Pondering Combo Systems

[the_last_shmupper]

I'm not sure if this should go in Shmups chat or Development. I've been playing around with a combo system and I've come up with a few ideas I thought I'd throw out to the community.

What should the purpose of combos be? Bigger score? Bigger weapons? Regenerate health?

How do YOU like maintaining combos? Getting hit destroys your combo? Letting 5 or so seconds go between destroying ships or collecting treasure breaks your combo?

Are there preferred methods of combos or another idea I haven't thought of yet? Should a high combo increase your end of level score instead of the current combo itself meaning something?

[Shepardus]

Combos/chains in shmups are typically used for scoring purposes, though that itself may have other consequences, like in Radiant Silvergun where score directly upgrades your weapons, or Mars Matrix where your shot power increases at certain thresholds for your scoring multiplier. Also many games give lives based on score, like the Dodonpachi series, so keeping longer chains will get you lives faster. I've never been a huge fan of chaining because they tend to have an "all or nothing" feeling to them and encourage very strict routing even more so than shmups naturally do by themselves, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, it depends on personal taste.

I prefer it if the current chain means something during gameplay rather than just factoring into the stage/game clear bonus. For me that's a more general dislike of clear bonuses - in my opinion you should be able to see the effects of your actions during the actual gameplay. To me it's a lot more fun to see a record being broken as the player's doing their record-breaking actions and not just at the end of the game when some seemingly arbitrary value gets added to the score to push it to the top.

The most unique chaining/combo system I've seen is that of Battle Bakraid. In some ways it's similar to many other chaining systems: destroying specific (large) enemies before the two-second chain timer runs out will reset the chain timer and increase a scoring multiplier from x1 to a maximum of x64. What's unique and utterly bizarre about it, however, is that deaths and bombs do not reset your chain, but actually pause the chain timer, allowing you to extend your chain timer to chain enemies that would normally be too far apart to chain together. Bombing, in addition to pausing the timer, will set the timer to its lowest value during the bomb, so if you don't destroy a chainable enemy during the bomb you'll lose your chain. Keeping a chain going through an entire stage involves numerous suicides and bombs at precise times and locations, but that's okay since the game gives extends every 2 million points, so if you're keeping a x64 multiplier you'll be getting a lot of lives that you can sacrifice to continue chaining. It's the silliest thing ever but it's also insanely fun and has a lot of depth to it. Here's an example of one of the stages being fully chained - note the chain timer counting down from 120 in the top-left below the score, and the chain multiplier below that.

[Bananamatic]

regenerate ammo and increase movement speed

[Squire Grooktook]

You probably can't tell since you sound new, but Bananamatic is trolling. ^^^

I just want to comment and give a big fat no to "health regeneration".

-Shmups are generally best with very limited amounts of lives/health. If you throw a bajillion lives/health at the player, it'll either be too easy or feel like dumb bullshit when you crank the difficulty up to the vault of the heavens to compensate.

-In combo/chaining based shmups, you tend to chain/combo A LOT. You'd basically be completely invincible if you got a health restore every single time.

Probably more reasons, but those are off the top of my head. Doing score related things (like chaining/combos) to get extends/health up can work, but it needs to be a long term thing. Like "you get one or two 1up/heatlh up per stage if you take lots of difficult risks". See any Yagawa game (Battle Garegga, Armed Police Batrider, Battle Bakraid) for examples of this.

[the_last_shmupper]

Yeah I could tell. I've never even heard of ammo for a shmup unless its a ground walker / run & gun and personally I always frown at extra speed.

This is my first shmup development, so its always helpful to hear what actual players want

The limited health and lives are always a plus. The regenerating health was more or less a joke, someone that strings together a healthy combo isn't someone that will need health and well FPS always hate regenerating health. I've played some with a regenerating shield, but not regenerating health.

Currently I've got extra lives via points and collectables (I'm not certain about if it will stay, but its there). I could do a Mario style combo system where chain together X combo and get a one up. That sounds easy to work in with balancing. Lots of lives early in the game to make up for bone crushing difficulty at the end.

