I have a couple suggestions for P2D that’d make it a lot better:
Add more motion to the sprites. Samus’s walking/running animation seems really stiff and could use more motion in the shoulders/etc.
Have you guys ever thought about using voxels for some things in the game? By using voxels you could potentially add more destructable effects, smooth voxel model animation that mimics sprites, etc.
The most important suggestion I have is to add mouse aiming. If you look at games like soldat, and mods like Unreal Tournament 2D for UT3, you’ll note that you’re able to aim with the mouse and move using keys. Using this model you could have better control over where Samus is aiming, and be able to moonwalk/etc.
Also as for 2, you could probably easily render it quickly since there’s only one camera angle to render from. One of the big benefits for voxels is being able to accurately make destructable effects for objects/creatures.
Nice name…
1)Agreed
2)That’s an engine thing, don’t know if CFX will implement it, but we allready have plenty of sprites, and it would be a waste (:()
3)Hell. Fucking. No.
Well you could add mouse aiming as an alternative to regular Metroid controls. So you can have controller compatibility as well as mouse compatibility. I’d really play with either but only having 45 degree angle diagonal shots is kinda dated. I’m sure a lot of other people would find interest in mouse aiming, too.
I wasn’t saying to replace the entire aiming system, just add an alternate way to control.
Well for voxels you’d just be reconstructing the sprites anyway. It’s not really a big deal either way, though.
Voxels would be nice, but hard to program without cfx’s help.
IE, if cfx doesn’t want to do it, no chance it’ll happen.
No mouse aiming, mouse aiming is not metroid.
Metroid is not a shooter (nor gay )
I don’t intend to suggest that you make Metroid into a shooter. It’d just make it easier to aim at stuff that isn’t at a 90/45 degree angle, since I noticed in a P2D video at the beginning they had a hard time hitting the switches.
It may not be “Metroid” to allow an (almost) entire circle for aiming but it’d make it less of a headache. The game this is recreating had a lot of un-Metroid 2D things to it that you’re also adding to the game like scanning, so it shouldn’t really be a big deal to add the option of mouse aiming.
Being restricted to eight directions of aiming is more annoying than anything, to a lot of people, and I don’t think it’d change the core dynamics of the game much at all.
Edit: Is there really any reason NOT to allow mouse aiming that isn’t an appeal to nostalgia (i.e. it wasn’t in Super Metroid). I’d like to know if there are any actual negative effects on gameplay mouse aiming would cause. I can’t really think of anything so I’m curious.
Also my name is just tongue-in-cheek and I couldn’t really think of anything else.
making mouse aiming ruins the metroid feel. as soon as i saw that i thought:
8 directional mouse aiming? it wouldn’t ruin the engine much, and it’d be easier to aim than pressing those buttons on the keyboard (believe me, i’ve played super metroid on an emulator. it’s no fun.)
Sounds like a good compromise. I wouldn’t mind it as long as it’s actually somewhat easy to aim without a gamepad.
Though really, if you do that you might as well make three different setups:
Keyboard-only / Gamepad
Classic mouse & keyboard (8 or maybe 16 directons to smooth it only)
Modern mouse & keyboard (~360 degree aiming)
Then people that like the old metroid feel for controls, no matter how flawed, can enjoy that. Mouse control would do a lot for moonwalking and stuff so even with only eight or sixteen directions it’d be useful.
Oh my god, didn’t you get it at “Hell. Fucking. No.”?
NO MOUSE AIMING.
End of story.
Go play some super metroid, and tell me if it’d be even remotely a similar experience with mouse aiming.
Gee, I coulda sworn it was just an alternative, not something we’d force on everyone.
Not to mention, Prime had free-aim (if you hold R) and Hunters/Corruption had free aim all the time… and while those games were both bashed like hell for various reasons, the ability to aim was certainly not one of them.
…I kinda find this funny. I was only ever frustrated with that aiming style when I was trying to aim straight down while in the air, which was kind of a personal timing problem <_<
Seriously, who is so bad at judging timing/distances/angles that they would get frustrated with the 45 degree aiming style? If they suck at that so much, learn to jump and shoot the lower enemies (Which SHOULD be the only ones causing trouble with that style of aiming).
edit: Daz, from where I stand, it looks like they would then have to balance the controls to one style, which would make the other style harder/easier to use. I don’t know, maybe that wouldn’t be a problem here, but I just think it could cause problems.
Example: You walk into a room full of weak 1-hit enemies bouncing around in the air. The person using mouse aiming would pick them all of incredibly easily, even if they were a novice, without losing any health. The person with the angular aiming would have a much more difficult time picking them off by aiming or jump-shooting, especially without getting hit. While this isn’t necessarily game-breaking or anything, it would still be a small issue. If you have less enemies to make it seem less ridiculous for the angular aiming style, then it becomes really easy for the mouse-aiming person. If you have more so it’s interesting for the mouse-aiming person, it becomes quite a bit more difficult for the person with angular aiming. Same with any strong enemy that flies around with any complex patterns.
Well that’s a pretty good argument against mouse aiming. I think a good way to do it then would be to constrict the mouse aiming to maybe 8 to 16 angles (and for 16 angles, there’s probably a creative way to accomodate the original controls in there somewhere). 8 angles could make it unsmooth, and 16 angles would still be restrictive but still more angles than regular controls.
I think an actual nice way to solve this would be to animate free-aim as though it were actual free-aim, but cause Samus’s gun to bias to 8 directions when firing. So you could aim with the mouse and see the gun as though it were 360 degrees, but when you fire it uses an 8-directional alias.
So in that case the gameplay would be much the same, only it would be able to accomodate mouse/keyboard play.
As is your inability to accept that metroid prime is 3D, this is 2D.
Many 3D mechanics do not work in 2D, free aim is not one of them, but it simply doesn’t make sense for an exploration game.
Also… look at my sig, fool. It wasn’t in metroid, this is highly influenced by Super Metroid. I, personally, think free aim would ruin the feel, turn it into a trigger happy clicky game, rather than the exploration game it is.
Also,
I already explained a solution to that. Just make it so you can only actually fire in the eight controller directions but have the gun animate 360 degrees so it feels smoother. It wouldn’t change a damn thing.
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