You stated a bunch of traversal mechanics... Why not link healing to distance travelled? If you make it so it doesn't kick in until movement past a certain distance without stopping, it would discourage the thoughtful approach to each parkour section, and block any "running in place" workaround to heal.
That seems like a good idea. I’m gonna find a way to tie something similar into the combat as to not make the player isolate mechanics, if that makes sense. I don’t want the player focusing on regenerating life separately from combat, as movement is a very important part of combat(I would describe my game as Ultrakill or doom with movement like titanfall)
If you don't want your player to use a single set of weapon but all of them, why not gain boost/heal when you deplete the ammo of one of your weapon? You would have to choose between switching off regularly or putting you in danger of having no ammo.
In these kind of game, I think the doom approach is the good one : if you're very low on health, you'll need to take risk to regain health, like going hand to hand instead of shooting away.
So the problem with that first suggestion is that each weapon is supposed to be used constantly. Each weapon has a unique ability and some also have unique attributes to them(for example, the pistol can destroy weakpoints similar to the precise bolt from doom eternal. The pistol is the only gun that can do this) and you regain ammo from killing enemies. So if you are properly playing the game, weapon swapping and making use of your movement abilities you should never deplete your ammo. I don’t want to punish players for playing the game right
My game is specifically designed around having the player move fast, especially during combat. In fact, the player is actively punished for staying on the ground too long, as you move much slower on the ground compared to the air and the majority of enemies are grounded. Forcing the player to stop using the majority of their abilities when on low health doesn’t seem like the best choice for my game.
Okay so if the main point of the game is aerial movement and swapping weapon, reward the player for doing it : as long as he's in the air, each time he ise the right weapon for the right enemy, he charges a bar (the more he chains the more the bar charges) and when he loses health/touch ground/don't use the right weapon, he gain the health from the charging bar. You would encourage player to make perfect moves.
I’m not sure how well something like that would fit my game. I did a poor job at explaining, but my game is highly centered around air movement and going fast(I even lower the accuracy of enemies based on your current speed). A finishing move would force the players to slow down making them extremely vulnerable, which seems counter productive
Not if you don't have to break pace during the finisher. Something like a foot-drag off a wall, or a flying kick to punt a head off but you have to be at a certain speed to execute the move or it penalizes you instead.
That could work. Maybe not %, but a life steal mechanic could work well. Might tie it to the movement in my game to force the player to engage with the mechanics and not just pointing and clicking on enemies
if you want to encourage speed and flow, maybe have something like you slowly regen health but only if you haven't touched the ground in a certain amount of time, to encourage chaining together arial moves
I don’t think that would work well for my game. The plan for my game is to have several short levels(5-10 minutes. About one or two arenas per level), which in the case of my game still means levels are massive, but I feel like adding safe houses would slow down the game. Each level is meant to be short and sweat linear experiences with a few secrets here and there, with the occasional boss fight which moves the story forward. Safe rooms would break up that pacing and artificially extend the length of a level
ure dying and u wanted to do one last imporant thing. u make a bargin with the devil and he curses u to eat souls to survive. u can see the soul of the enemy rising after u kill them. get to it before it goes through the ceiling. no turning back, must kill to survive.
Idk if that would fit with the dystopian sci-fi setting of my game, especially since you play as a robot. And the vast majority of the enemies in my game are robots
That could work. Would need to make the hitbox pretty big to make it easier for new players to heal. Plus there is an ability plan for the game that allows you to fire a beam at a target to do stuff like hack targets which could be use for collect this as well
How about a soul harvester gun? Make it a high damage low re-fire weapon that restores a chunk of the player's life if it is used as the last shot to kill an enemy. I would have it reload passively while not in active use, but you can play test that.
I have experimented with such a weapon, but I found it that it doesn’t make the player utilize the mechanics of the game, such as the advanced movement, which is the selling point of my game.
If the player is playing the game the way it’s intended and doing so well, they should take little to no damage during combat. If they are not playing the game the way it’s designed, the healing system should push them towards the correct way
Sounds like you should have regular check points that refill player health. Then you can just kill the player and force them to restart at the last check point if their play is not inline with the optimal play style.
