Enkeria
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Post by Enkeria on Dec 7, 2017 12:51:02 GMT -6
You are walking in a cave, suddently a few spikes are falling down, you dodge them quickly thinking they will hurt you. How come?
We have learned that sharp and pointy objects along with bigger more solid ones in the same forground as you usually means hazardous and dangerous damage for our playable character. In some games these environments are very bad in showing whats "ok" and whats dangerous to be hit by.
Late games with fire, caverns, pools of acid and arrows shooting off the wall are things that sometimes can be overlooked while we are in a hurry. Some platform games usually show a warning before something is droped at that position, others let you just go with luck and a few lets you learn a pattern.
This pattern is what IGAvania usually have, letting you build up a strategy to overcome that environment. There is usually some kind of trail when you meet a bigger boss, or a boss that actually use the environment to make its attacks.
Bloodless showed us that the ceiling can be a danger to us once it starts raining sharp and compressed blood that could puncture our character(s).
Image source: www.pinterest.se/pin/212021094931339954/?lp=true
The questions I have for the community:Use environments against them1. Would you like to use the environment to kill off enemies? If yes, would you like to have it as random as the generated corridors in the background, or always at the same location? And, would you like it for castle in general or only when you meet bosses?
Traps + Enemies2. Traps are most of the time surrounded by enemies, unless its a room for a special type of gear (spike armor - SotN). Would you rather have traps only in a room, a combination of them and enemies or a room that "divide" the enemies and traps a part? Like having flying heads, while the floor is rising up and down with lava or acid? If there would be enemies in this room, would you like to see them die on these traps, or magically just pass through them unharmed?Falling Enemies3. Some enemies are very stupid. They walk or jump off edges and are forever gone. Would this apply in Bloodstained? Or would you see them either respawn shortly, find their way up again or do the classic one - respawn once you leave the room.Flying Enemies4. Those enemies that fly, keeps on coming. What if you could actually manage to kill them "all"? Would it be satisfying? Would it be a waste of effort to actually make it happen? After all, leaving and coming back would mean they would respawn anyways.
Image source: Skeleton Church - My video: See here!
2nd Tier "Smarter" Monsters5. Once you actually managed to kill of a room, using weapons or the environments, would you like to see the enemies become smarter? What if they are in Limbo, and they actually remember you slashed a chain so a chandelier landed on them just an hour ago? Would they try to do this to you? Or would they become stronger and stand against this, if the trap was always at the right place? Maybe you enjoy making them suffer, and the traps and environmental damage was to be based upon your weapon damage?Thoughts?
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Post by m0nkf15h on Dec 7, 2017 14:22:49 GMT -6
you got some interesting ideas there, problem is i feel it's a little late in the day to be discussing things like this. From what i understand the meat of the game will not be altered at this point so features will not be implemented. That asside i like your ideas:
1) yes this would be a nice feature
2)Trap rooms might be interesting would give the castle an otherworldly feel maybe with a small number of annoying baddies
3)i prefer the classic respawn mechanics so when you re-enter an area, respawn all the dudes in there
4) maybe you could get rare item or achievement for doing this 100% (respawned ones you've killed would still count)
5) too hard to impliment
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Pure Miriam
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Post by Pure Miriam on Dec 7, 2017 16:02:48 GMT -6
Your questions in Familiar Green. My anwsers on Effective Blue.
Use environments against them
1. Would you like to use the environment to kill off enemies? If yes, would you like to have it as random as the generated corridors in the background, or always at the same location? And, would you like it for castle in general or only when you meet bosses?
First of all, i believe there is a misconception here. As far as i remember, the background is not randomly generated. They use procedural generation to create environments, that does not mean they are random all the time. You use a software to randomly generate environment and then you SAVE the environment as it looks and fixes it on that look. The procedural generation is used just to create things easier, not really to make the background random everytime you see it.
That's what i understood at least, i may be wrong.
About the question itself, i would like to use the invironment to hurt enemies, but as a minor scale. The main power killing baddies must come from my weapons and my shards. At the Demo, you can make a Buer fall into another and hurt it (by a very low damage) if i'm not mistaken. I find little things like that fun and interesting, but more as a gimmick, puzzle-solving or something interesting to discover, than a real effective way to kill enemies.
