"Sonic The Hedgehog" and a Steampunk theme shooter

LionFish · Post by **LionFish** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:05 am

I know that title isn't too popular nowadays, but I had this pressing wonder as to why Tails had an airplane and never used it outside of carrier purposes. I came up with a probably not so unique game play idea from it though, having a ship launch some projectile(s) which ricochet off enemies, repelling, destroying, or partially damaging them (each with separate chain/scoring values); then returning to the craft either when there isn't anything to bounce off of or the force of the initial release of these projectiles dies off and the remaining energy is used to return to the craft. I considered breaking away from sonic and switch to some characters of my own, so that I could further add some more interesting features; and the storyline turned into something along the lines of mammals vs aquatic creatures, where all the ships had mammalian cyborg allies (the hedgehog was swapped for armadillos or pangolins) which could combine with that craft to usher out a much greater level of the same attacks as the "bomber" option. The other two mammals were bats which used "resonance" to destroy enemies within close proximity to the craft, and moles which just had head on "drill attacks", mainly for use against larger enemies, I supposed.

OK.... finally got that out of the system, my other concept was a shmup with all steam-powered vehicles, basically. I visualized a Raizing/EspGaluda look to it, but I also thought of instead of firing bullets or having bombs, the crafts would expel a steam blast of some sort at other enemies which caused them to collide with other ships, and if an enemy was blasted but didn't collide with anything, they could and recover and continue attacking until a blast did cause them to collide with another enemy. Assuming the steam blast would stream out in a straight lazer-like fashion, but in a limited distance like the Ketsui crafts had, the angle of repulsion could depend on the blast hitting the enemies off center. That is unless the weapon was mouse controlled and the craft keyboard navigated thus giving it a full 360 degree range of attack, but I don't know how complicated that would be to script. To add interest, there could also be a fire/ice subweapon option where switching to "fire" mode sends off a flamethrower attack which does procedural damage just like a normal weapon would do, but there could also be an "bullet canceling" ability with it as well; and "ice" mode would just freeze enemies instead of propelling them into other crafts so that other ships could just crash into the one which was frozen.

I had some concept art for these, but I still have a week until school starts back up and there I gain access to a scanner to post it (hopefully it will clarify most of this babble).....

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:39 am

I'd avoid using existing IP if I was you. You probably don't want your game to end up like Grid Wars and what's worse, make some lawyer rich in the process

Plus, after 10 years of Sega's unplayable attempts at 3D, nobody wants to see anything Sonic-related again.

And that enemy repulsion system, there's no reason it shouldn't work. Same applies to projectiles "bouncing" from enemy to enemy (I think you mean something like lightning attack in Raystorm).

But mouse-controlled weapons? Please avoid using that as primary way to target enemies. If anything, it should be last alternative for people without dual stick controller (that is, if you want to use multidirectional shooting at all).

null1024 · Post by **null1024** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 9:00 pm

Sega doesn't bother going against fangames, as long as you don't sell it. [otherwise, there'd be a BIG cease-and-desist letter going to the guys who are working on Sonic Nexus, and actually, to a couple dozens of projects, some going on for about 4-5 years now]

Also, people love Sonic still. Well, everything from Sonic 1 to SA2. After SA2, everything went way downhill.

LionFish · Post by **LionFish** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 1:08 am

Yeah the idea is almost exactly like raystorms, only I didn't think it to be that easy. I had other uses for using these arakanoid-like projectiles in the game, such as jamming a machine by shooting the projectile into some moving component of it; causing it to automatically self-destruct and adding a bonus in the scoring system. The levels would also resemble a horizontal shmup done vertically with background obstacles not necessarily intended to pose a challenge for navigating the, but hopefully allows for more of a challenge to using ricochet attacks.