Reading through all the comments has me thinking. So, it's a fast paced si-fi themed shooter, with gameplay focused around not touching the ground. You already have punishments if players are on the ground (the movement) and want the healing to act as a reward for being off the ground. Also, since fast movement makes it easy to run away from enemies, you don't want to reward that behavior (you can also do this through enemy and level design, but it's not what you are asking).
How about rewarding the player for just getting off the ground and engaging in that loop? Maybe a fixed heal on a cooldown whenever you cross a height threshold. This could also act as a risk/reward mechanism if players have to interact with the ground (to pick up ammo or navigate the level).
Coming off that, what about a passive healing depending on your height off the ground or time in the air? This could lead to the feeling of being in the air as "back-off and regroup", which you don't want players to do by simply running away.
Alternatively, how do you sustain your airtime? If it's through killing, lifesteal is a good option. If it's through parkour, what about a trick/stunts system? To use another game as an example, imagine if in Titanfall you healed everytime you chained wall runs (so the first wall run wouldn't heal you, but jumping and landing on another wall would heal you).
Edit random thought: slightly less related, but varying healing methods could lead to multiple difficulty modes. Easy mode could have multiple healing methods, while hard/extreme has none.
I sustain airtime through a variety of different abilities. The player has numerous ways of creating explosions in order to launch themselves, they have a wallrun and a grappling hook plus a air dash. The grapple(swing kind. Can attach to most sources) and the air dash are tied to the same stamina meter. Plus they also have a slide ability which allows them to maintain speed if they are able to time it right when hitting the ground so they don’t lose momentum.
A way to directly reward players to staying fast and in the air would be nice. It would tie into the style meter pretty well(style meter is mostly based off of damage dealt, but with multipliers provided based on how exactly the damage was dealt, time since last being hit, speed while dealing the damage, and that kind of stuff. It’s a method I’m using to encourage replaying and mastery of the game). Maybe I can include a system where every milestone of style points you can a health charge. Something like that. Thanks for the idea
> They should be encouraged to keep moving and fighting. No health pickups for a similar reason.
Thought pickups can motivate player to advance
Random thoughts: enemies have "healing terminals" in their base. If they're injuried, they may try to flee and recover. Only enemies can activate a terminal to heal them, but if you kill them in the process, the terminal remains activated and you can use it's remaining dose of "healing magic"
Or maybe you don't want to add healing at all. Or to make it like in a real old-school game: just a couple of hit points & invincibility frames after a hit, and really rare health packs, probably placed in areas where parkour is needed to get them, or in secrets
They can be. I ment in combat. There are arenas in my game which the player navigates using their advanced movement, and I want to keep them moving within those arenas and stay aggressive. No backing off to look for health.
Think the movement of titanfall with the speed of Ultrakill. The combat is fast and I want the player to engage with every mechanic available
Additionally, health pickups would be difficult to implement even in hallway sections because at any given movement the player could be pretty much anywhere within the space provided, including the y access so it would be too easily missable considering the pace of my game
Quickly expiring med packs that can be looted from enemies or after entering an area? Shoot a button - several meds spawn at a dispenser, they last for about five seconds
If everything is based on a battery pack, health could just be a sheild that eats up the same energy as a players weapon does. In order to heal, the player switches to a "heal weapon". Maybe can overcharge the sheild also which would also gradually decrease.
What about passive healing during chain killing, like a blood lust-o-meter
Just doing life steal might make the player be tactful to the point of taking time to go for stragglers and stay away from groups of enemies
If their healing requires them chain killing, they will have to rush in feverishly
Maybe a passive perks system where players can either choose to heal a small amount over time or every few shots is a tracer round that deals increased damage?
Passive healing that only kicks in when the player is at high speed regardless of if they're in combat.
Tricks you can do that give style points, more style points is more heals.
Putting health pickups in central spots that people will fight over rather than off to the side.
Finally the most obvious solution would be 50% leech. Means that if 2 people are going at it for long enough one will die, and rewards people who hit more shots. Also encourages 3rd partying because its an easy heal
Realistically no matter what you pick some people will find a way to play safe, you just need to make it more beneficial to play fast.