Traps + Enemies
2. Traps are most of the time surrounded by enemies, unless its a room for a special type of gear (spike armor - SotN). Would you rather have traps only in a room, a combination of them and enemies or a room that "divide" the enemies and traps a part? Like having flying heads, while the floor is rising up and down with lava or acid? If there would be enemies in this room, would you like to see them die on these traps, or magically just pass through them unharmed?
I think all options are possible, variety is the key. A room that is nothing but traps is interesting, as is a room with traps and enemies, and both things divided apart. About enemies on traps, i think they can survive most of them. Like, you don't see enemies on Castlevania dying at spikes, so, i think they could be immune to most (maybe not all) traps.
Falling Enemies
3. Some enemies are very stupid. They walk or jump off edges and are forever gone. Would this apply in Bloodstained? Or would you see them either respawn shortly, find their way up again or do the classic one - respawn once you leave the room.
Respawing when you leave the room is granted. There is absolutely no way an Igavania would work without that. I would like to see enemies with a better overall IA, like choosing their attacks in a smarter way and not doing suicide jumps, or having means to coming back, that would be nice. Even so, i also like the simplicity of enemies in Igavania basically working as obstacles with patterns. So, both ways go.
Flying Enemies
4. Those enemies that fly, keeps on coming. What if you could actually manage to kill them "all"? Would it be satisfying? Would it be a waste of effort to actually make it happen? After all, leaving and coming back would mean they would respawn anyways.
Portrait of Ruin has a quest where you need to stay inside a room killing never ending ghosts until a bigger one shows up and you kill it too. Killing all auto-respawing enemies could be some kind of secret quest or something. It would be fun to do that in order to make something else shows up to get it's shard, for instance. I think something like this works better for quests and secret and hidden stuff, than something normal.
2nd Tier "Smarter" Monsters
5. Once you actually managed to kill of a room, using weapons or the environments, would you like to see the enemies become smarter? What if they are in Limbo, and they actually remember you slashed a chain so a chandelier landed on them just an hour ago? Would they try to do this to you? Or would they become stronger and stand against this, if the trap was always at the right place? Maybe you enjoy making them suffer, and the traps and environmental damage was to be based upon your weapon damage?
Enemies become smarter after kill them on a particular room? That would be really hard to code right now, and i don't think i would like that at all.
Thanks for the nice questions =)
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Enkeria
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Post by Enkeria on Dec 8, 2017 10:17:34 GMT -6
m0nkf15h / Pure Miriam
Sure it's late. However - if its on its way, they might know we would enjoy some of the features. And in any other case, if fans speak up about it, it is possible it will end up in future Bloodstained projects. Even so, some of these ideas are flexible, and could be added through patches if they want. I doubt that will happen, there is enough work to be made at this point. And it is nice to talk about things while waiting on the game too.
Traps are a thing we have in many if not all Castlevania games for example. If there is no traps in Bloodstained, it is no issue since its a new IP. I like to kill enemies more than dodge traps, but it would be kinda cool to kill off some enemies with traps.
I remember cracking some pillars just to reveal a bridge or a ramp of some kind to get pass. I miss that feel going back to the same room again. Destroying stuff in games is pretty fun. I don't know really why.
Random generated might be a riddle, but background being randomized is a nice feature to speed up both the process of game development, and give us a new backdrop every time. I just wonder if this could apply also on the forground. If a corridor would say, have prison cells behind them. Wouldn't it be more fun to exchange lanters on the roof with lanterns on the floor with other colors and light-radius? It would set the mood. Also, if traps were to be generated, would it be a fun way to explore each room in every game?
Again, a late idea. But worth speculating since Bloodstained future might be brighter than ever shortly!
Enemies that ignore traps. I guess the only way for enemies in Castlevania games to die off by, is through falling off-screen. It is very rare one enemy kills of another in games in general, with their attacks. I believe Bloodstained will be like you say Pure Miriam, they will just fall if anything, or just pass through the dangerous paths and areas without issue.