Shepardus had a lot of great details to say and I thank you for them. Especially pointing out how fun it is to push the high score up. I've got a high combo to the game screen and several high scores outside of the game screen. I should probably add a high score to the game screen for that old school arcade feel and because I've got a lot of screen real estate. I feel like a adjustable resolution might be a bit much. Having 1080 to fly around in on a 16:9 widescreen for a vertical shmup.

So the Battle Balraid system is downright brilliant. That's true risk and reward. I'd be game to that, but its not about what I want really. It also extends the limited idea of you need to destroy or collect power ups within 5 seconds before the combo runs out. I hope no one would throw egg at me for stealing it once I find a way to twist it instead of bluntly taking the mechanic.

If you say its fun, that's I really care about, because right now I have 95% square box graphics, so fun is all I have.

[LordHypnos]

Probably more reasons, but those are off the top of my head. Doing score related things (like chaining/combos) to get extends/health up can work, but it needs to be a long term thing. Like "you get one or two 1up/heatlh up per stage if you take lots of difficult risks". See any Yagawa game (Battle Garegga, Armed Police Batrider, Battle Bakraid) for examples of this.

I think you can get more than 2 1ups in a stage in Bakraid, at least, but the suiciding probably makes the difference here, because it keeps you from being able to be a bullet sponge.

On topic: I definitely think that Mars Matrix has the best chaining system. The reason why is all about the fact that you can reflect bullets against your enemies to fill gaps in the chain. This adds an element of chaos, and also creativity to the chaining because there are a lot of ways to chain any given section. This creates a lot of depth considering how extremely simple the actual chaining, in fact, is. It also gives you more control over it. It's a bit hard to explain, I guess. I'd say that Bakraid suiciding / bombing serves the same purpose. Can't kill one enemy near enough to another to chain them? Bomb or suicide during the gap. In Mars Matrix, it's like: look at this big area where there aren't any enemies dropping gold cubes, well if you kill this one enemy with his own bullets or reflect them against some scenery or non-cube-dropping enemy, you can collect those cubes slowly enough so that the chain is still going when that next cube spawning enemy appears. The larger cubes giving you more time on your chain, but in a sense less of a multiplier boost adds another little layer of depth, but the shield and the control it gives you is the big thing. I think DOJ hypers might serve a similar purpose, though I'm not terribly familiar with that game.
I'd say: make sure you have some sort of mechanic that gives the player a sense of control over the execution of the chain.

As for deaths, I tend to think that punishing players' score for dying is kind of annoying, and I'd recommend against making it sort of an all-or-nothing type experience, but I will say that there's something kind of intense about how punishing dying during your longest chains is in Mars Matrix (though this is mostly concentrated in stage 3 for non-insane-level players).

I don't have much of an opinion on how chaining should affect gameplay outside of score. I think that Mars Matrix does a really good job with the leveling up of the normal shot mechanic, but I think it would be a crazy difficult balance to get right.

[trap15]

regenerate ammo and increase movement speed

[BIL]

Einhander has ammo and it's pretty cool ^_~ No for real, emptying a fuckin Cannon pointblank into a robot's face and watching its decapitated body buckle and explode is an amazing, possibly quasi-sexual experience. It's gotta be something worth expending though!

[Shepardus]

Probably more reasons, but those are off the top of my head. Doing score related things (like chaining/combos) to get extends/health up can work, but it needs to be a long term thing. Like "you get one or two 1up/heatlh up per stage if you take lots of difficult risks". See any Yagawa game (Battle Garegga, Armed Police Batrider, Battle Bakraid) for examples of this.

I think you can get more than 2 1ups in a stage in Bakraid, at least, but the suiciding probably makes the difference here, because it keeps you from being able to be a bullet sponge.

More like ten if you do it right =D

I agree that chaining systems are better when there's some way to manipulate them like the examples you mentioned. For that reason I never really liked Dodonpachi. I even prefer Donpachi over Dodonpachi because you can't chain the stages all the way through, so there's more room for creativity in where you begin and end your chains and how you set them up. It also feels less all-or-nothing because if you mess up one chain there's still other chains in the stage you can execute (though I guess that one counterstop video relies super heavily on one certain 300-hit combo in stage 5). From what I hear Guwange has one of the most "all-or-nothing" chaining systems since you can chain through the entire game rather than each stage individually.