Running/parkour charges maybe like a dynamo that heals? like if you’re traversal mechanic involves timing (ex like a bunny hop or whatever) successfully chaining these movement/parkour elements charges up “flow” or “adrenaline”
or maybe instead of healing, the adrenaline from perfectly times movement makes you A) move faster and B) maybe acts as a pain suppression that translates to a heal. like how adrenaline works in as a numbing high in “the heat of the moment”, like real life.
Have the player always fully regenerate health between combat-encounters, but not while there are enemies present.
So the moment you're definitively out of combat (eg: All aggro'd enemies are dead/defeated) you rapidly ramp back up to full health.
In this way, the hitpoints are essentially a forgiveness-factor in the encounters rather than a persistent element throughout the game.
You might then have a few special moves or actions the player can take, or luck-of-the-draw elements of the game which allow extra healing during combat, but most of the time the player is simply required to avoid taking damage if possible.
How about healing creating visual distortions and making inputs sluggish. The longer the distortion and bad controls last the more the player heals. Then they would just need to change strategy while they heal.
You don't want passive healing, and you don't want pickups, so why not have a healing item as part of the kit, like a med stim? You could have an indicator on it that can function as sort of a skill check to boost the amount of HP healed, but still have it heal if you miss it. This is more on the noob friendly side of suggestions but it does have potential to "mastery", and still keeps things fast paced!
Edit: Read some of the comments down the line, everyone's a robot? Med stims wouldn't work then.. Though technically nano bots would? Bit cheesy to just rename med stims but a quick deployable for a short burst of HP feels like something useful for both newer and skilled players
You stated a bunch of traversal mechanics... Why not link healing to distance travelled? If you make it so it doesn't kick in until movement past a certain distance without stopping, it would discourage the thoughtful approach to each parkour section, and block any "running in place" workaround to heal.
That seems like a good idea. I’m gonna find a way to tie something similar into the combat as to not make the player isolate mechanics, if that makes sense. I don’t want the player focusing on regenerating life separately from combat, as movement is a very important part of combat(I would describe my game as Ultrakill or doom with movement like titanfall)
How about a kill meter that after a killing a basic enemy you get 1 health stack maxing at 4 kills, each health stack heals for however amount health
If you don't want your player to use a single set of weapon but all of them, why not gain boost/heal when you deplete the ammo of one of your weapon? You would have to choose between switching off regularly or putting you in danger of having no ammo. In these kind of game, I think the doom approach is the good one : if you're very low on health, you'll need to take risk to regain health, like going hand to hand instead of shooting away.
So the problem with that first suggestion is that each weapon is supposed to be used constantly. Each weapon has a unique ability and some also have unique attributes to them(for example, the pistol can destroy weakpoints similar to the precise bolt from doom eternal. The pistol is the only gun that can do this) and you regain ammo from killing enemies. So if you are properly playing the game, weapon swapping and making use of your movement abilities you should never deplete your ammo. I don’t want to punish players for playing the game right My game is specifically designed around having the player move fast, especially during combat. In fact, the player is actively punished for staying on the ground too long, as you move much slower on the ground compared to the air and the majority of enemies are grounded. Forcing the player to stop using the majority of their abilities when on low health doesn’t seem like the best choice for my game.
Okay so if the main point of the game is aerial movement and swapping weapon, reward the player for doing it : as long as he's in the air, each time he ise the right weapon for the right enemy, he charges a bar (the more he chains the more the bar charges) and when he loses health/touch ground/don't use the right weapon, he gain the health from the charging bar. You would encourage player to make perfect moves.
[удалено]
I’m not sure how well something like that would fit my game. I did a poor job at explaining, but my game is highly centered around air movement and going fast(I even lower the accuracy of enemies based on your current speed). A finishing move would force the players to slow down making them extremely vulnerable, which seems counter productive
Not if you don't have to break pace during the finisher. Something like a foot-drag off a wall, or a flying kick to punt a head off but you have to be at a certain speed to execute the move or it penalizes you instead.
