow your shipsX then ShipsX:-Speed . You might need to tune this a little to prevent jittering, but it should work out ok. |
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| Thanks guys. I'll put up the current demo at some point, although it's only half the game, so I'll seperate it from the other half and show you what I mean. I realise it's hard to judge without a demo, was just wondering if there are some basic tips to make shoot-em-ups work. The ship does move 'towards' the mouse X position, but max 10 pixels at a time, so it's not too fast. I think the real problem is that it just feels boring. But then again, having played a million similar games in the past, maybe I'm just bored of the genre. I'll try to show a demo tonight. Cheers. |
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| Demo would help, if the control or moving around feels boring it could simply be that your not putting the player in enough danger. Try throwing more bad stuff at the player and force them to move around a bit more, the actual act of moving will fade out of forethought and become second nature and the player will focus on the risks around and the boring feeling should fade away. |
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| Most shooters i've played on the PC/Mac are keyboard (or control pad) controlled, which i tend to prefer. However, i did play a few that uses the mouse which also worked out fairly well too. Several months back, I did started working on a shooter that was mouse controlled that sort of had a delayed movement to it (so that its not directly on the mouse's coordinates but rather follows it a based on the velocity). May post a little demo later, if i can dig up the code for it somewhere.. |
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| Cross Fire and Impact as I recall on the Amiga used mouse control and they were both cool, other than those iv not seen a mouse controlled shooter on the PC, that is to say a shooter whos ship is moved by the mouse, aim yeah tons but not move. |
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| You might possibly find the mouse movement in /bananas/hitoro/rockout of interest. |
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| I think ur right about the difficulty Taiphoz, and I think you've actually hit the nail on the head. The basic layout of my shooter is that there's a mothership at the top - very big - and she's protected by a layer of defence ships which tend to saturate the centre of the screen with bullets, forcing the player out to the sides. Then there are little fighters that harass you out there, but not so much. So it just became an issue of moving to the sides, waiting for the bullets to leave a gap, then popping in for a few shots. I think you're right, it's the difficulty that's the problem, not so much the mouse control. |
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| Yeah I thought it might be, I had a simmilar issue with Terminal, I found there was a spot I could sit and due to accuracy of some of the math the bullets just missed this spot. In the end I just coded in a routine that does nothing but shoot at that spot making sure that if the player happens to ever discover it, a sneaky little stray round will eat them and punish them for hiding lol. Other than that, making sure that every now and then you actually target the player with a few rounds will make sure that he moves. |
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| I have little fighters that spawn from the bomber that have turrets which can fire at any angle. Problem is, they're easy to kill, and making them harder would probably make it TOO hard. However, I think some turrets on the back of the bomber will do the trick, then the player can't sit still. I think you're right, sitting around doing nothing, even for half a second, is the problem here. |
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