Einhander has ammo and it's pretty cool ^_~ No for real, emptying a fuckin Cannon pointblank into a robot's face and watching its decapitated body buckle and explode is an amazing, possibly quasi-sexual experience. It's gotta be something worth expending though!

One shot type for Kagura in Hellsinker also has an ammo counter, though you can still fire after running out of ammo, just with a weakened shot until it regenerates. I could never get the hang of it (or any character except Minogame, really) but I thought it was pretty cool.

[the_last_shmupper]

regenerate ammo and increase movement speed

ok just for the laughs I made an ammo system and I made it increase the speed. Then I made a power up to refill your ammo. While I didn't give any time to balance it out, I felt like I was working an uphill battle. instead of being rewarded, I was being punished. Even the slightest speed boost got to be too much without a cap. When the combo breaks you return to normal speed. I think I might keep it in with a code or in the settings. 25 minutes of work for 5 minutes of laughs.

It turned out to be an intelligent system, you don't get faster persay, but it increases your max speed. Every bullet or laser takes ammo. Your first kill doesn't regain ammo, but your second kill, an actual combo gives you 25% of your combo's points in ammo. So an enemy worth 100 points, gives you 25 shots * the combo amound. Once you have no ammo, you need the power up... but I never put the power up in, because well I did it for the challenge.

Speaking of challenge, I've got the other system put into the game, but there are no bombs yet. You kill an enemy to increase the combo and death or collecting an item restarts the timer. Death restarts the timer too. Since enemies drop cash for lack of a better term you can time out killing something and keeping the cash on screen before collecting it. I suppose that will be my twist.

I'm no fan of punishing a score for death. That can be some additional setting or whatever for players that like that, but it'll be a while before I'm bored enough to add that sort of thing.

So many great ideas so far.

Time to make the bomb mechanic. I'd like to make a charge bomb. The longer you hold the button the wider the radius. Otherwise several different alternate items that depending on how long you hold the alt button it will be a bomb for just a press, or a flame tongue if you hold it half a second and so on. I would make switchable alternates, since a 360 controller has all those buttons, but an arcade cabinet wouldn't.

[Squire Grooktook]

Einhander has ammo and it's pretty cool ^_~ No for real, emptying a fuckin Cannon pointblank into a robot's face and watching its decapitated body buckle and explode is an amazing, possibly quasi-sexual experience. It's gotta be something worth expending though!

Was about to mention that. An Einhander, Metal Slug, or Thunder Cross style ammo system, in which the player is temporarily empowered by a finitely usable new weapon, could work I suppose. Like, if particularly sexual techniques could extend power up ammo?

Also Einhander is great in that department, isn't it? Only shooting game where eviscerating normal enemies captures the same sense of impact and power as beating up dudes in a belt scroller.

[LordHypnos]

Probably more reasons, but those are off the top of my head. Doing score related things (like chaining/combos) to get extends/health up can work, but it needs to be a long term thing. Like "you get one or two 1up/heatlh up per stage if you take lots of difficult risks". See any Yagawa game (Battle Garegga, Armed Police Batrider, Battle Bakraid) for examples of this.

I think you can get more than 2 1ups in a stage in Bakraid, at least, but the suiciding probably makes the difference here, because it keeps you from being able to be a bullet sponge.

More like ten if you do it right =D

Yeah, I've seen some video(s) where the player is just picking up extend after extend. It's pretty mind boggling. Then they'll suicide down to 0 extra lives while chaining the boss. Pretty edge-of-seat stuff. Definitely one of the most interesting scoring systems out there.

[the_last_shmupper]

I added a bomb system and I've gotta say maintaining the combo through 2 second bombs gets addictive like a juggle that I just refuse to stop even in the testing environment. I'm really happy that I came to the forum

[Doctor Butler]

Chaining is a scoring mechanic.

Weapons/Firepower should come from pickups, released from slain enemies.