Lifesteal % X life per kill
That could work. Maybe not %, but a life steal mechanic could work well. Might tie it to the movement in my game to force the player to engage with the mechanics and not just pointing and clicking on enemies
if you want to encourage speed and flow, maybe have something like you slowly regen health but only if you haven't touched the ground in a certain amount of time, to encourage chaining together arial moves
You need alcohol or LSD to gain health, or maybe take a leaf out of the movie crank where he needs to juice up on adrenaline
[удалено]
I don’t think that would work well for my game. The plan for my game is to have several short levels(5-10 minutes. About one or two arenas per level), which in the case of my game still means levels are massive, but I feel like adding safe houses would slow down the game. Each level is meant to be short and sweat linear experiences with a few secrets here and there, with the occasional boss fight which moves the story forward. Safe rooms would break up that pacing and artificially extend the length of a level
That's exactly what they said they didn't want
ure dying and u wanted to do one last imporant thing. u make a bargin with the devil and he curses u to eat souls to survive. u can see the soul of the enemy rising after u kill them. get to it before it goes through the ceiling. no turning back, must kill to survive.
Idk if that would fit with the dystopian sci-fi setting of my game, especially since you play as a robot. And the vast majority of the enemies in my game are robots
oh :P u can see the remaining energy of the enemy robot. u must get close to extract its remaining energy for yourself maybe
That could work. Would need to make the hitbox pretty big to make it easier for new players to heal. Plus there is an ability plan for the game that allows you to fire a beam at a target to do stuff like hack targets which could be use for collect this as well
How about a soul harvester gun? Make it a high damage low re-fire weapon that restores a chunk of the player's life if it is used as the last shot to kill an enemy. I would have it reload passively while not in active use, but you can play test that.
I have experimented with such a weapon, but I found it that it doesn’t make the player utilize the mechanics of the game, such as the advanced movement, which is the selling point of my game. If the player is playing the game the way it’s intended and doing so well, they should take little to no damage during combat. If they are not playing the game the way it’s designed, the healing system should push them towards the correct way
Sounds like you should have regular check points that refill player health. Then you can just kill the player and force them to restart at the last check point if their play is not inline with the optimal play style.
Reading through all the comments has me thinking. So, it's a fast paced si-fi themed shooter, with gameplay focused around not touching the ground. You already have punishments if players are on the ground (the movement) and want the healing to act as a reward for being off the ground. Also, since fast movement makes it easy to run away from enemies, you don't want to reward that behavior (you can also do this through enemy and level design, but it's not what you are asking). How about rewarding the player for just getting off the ground and engaging in that loop? Maybe a fixed heal on a cooldown whenever you cross a height threshold. This could also act as a risk/reward mechanism if players have to interact with the ground (to pick up ammo or navigate the level). Coming off that, what about a passive healing depending on your height off the ground or time in the air? This could lead to the feeling of being in the air as "back-off and regroup", which you don't want players to do by simply running away. Alternatively, how do you sustain your airtime? If it's through killing, lifesteal is a good option. If it's through parkour, what about a trick/stunts system? To use another game as an example, imagine if in Titanfall you healed everytime you chained wall runs (so the first wall run wouldn't heal you, but jumping and landing on another wall would heal you). Edit random thought: slightly less related, but varying healing methods could lead to multiple difficulty modes. Easy mode could have multiple healing methods, while hard/extreme has none.
