Rolling Back
Once again, playtesting served as a wonderful source of information. Not only on the sessions I managed to organize in person, but after seeing all of the AM2R Demo playtrhoughs on YouTube, I noticed something...
Nobody ever switches the ice beam off.
The beam system was planned to be a little more complex than the original Super Metroid stacks. There's a base damage value, that goes up every time you get a new beam, and some modifiers, that are part of each beam's features.
In theory, this gives the player many ways of approaching situations. Having Plasma Beam enabled makes the beam hit multiple times, but the damage is lower. Spazer spreads the base damage on each beam, and with some extra damage, you'll need at least 2 beams hitting an enemy for an actual damage boost.
It was getting a little painful to balance. On each revision the beam combinations went from really impractical pea shooters to extremely overpowered. And, in all cases, having all 4 beams enabled was the best choice, there was little reason to change combinations. Missiles, in the end, turned out to be just Metroid killers, and nothing else.
So, after explaining the system to the test players, they never found a situation to turn any beam off. The game wasn't designed with active switching in mind, like the Prime series. So, I think the best is to make things simple again.
Now, beams act like in Super Metroid. If, for some reason, you decide to disable one of the beams, it'll be to add some challenge to the game, just like disabling any other useful item. This makes balancing enemies a lot easier.
You enter a new area, enemies take many hits, you might focus on killing just the ones in your way. You find a beam upgrade, enemies are much easier to kill. Simple as that.
I might keep one or two of the specific-beam-combination puzzles for certain items, but they won't be essential.
Anyway. Besides that, there was a major bug hunt. Seems like variable rounding changed from GM7 to GM8.1, causing some obscure glitches here and there.
The contents of the next demo is looking good.
As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.
Comments
t3rr4
I thought it was fine that way; but it just means that particular feature (toggling abilities) is not much of an asset to gameplay.
Shame to see that the complex beam system will be gone. Ah well.
Either way, glad to hear that testing is going well. I look forward to the final product and the next demo when it comes. Here's hoping we get another sector or 2 to toy around with, and that the full game will be not too far behind that!
I just insist that there ought to be little films for when Samus lands, when she surprisingly comes across with chozo ruins and the first alpha metroid (she didn't expect to see them evolving), the Queen, killing the Queen, the baby hatching and leaving SR388 with it.
Another suggestion I can give is trophies. Just like the consoles do nowadays, you could put some trophies for us to try to achieve during the game.
That had a genius system where they locked out beam switching until you got the hidden beam combo item. Each beam had a different use up until then and it made it less irritating to have to go in and switch all the time as opposed to a system where it merely affects rate of fire & damage. You had to use the Wave Beam to open shutters, Ice to freeze, Plasma to defeat otherwise unbeatable enemies, and I guess Spazer was just an upgrade to your regular beam. I'd love it if you'd look into incorporating something like that... but that would be a lot more work.
Im happy you are still on it !
I'm guessing the ice beam doesn't add a lot of damage.
While I don't think you should have to collect a beam from an item again in order to switch back to it, I did like the challenge of having a pure beam.
While a complex system might not be ideal for normal mode, it would be a great unexpected challenge in Hard Mode.
Either eliminate beam combining in Hard Mode, only allowing you to switch back and forth between the pure forms of the beams
or
Make Beam combination be purely an averaging of the effects, not an addition.
So average the damage level between all the beams added, as well as reload times, etc.
So Ice beam combo-ed with Plasma beam would be slower reload than Ice beam alone but faster than Plasma alone, but more powerful than the Ice beam and less powerful than the Plasma beam.
That way, combining all the beams gets all the special effects, but reload time and power will not be the highest, and hopefully make a noticeable difference.
Plus you can easily set beam limits by simply changing the values of the pure beams. With Plasma being the most powerful and
Ice beam or Spazer being the weakest.
I think that anti-beans enemies can solve this, and a poor starting beam, like in Super Metroid go well too. And only in the end, a powerfull plasma beam, just to make easier going back to starting areas.
Great work Doc, these details are essential for the gameplay, but not so evident.
This is useful because some low-end GPUs (like Intel HD4000) don't let you preserve the aspect ratio in fullscreen, so in-game black bars is the only way to not have a stretched game view.
On a side note, I did enjoy the idea of different rates of fire depending on what beams you had equipped.
As for things being unique and giving reason to switch on certain beams and the like; I really liked how charging single beams with power bombs on in Super gave you special and more powerful effects.
I wouldn't suggest toying with that this late in the game - especially if you've already done a lot of play testing - but it was one of the points in Super Metroid I liked and was very happy to see something similar in the Prime series with the missile charging.
Anyways, keep up the great work! It's easy to see you've enjoyed a lot of this. (Psssst, can we expect to see a demo and AM2R at the conference this year? ;) )
-Veysey
Ultimately, you can typically assume players are going to use Wave, Plasma, and Spazer all the time, so unless you add beam combos, there isn't any real reason to turn those off.
Keep up the work! I've been a follower from the beginning and can't wait to play AM2R!
I only tun it on when i have to climb a Way UP or fight "Basic" Metroids.
Just to be in the know.
Make it so that you don't have to go into the pause menu. Samus already has an aiming function so a theoretical interface in which Samus just aims in the direction of the beam she wants would make the transition seamless. That's why it worked well enough in Metroid Prime (at least the Wii version—I never played the Gamecube ones).
I have one suggestion, something you might try before throwing out the original system. Limit beam combos. Make it so that you can't stack all at once, but maybe only two at a time (charge aside). That would make for 6 different combinations that a player could toy with to suit both the situation and their play style! You couldn't use all of them but you wouldn't be stuck with only one or another.
if staying dificiu to understand is that I do not know well and write in English I use google translator. XD
saludos desde chile, desde un fan constante
I just collect it from PIJ. Its really amazing.
http://bit.ly/metroidfigma
http://bit.ly/METROIDOtherM
AND EVEN THEN, in Super Metroid, you can't have all four beams activated at once anyway: The Spazer and Plasma beams conflict.
I will say this: I needed to be able to switch High Jump Boots on/off on occasions during Super Metroid, especially through the upper Red Brinstar section.
I always thought this was one of the best examples of A.I. ever implemented. You could choose to do this with some of your enemies.
Sake of argument: Q (toggle spazer on/off); W (toggle ice beam on/off); E (toggle wave beam on/off); and R (toggle plasma beam on/off). Pausing the game to select/unselect beams/accessories can continue to exist.
Mega Man X for the SNES finally allowed for weapon switching without calling up submenus by using the L and R buttons so there is precedent for this.
armor. These are all thoughts and i hope you have as much fun making the game as i am playing it.