Hi. Following my finishing of both Super metroid and metroid Ii, I went on to metroid zero mission (fusion is a bit more problematic from an access perspective due to all the text).
Zero mission for those who don't know is a very very very! enhanced remake of the original Nes metroid for the gameboy advanced (although I'm playing it on my gamecube). Leaving aside all the 2d vertical mechanics of the game, one thing I noticed was just how simple most of the enemy's movements are. many for example crawl along the outside of each platform you need to jump to, some simply jump up and down, others rise up from the floor when you approach their nest and pole at you horrizontally before leaving the screen. Very few enemies (indeed d possibly none at all), have any degree of ai to them at all, they just move, (remember that touching most enemies harms you), or shoot or react to your proximity on a basic level. One thing I find interesting in audio games, is that though first person, ---- or at least full 360 degree movement in a two dimentional plane ala shades of doom and swamp is a very good representative medium, few developers have actually considdered how much can be done with basic movement patterns for enemies. Of course, enemies that come to get you are great, however it did strike me a lot could be done with enemies who just move in a static sense or react to your presence forcing you to think fast with some good map design. For example, take the most basic sort of enemy, one who patrols back and forth in a streight line, call it a robot centry for sake of arguement. Imagine your playing a game similar to shades of doom and come to the end of a corridor that finishes in a t junction. You hear a robot sentry pacing up and down the end of the T junction in front of you. now, what do you do? you can try and run past it down one of the ends of the corridor, you could stay where you are and pick it off as it passes. if you were less vigilent you might have already blundered into the T and find the sentry coming towards you and have to try and pick it off quickly (let's assume the sentry is pretty tough for this example), or back up and hope to find a side passage to duck down. To take another example, imagine something similar to the metroid nests, a sewer great on the ground that if you get close enough, a carnivorous fly will spring out of, pole streight for you and vanish. Knowing it is there, you'll need to approach it, make the fly come out and either kill or avoid, then run quickly past before another comes and get out of the zone of detection, ---- possibly having to turn around and snooker another fly coming for you from behind. I can only think of one game that has employed this mode in it's enemies, and that is papaasangre, but really with some good design there is no reason that these sorts of things shouldn't occur more often in a first person setting. It's true that you will have a harder time tracking movements of unfamiliar enemies in sound even in a first person view, however this is easily soluable with a bestiary, a scanner, an npc or (as papasangre did), simply some explanation of what your facing. I'd also imagine these sorts of enemy movements are far easier to program than say something which must chase and attack the player, or move towards the player and repeatedly damage them. Of course, we have seen some of this sort of thing in the design of enemies for space invaders games, but sinse there the player's own options are pretty limited to just moving left and right and firing, the tactical options for taking out say a ship crusing side to side are less evident, sinse whatever it is the usual response is kill it quick! I wonder if this is another case of people being less familiar with mainstream mechanics, sinse these sorts of enemies and movements have been common in games from the atari years onwards, either way perhaps this is something developers could considier, especially in fp games where the player has the most options for tactical movement and gameplay. BEware the Grue! Dark. Take them to the refirbished chamber that was once bad! --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