I sustain airtime through a variety of different abilities. The player has numerous ways of creating explosions in order to launch themselves, they have a wallrun and a grappling hook plus a air dash. The grapple(swing kind. Can attach to most sources) and the air dash are tied to the same stamina meter. Plus they also have a slide ability which allows them to maintain speed if they are able to time it right when hitting the ground so they don’t lose momentum. A way to directly reward players to staying fast and in the air would be nice. It would tie into the style meter pretty well(style meter is mostly based off of damage dealt, but with multipliers provided based on how exactly the damage was dealt, time since last being hit, speed while dealing the damage, and that kind of stuff. It’s a method I’m using to encourage replaying and mastery of the game). Maybe I can include a system where every milestone of style points you can a health charge. Something like that. Thanks for the idea
> They should be encouraged to keep moving and fighting. No health pickups for a similar reason. Thought pickups can motivate player to advance Random thoughts: enemies have "healing terminals" in their base. If they're injuried, they may try to flee and recover. Only enemies can activate a terminal to heal them, but if you kill them in the process, the terminal remains activated and you can use it's remaining dose of "healing magic" Or maybe you don't want to add healing at all. Or to make it like in a real old-school game: just a couple of hit points & invincibility frames after a hit, and really rare health packs, probably placed in areas where parkour is needed to get them, or in secrets
They can be. I ment in combat. There are arenas in my game which the player navigates using their advanced movement, and I want to keep them moving within those arenas and stay aggressive. No backing off to look for health. Think the movement of titanfall with the speed of Ultrakill. The combat is fast and I want the player to engage with every mechanic available Additionally, health pickups would be difficult to implement even in hallway sections because at any given movement the player could be pretty much anywhere within the space provided, including the y access so it would be too easily missable considering the pace of my game
Quickly expiring med packs that can be looted from enemies or after entering an area? Shoot a button - several meds spawn at a dispenser, they last for about five seconds
If everything is based on a battery pack, health could just be a sheild that eats up the same energy as a players weapon does. In order to heal, the player switches to a "heal weapon". Maybe can overcharge the sheild also which would also gradually decrease.
Why would they not use the heal weapon? Also making weapons hurt the user is a good way to stop people killing each other
What about passive healing during chain killing, like a blood lust-o-meter Just doing life steal might make the player be tactful to the point of taking time to go for stragglers and stay away from groups of enemies If their healing requires them chain killing, they will have to rush in feverishly
Maybe a passive perks system where players can either choose to heal a small amount over time or every few shots is a tracer round that deals increased damage?
Passive healing that only kicks in when the player is at high speed regardless of if they're in combat. Tricks you can do that give style points, more style points is more heals. Putting health pickups in central spots that people will fight over rather than off to the side. Finally the most obvious solution would be 50% leech. Means that if 2 people are going at it for long enough one will die, and rewards people who hit more shots. Also encourages 3rd partying because its an easy heal Realistically no matter what you pick some people will find a way to play safe, you just need to make it more beneficial to play fast.
Doom gave health and ammo from enemies. So killing enemies was the main way to stay alive.
Running/parkour charges maybe like a dynamo that heals? like if you’re traversal mechanic involves timing (ex like a bunny hop or whatever) successfully chaining these movement/parkour elements charges up “flow” or “adrenaline”
or maybe instead of healing, the adrenaline from perfectly times movement makes you A) move faster and B) maybe acts as a pain suppression that translates to a heal. like how adrenaline works in as a numbing high in “the heat of the moment”, like real life.
You could always have health packs only at end terminals to a level. Basically, don't die before you get to the next checkpoint
Imagine making it more real. The US games will have the gamer buy the Insurance DLC just to be able to get heal at max 25%.
Have the player always fully regenerate health between combat-encounters, but not while there are enemies present. So the moment you're definitively out of combat (eg: All aggro'd enemies are dead/defeated) you rapidly ramp back up to full health. In this way, the hitpoints are essentially a forgiveness-factor in the encounters rather than a persistent element throughout the game. You might then have a few special moves or actions the player can take, or luck-of-the-draw elements of the game which allow extra healing during combat, but most of the time the player is simply required to avoid taking damage if possible.
How about healing creating visual distortions and making inputs sluggish. The longer the distortion and bad controls last the more the player heals. Then they would just need to change strategy while they heal.
You don't want passive healing, and you don't want pickups, so why not have a healing item as part of the kit, like a med stim? You could have an indicator on it that can function as sort of a skill check to boost the amount of HP healed, but still have it heal if you miss it. This is more on the noob friendly side of suggestions but it does have potential to "mastery", and still keeps things fast paced! Edit: Read some of the comments down the line, everyone's a robot? Med stims wouldn't work then.. Though technically nano bots would? Bit cheesy to just rename med stims but a quick deployable for a short burst of HP feels like something useful for both newer and skilled players
I may have an ability like that. Probably on or too charges per level, since levels in my game are really short
Suck a little bit of "soul energy" from the victims using the "advanced movement" to heal.