idea for a no shooting shooter

[genecyst]

hi guys, i've just started a really small project about a sort of cute'm up with his own gameplay and i'm curious to hear what you think about the gameplay i'm going to build.


waves of ships and bullets come down from the upside and you got to dodge all the bullets... as usually...
the fact is that you can't shoot.
your ship got two energy fields, one on the left and one on the right side of the ship which can be activated by pressing the relative buttons. this energy fields remain active for the time you keep the button pressed. these energy fields aren't used to deflect bullets as it happens in many other games, but they are the way you can destroy enemy ships.
it all works with contact, when you touch a ship his energy starts to slow down till it explode.
this is the basic mechanics of the game, what you think?

[Ixmucane2]

Why shouldn't you press both buttons continuously? And why a split field, needing one more button, rather than a 360 degree one?

[genecyst]

two button shield for not keeping it too simple, to avoid left coming ship i must use left shield leaving the right part of the ship exposed. i forget to write that i was thinking about a shield who can't be totally active, only right or left at a time.

i don't want a 360 degree protection because moving the shield is the main focus of the game.

[soloista]

Why don't you map the left/right shield activations to the D-pad?

Press to activate shield.
Move left/right to shift the shield to the appropriate direction.

[Ixmucane2]

I think a dual analog stick (one stick to move, one stick to orient an always-on shield) would improve the core mechanism of managing the shield with continuous face changes, and it would be much less bizarre than keyboard-based schemes.
You might emulate a dual stick with a keyboard (WSAD and arrows), but then the controls would work in 45° increments and suffer from simultaneous key press limits.

[genecyst]

that was another way i've tought, but i think it will become useless to press the button because the shield hasn't a timer for his duration.
as the 360° shield, i think it will made all to easy...

I think a dual analog stick (one stick to move, one stick to orient an always-on shield) would improve the core mechanism of managing the shield with continuous face changes, and it would be much less bizarre than keyboard-based schemes.

i were thinking to release this game for game boy advance, so without this possibility, but it's a neat idea, and easy to release on a nintendo ds with pen aid...
mmmmh... i think i'll do an easy prototype and then post something.

[ShmupSamurai]

For some reason your "hitting enemies with shield" idea reminds me of Radio Zonde, which actually is kinda cool. In RZ, I find the saber/shield loking attack to be the best way to score big and minimize body count.

would be sweet if u made it so that destroyed enemies drop some kinda scoring gem or medal which u could bounce off the shiedls into more enemies, which does extra damage AND increases their value.

[genecyst]

this idea is interesting; i've got to test some basic gameplay on the ds to see if it works and then i'll go trough some improvements. i'll keep it in mind couse i like it a lot.