FIGHTING TITANS !!! EXTREME GAMEPLAY !!! SICK GRAPHICS !!! RADULAR CHARACTERS !!!

[Sketchasaurus]

I did some sketching (which I need to act on) and took some time to meditate on some of these questions and get my imagination going again. I like what I see on the 4Player HUD idea here, and the Skull/Heart idea is also really rad to me.

• first of all could you make victory and KO poses for each character ?

Yep, I'll get started on that right away.

EDIT: Here we go, I've gotten at least Tropicaur, Kamekannon, Hawkindle, and Rhinozar's Win/KO poses done:

• next could you tell me how you feel the game's menu should be so i can start working on it ?

I was thinking of the menu being like the interior of a gym, with "inspirational posters" as the options for game-modes. That's at least what I imagine the mode select screen to be like. As for pausing while in-battle, that screen would take place at the bench, much like in sports, where your team would be seated; Titans with lower health would have sweat drops coming off of their heads. I'd have to find out how to accomplish this with 4-Player mode (if this somehow had online capabilities, then each player would have their own view of their own bench and nobody else's)

EDIT:
Here's what I have for the mode select screen so far. as you scroll left/right, one of the pieces of gym equipment from the previous screen would remain on screen.

So if we were to move to the left, the bench press would be on the right side of the new poster.

• i programmed it in a way that the stage size is easily modifiable, why not have more varied stages ?
(maybe even some with slopes, or obstacles and shit)

I definitely agree that there should be variance in the stages with obstacles, different events like birds flying on-screen and dropping items, swarms attacking, maybe geysers, and all sorts of other fun things.

• do you want there to be a cooldown on special moves, or bullet attacks ?

Cooldown would definitely aid in balancing combat so that you can't stun-lock your opponent and win cheaply. I imagine that basic bullet attacks would be able to be somewhat rapid-fired, but I imagine that fighters would have a short period of time after hit where they're invulnerable and flickering, so they have a chance to get out of the way.

• you made it so there's a little cutscene at the beginning of the battle, and okay this is fine for 1P mode
now i haven't programmed that yet but how i am supposed to do for 2 player mode ?

I might come up with a different cutscene for 2P/4P battlemodes. If not, I imagine that each player would be focussed on at the beginning with their entrance to the stage, one at a time, but that would lengthen the intro cutscene, so I might instead have the camera focussed on the center of the screen and each player leaps into position from their respective corners. P1-top/left, P2-top/right, P3-bottom/left, P4-bottom/right.

• i changed the HUD a bit to show enemy HP, would you want that not to be seen when in story/campaign mode ?
On that note, i was thinking of making the game potentially 4 player, in which we'd have 4 life bars on the HUD, with only the time shown and no score
Also you made a big square for the element modifier, how about assist characters ? where do they go on the HUD ?

During story/campaign mode, I imagine that enemy health would be hidden, but it could also be revealed by calling upon an assist character (not yet sprited)

4-player play would indeed be interesting, though the camera may have issues tracking all 4 players at once.
Assist characters and element modifiers are shown in the same slot on the HUD, as calling an assist would replace one of the attack functions (non-melee)

• okay now here's a biggie : so i told you already the hearts you made aren't in multiples of 8x8 tiles but that's not much of a problem except heres the deal
i think it'd be nice for each titan to have its own specific stats so i kind of started to do that already,
like knael is really quick in movespeed but has only 4 hearts, whereas its the other way around for tropicaur, etc
i think in the end you could have this info when you select your character, like there are different categories of stats, each out of 5 stars
heres an example
TROPICAUR
Health : *****
Speed : *
Melee : ****
Bullet : **
Jump : * (this stat im not sure about, maybe you wouldnt want them all to be able to jump; but i think it makes for an interesting game mechanic)
so heres my question : wouldnt it be better to have life bars instead of hearts ?
that way the titans can vary in attack power without having that huge difference a half-heart makes (or even a quarter-heart for that matter)

Life bars would probably be better than a heart meter, especially because I think stats would definitely come into play. I would include "Charge" and "Range" into the stats mainly because of how I imagine the attacks system would work.


• could you tell me exactly how element modifiers work ?
i was thinking they could appropriately modify not only your bullet attacks, but also your special moves
and that there would be 5 elements, the advantages of which are spread like a pentagram (think rock/paper/scissors/lizard/spock)

One thing about elements that I'd been thinking about when beginning thoughts on Titans was that they wouldn't be a core concept in the design of the monsters, however, there are different gameplay mechanics that could be played with to make battles more varied with them. When I've thought of elemental power-ups, type advantage was something that I avoided, typically.

I think of the elements as more of equipment that changes/augments how a titan's inherent abilities work. It could also be a way to allow the player to set up traps around the arena, which could be a fun mechanic to explore further.

Some of these, I'm coming up with on the spot:
Fire: projectiles ignite the opponent, obstacles, or leave a trail of flames behind it temporarily.
Ice: freezes or slows the opponent, allowing a chance for more melee attacks. may also leave icy patches on the ground, causing titans to slip.
Water: pushes the opponent, does very little damage but is useful in pushing opponents into traps. also could create slippery surfaces.
Bomb: High amounts of damage. may be able to be used as landmine traps. can be immediately detonated by fire, and maybe extinguished by water.
Metal: higher defense, slower movement, attacks also deal more damage. projectiles are metallic and may also bounce off of walls and obstacles.
Spikes: all projectiles are spikes, physical attacks are "sharper" but have less knockback and less heavy damage. sets up spike traps.
Seed/Sprout: seeds and vines become your weapon. seeds become sprout traps when they hit the ground, but can be destroyed with fire, bombs, and ice; water makes them stronger/bigger.
Bones: your titan throws bones as a projectile. This modifier may also come with its own helper, which is triggered as a trap: Zombie/Skeleton. it's slow, but it follows the one who sprung the trap and latches on, slowing them down and doing small amounts of damage over time. this equipment may be quite rare.

• also if you could tell me how the various bullets behave ?
im pretty sure some of them spread, or are AoE explosions and if not there should be different behaviors
and which characters have which bullets on the spritesheet etc

I'm thinking about shared characteristics such as the way that a titan's projectile fuctions, which I've boiled down to "Spread" "Direct" and "Catapult" types. Though, I might add a fourth which would be called "Stream" due to its function as a flamethrower of sorts (but it could also be water or maybe an arc of lightning due to different elemental effects)

Spread: 3(or so) bullets that separate vertically as they travel horizontally. Hawkindle uses this bullet type by default and the smoke cloud is the primary effect.

Direct: 1 bullet that travels horizontally (until it hits or runs out of range, in which case it collides with the ground) This bullet type moves faster and has the most horizontal range, but has to be more accurately fired. Kamekannon and Knael use this by default. Kamekannon uses the rock sprite by default, Knael uses the Knife.

Catapult: Launches the projectile in an arc on the Z-axis, and drops on top of the target. this one may behave differently based on how long the button is held and depends more on timing. projectiles of this type have a larger radius of effect when they hit the ground, spawning at least 4 debris projectiles that deal damage. Tropicaur and Rhinozar use this by default. Tropicaur uses the Pineapple by default (if it's on that sheet), and Rhinozar also uses the rock.

Here's a (dated) example of the attack types.

• this one can wait, but how are the bosses' AI supposed to work, what are their attacks, how much health etc ?

I have a few ai sets in mind for at least the dragon boss, which will have different color palettes for the different attack pattern sets. I also want to come up with a few more bosses to add a bit more variety to the roster and gameplay. Likely, there will be at least 1 more super-huge boss like the gorilla.