Shooters don't have ammo, and the good ones don't have lifebars either.

[LordHypnos]

Chaining is a scoring mechanic.

Weapons/Firepower should come from pickups, released from slain enemies.

Shooters don't have ammo, and the good ones don't have lifebars either.

Disagree somewhat.

If you're just trying to avoid crappy powerup dynamics the safe option is to avoid powerups alltogether. In most games that have powerups and don't have issues with gradius syndrome the powerups are basically entirely superficial and don't add/detract anything from gameplay. It is also possible to have powerup systems that come from score, essentially, and are not frustrating, as in Mars Matrix. It just takes a large amount of balancing that is probably more trouble than it's worth, and will likely still lead some players to avoid them.

As for lifebars, it is possible to do those well too, but just somewhat uncommon. CAVE even has a few games with lifebars. Yet again, the safe option is definitely to avoid them alltogether.

Never speed up power ups or power up dodging though >_< FFS.

[the_last_shmupper]

I can understand life bars, but when I play a game... I'm never looking at it. Its too difficult to take my eyes off any action. There's always ship smoking to indicate how much damage you've taken or even a color change if you want to be lazy about it. The troll in me says.... alamrs needs alamrs! going off blaring non stop indicating YOU ARE LOW HEALTH!

[Squire Grooktook]

Shooters don't have ammo

Einhander.

Shooters don't have ammo, and the good ones don't have lifebars either.

Guwange.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Ikaruga's prototype mode has ammo that restocks through bullet eating. Would be very annoying on Easy Mode where there are no suicide bullets, but it offers some new options on Normal and Hard mode since not having to charge up to release the special attack could allow more chains at times as well as quicker speedkills on bosses.



Guwange and both Deathsmiles games kind of have it on lifebars. For Deathsmiles it's pretty much just a life count except collisons take half a bar instead of the full bar. Guwange's damage depends on whether you're in shikigami or not, whether you collided into a bullet or enemy, and has no i-frames unless you lose a section of the bar, so a few bullets could quickly eat through a section of the bar.


SDOJ's 360 mode also does it, with the option to use some of it to shot + laser for more hyper, regenerate it with hyper, used up for bombs and autobombs. It works though because it's already based on a game that was fair.


Just don't do the lifebar thing because a lot of them will be, who cares if this is fair, they'll have the life to take the BS hit(but might not).

[pokemon123]

I would be against the "combo" system but it's just personal taste because chaining ruined the DDP and DOJ and made me despise both of the games but if you're going for a combo system I'd prefer a "short burst" style combo system like donpachi.



If you do decide to go for a big combo system i would support it only for score and nothing else.

TBH i probably shouldn't answer this since DDP is the only combo system game i've played but just my thoughts.

[LordHypnos]

I even prefer Donpachi over Dodonpachi because you can't chain the stages all the way through, so there's more room for creativity in where you begin and end your chains and how you set them up. It also feels less all-or-nothing because if you mess up one chain there's still other chains in the stage you can execute (though I guess that one counterstop video relies super heavily on one certain 300-hit combo in stage 5).

Slightly off topic, but I actually kind of like it when there's one or two specific spots that're worth way more than others. It kind of takes the pressure off of minor mistakes in other spots. In Mars Matrix the gold cube waterfall in stage 3 is responsible for the biggest share of your multiplier, and you're totally fucked if you die in its midst (So you pretty much have to restart). As a consequence, though, your score isn't reduced too much if you die much earlier in the stage (although it's pretty badly impacted if you die or break the chain right before the waterfall). Also one or two chain breaks, depending on where, in stage 5 (also worth a lot) aren't too significant either, because the scoring potential is spread out more evenly through the stage.

While 3 is still worth the most, this is probably less true if you're skilled enough to full chain stages 2 and 4.

Additionally, the majority of your score (not multiplier) ends up coming from stage 6 because of all the high value enemies there, and to a lesser extent the time bonus at the end (all of which are multiplied by the multiplier), so you still need to make it past all the hard parts (bosses of stage 4 and 5) to get a good score.

I understand that Border Down also has one stage (2...?) worth a lot more than the others.