Doubts about enemies, game difficulty and two player

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Moebios
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Doubts about enemies, game difficulty and two player

Post by Moebios »

Hey guys.
I'm designing my first shmup and I had three questions, yes two, because many of the others I managed to solve by reading this forum =)
First of all, sorry for my English (I used google translator to correct some possible errors)

Well, let's go:

Doubt 1: Create enemies in the scenario, which way do you think is more viable (thinking about game maintenance like resetting phases and things like that)
a) creating enemies by code with a timer for each new wave?
b) are enemies already creating on stage and are they being activated when they are in the proper Y position?

Or some other smarter way?

Doubt 2: About the game modes, I thought about making three modes. Easy mode, normal and hard mode. My doubt is:
In easy mode, do enemies shoot less bullets? Do bullets move slower? Are fewer enemies created? Are enemies' hit points getting lower?
And in hard mode, would it be the other way around? Enemies fire more bullets? Do enemies' hit points get higher?

Any advice you can give me on this?

Doubt 3: When there are 2 players, is there usually any change in the game? For example, are more enemies created or do they get more hit points?

These were my doubts, I hope you can understand them. Any light you can shed on them will be extremely helpful. Thank you =)
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9uile
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Re: Doubts about enemies, game difficulty and two player

Post by 9uile »

Hi, good luck for your dev.

I also have a lot of doubt doing my shmup, my first, and not finished ... :)
So below are my choices, probably not the best,but i have to make decisions to go further) :

1. I set a fixed position for ennemies along the stage and when they are nearto the display area, i activate them.
I prefer this way because it's more visual in editor than a timeline based spawner.

2. I try to have only one mode but playable by casual and advanced players. By comparaison, think about pinballs : it's fun and also challenging when you want a highscore.
If you want several modes, everything is possible but think in term of development length.

3. I'm not making a 2p mode but it makes me crazy when i think about dealing with this !
And shmup audiance are most in lone 1p side ? right ?
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Sumez
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Re: Doubts about enemies, game difficulty and two player

Post by Sumez »

1)
I'm not sure what the difference between those two situations is, seems like it's just a difference of technical implementation, but the result is the same?
Not sure it helps, but in my code, enemies are placed in the stage as "objects" in the stage data that are triggered once you reach their specific Y coordinate. But each "object type" is really just a piece code that spawns the actual object in ram, so in the case of any enemy that comes on as a wave of multiple enemies, all of those are spawned as a single object even though they are handled as individual objects afterwards.

2)
In general, if you want a higher difficulty, anything that makes the game harder to survive goes, but I think it's generally a good idea to keep things somewhat consistent between difficulties, so the same skillset can be reused. More enemies and more aggressive enemies are definitely tested and tried approaches. But I think giving enemies more or less HP is generally a bad idea unless you specifically want the more beefy enemies (like bosses) to go down faster on Easy mode.
Generally, you always want a lot of enemies to go down fast. If hard mode just turns everything into bullet sponges, it will probably make the game less fun to play.

3)
On the other hand, in 2P mode, that's where you DO want to give enemies more HP. Popcorn enemies should stay popcorn, but keep in mind that two players have twice the firepower of one player. Try playing through the game in 2P and adjust enemy health until it feels similar to single player mode. Twice the HP isn't always the answer.
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Sumez
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Re: Doubts about enemies, game difficulty and two player

Post by Sumez »

9uile wrote: 2. I try to have only one mode but playable by casual and advanced players. By comparaison, think about pinballs : it's fun and also challenging when you want a highscore.
If you want several modes, everything is possible but think in term of development length.
Maybe I'm just stuck in the mindset of classic arcades, but IMO shmups are a good example of a pure action game where having a sliding scale of difficulty settings makes it a lot easier to work with. I like to have a global "rank" value which in turn affects "sliders" such as:
- Enemy speed
- Enemy aggression (frequency of shots, types of patterns used)
- Bullet speed

Changing this value on a stage by stage basis makes it easier to rebalance the game and move things around, but it also makes it easier to create different difficulty settings or additional loops if you want those, and build in features which makes high scoring runs more challenging, such as survival rank, etc. I think the latter also feeds well into the idea of making a game approachable to multiple audiences - I personally really like a game where the difficulty adjusts dynamically based on player actions.

Worth also noting that pinball tables definitely have a lot of difficulty settings that can be adjusted by operators. Although software settings mostly affect competitive and scoring challenges, even casual players will have a harder times on tables with the outlane posts moved outwards, or the playfield adjusted to a steeper angle.
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9uile
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Re: Doubts about enemies, game difficulty and two player

Post by 9uile »

Sumez wrote:I like to have a global "rank" value which in turn affects "sliders" such as:
- Enemy speed
- Enemy aggression (frequency of shots, types of patterns used)
- Bullet speed
I agree but it's really difficult to put the sliders efficiently. As a beginner dev, a not well balanced ranking system can ruins the whole game experience.
When i mentionned pinballs, it's because a child can have fun just like a pro player which who tries to maximize his score with pinball mechanics (extra ball, targets, multiball, jackpot and so on...)
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