Comments on: How do scrolling shooters work anyway?

By: Smartbomb

Smartbomb — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:06:01 +0000

[...] Owen, at 23:05 PDT pseudo-intellectual rambling | permalink | rss Among the comments to my post about scrolling shooters, John writes: Maybe with the alternate path system your talking about, you could change the path [...]

By: John

John — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 06:01:15 +0000

I’ve always found the the rhythm and pattern in side scrolling shooters to be the hook for me. I think it could be interesting to do something along the lines of Everyday Shooter with music but rather than do it with dynamic music use the enemy noises to generate the sound track.
Kinda like those music videos on youtube where someone takes 2 or 3 gunfire sounds from a game and makes a music track out of it. You could tie it in with the narrative and pacing of the game too. Maybe with the alternate path system your talking about, you could change the path and rhythm of the game depending on the players score. Thats got the old rub of making loads of content that people wont see though.

By: Luke

Luke — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:38:11 +0000

Well your post certainly got me thinking about sense making alternate activities for a rolling screen and can’t believe this hasn’t been done before…

A Chameleon shredding down Madagascan rivers on a massive surfboard viewed from a top down perspective. It uses its lightning quick tongue to swat and eat a prevailing horde of insects buzzing on the river. Only the end of the chameleon’s tongue is sticky and volatile and its continually reaching out until it hits a target or reaches the end of the screen. Its so quick to retract their tongue and ingest the bugs that it is essentially rapid-fire. Upgrades could include being joined by other lizards on your trusty surfboard.

By: Owen

Owen — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:52:22 +0000

I dunno. I’ve got Gradius Advance sitting on my desk and it really gets on my nerves when my souped-up ship catches a stray bullet and turns back into a pile of junk. I think that’s just a question of balance, and stuff… like, 19XX has far fewer upgrades, so you never fall back very far.

But anyway, yes. I’m probably going to make it a bit like Lylat Wars and introduce little challenges for each level that determine how you proceed.

By: Iain

Iain — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:15:10 +0000

Most scrolling shooters throw enemies at you at such a rate that there is never any point in letting up on the fire button – after all, you’re there to indescriminately wipe out an alien race or whatnot. Ikaruga is the exception, where shooting everything without colour changing etc loses you points and, at higher difficulties, gets you killed. Perhaps rewarding precision – don’t shoot innocents or explosives that would kill innocents, or feed Evil Birds – would change the feel a little.

To be honest though, I just like the increasing power that some of these games allow, where you start off with a pea shooter on a paper plane and customise yourself until you’re a fully operational battle station, as it were. Maybe no one else does.

Side note, would Game Maker allow you to do Outrun-esque route selection? Thought once of a shooter in a Metroid style network of tunnels.