Respawn where they were killed.. That would be the Red Skeletons, they re-animated in front of you. I just wonder if there would be a tomb, that "spew" out ghosts for example, which is in the background or forground for that matter. Allowing you (or not) to destroy it. I remember thorn weeds in SotN multiply if you weren't quick enough to kill them. Things like that are interesting, and its a different kind of "spawn" of an enemy, not only to "go off screen" to see them resurrect or spread.
Thank you both for your thoughts, awesome!
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Post by purifyweirdshard on Dec 8, 2017 12:13:29 GMT -6
Traps are pretty common in the older Castlevania games, a bit less so in Iga's. In Rondo, sometimes traps/falls or how the treachery of a level is designed leads you to a new area - that's something I'd like to see done again. A classic example of that are rolling boulders - after initially navigating and surviving the trap, once you're now used to its rhythm and can possibly sustain some of its damage, you might become curious to see how/where the boulders originate and if at their end point a wall was broken/new path is made.
Or, say you're in what is essentially a trap room with more than one way out. Early game, you may not have access to (or think to use) a certain more obscure solution, but in doing so you open up a new area. If they could somehow use the 2.5/3Dness of the surroundings to do things like this, even better. I think that this kind of stuff might be partly what he was excited about doing with the new medium.
Procedural generation of the rooms just means for the initial design process. What we'll be getting in the game is the static result of that. At least, unless I'm missing something...
1: Damage to enemies? Sure, dropping chandeliers on them is an old idea. Spikes are not common in Igavania and I can't imagine them used much in Bloodstained, but friendly fire vs the environment can be good. It's also really great with bosses (the OoE crab).
2: But, yes, the design of the castle should be more treacherous to us than to them. The design of it will need every edge it can get to circumvent the myriad powers and mobility Miriam will have.
3: Eh, there are no death gaps in Iga games and no fall damage to anything either, so those enemies aren't truly falling to their deaths anyway or even really gone. Often, it can actually work against you - they will fall off to a lower platform in front of you beyond your sight that you need to get to. That makes them accidentally "smarter" than less intelligent. That's more likely to happen anyway since falling off a ledge behind you means that somehow they're approaching from that direction (the left) or you didn't already kill them, which is rare.
4: Agreed with Pure Miriam on this one. They themselves are more of a trap/environmental hazard than anything, but using ideas like that can make things really neat.
5: This sounds like something the enemies should have at baseline in Nightmare. Their placement could be similar, but as you're attempting to use the same methods as in Normal to dispatch them, the enemy throws a curve ball and dodges out of the way of your previous tried and true methods. Having them adapt and change behavior within the same playthrough sounds interesting, but also technically difficult and potentially frustrating to all of us. What if you had managed to figure out a genius exploit of an obscure weakness of an enemy, unique to where it's at perhaps, and then it doesn't work the next time? Could be pretty disappointing. You can't show your friends/Youtube your neat strategy either haha.
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Post by Pure Miriam on Dec 8, 2017 16:42:03 GMT -6
About enemies vanishing when they left the screen, dying by themselves and such, i just remembered that, at one of the videos from E3 2017 Demo, the player, testing Bone Thrower, i think (Shard from Morte Bone), ended up throwing a bone that flew almost offscreen and hit a Dullahammer head that died offscreen and it's shard showed up and the player got it. It was...interesting.
About spikes, they are normally used at specific areas, so, they do exist in games, but are really not very common.
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Post by allooutrick on Dec 11, 2017 15:37:53 GMT -6
1) if we have attacks that knock back enemies then it would be a welcome addition if they took additional damage from colliding with a wall. I'm not so sure about a full fledged means of combat using the environment. (Trapt, BulletStorm, etc)
2) I'm in favor of traps so long as they don't rearm. To me it's tedious to have to navigate around them every time I enter a room or however often they rearm. The rolling boulders corridors from earlier igavanias were among my least favorite rooms.
3) I'm indifferent towards this. It's hilarious to see an enemy go to it's death but it's also a nice touch when they're intelligent about ledges and gaps.
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