On Cosmic Tides - Yar har, fiddle dee dee! [WIP]

[RockstarRaccoon]

Especially with Doom engine stuff, because the mapping process is so simple...

[TerminusEst13]

What. Did you make that? I thought ya said mapping wasn't your forte!

It turns out when you make a dedicated effort to try mapping every single week, eventually after enough bad maps you actually do get better and gain the ability to make maps that are significantly better than previous history.

Absolutely correct on both counts.
I'm still quite bad at mapping, but I'm forcing myself to stab at the maker every week, and I can slowly feel the rust breaking off and ability starting to form.

Still going to be a while before I can make something that I'm satisfied with, but one step at a time.

[TerminusEst13]

Wow, what a great crate. A straight-up great crate created by my mate, Mor'ladim.
My great-great grandfather used to have a crate. A great crate, I saw at late when I was eight. That great crate wasn't as great as this great crate, though.

[Captain J]

Great. More Crates to Break!

[Wivicer]

Was... was that a Nightshade reference? If not, disregard me.

[TerminusEst13]

Nightshade was a good game.

[Wivicer]

Congratulations! You've just won the "jef and paul award for excellence in shopping centers"!

[TerminusEst13]

Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

(Translator’s note: “Jii” means “stare”)

[Captain J]

Gogogogogogo-(it means gogogogo)

[TerminusEst13]

Oops I missed last week’s Screenshot Saturday because I’m an imbecile.

Guess what classic megawad I’m ripping off and win a free nothing!

[Captain J]

At least you feel strongth weeling in your body now-

[TerminusEst13]

Let's talk gameplay for a little bit.

One of the big things I've been fiddling with in terms of game balance/design is the weapon system, the dual-wielding between the Hull Buster and the other weapons.
One of the big inspirations for gameplay in On Cosmic Tides is manic shmups, with a lot of their gameplay relying on an infinite ammo shooter and limited bombs. Balancing this with a traditional FPS system where weapons use ammo is kind of difficult. Why use the weapon with limited ammo when you can use the weapon with infinite ammo?

In case of the classic of infinite-ammo pistols, it's easy. Pistols are dinky weapons. For a rapid-fire weapon like the Hull Buster, it's a little bit more complicated. With a rapid-fire weapon, what's to keep the player from just hanging at a distance and cheese enemies with no test? You can lower the damage to make the difference between the ammo weapons and unlimited weapon obvious, but if you lower the damage of the infinite-ammo weapon too much then there's no reason to use it over the ammo weapons.

These guys are an attempt to circumvent that.
One game I rather like is Marathon, and it had a very interesting sort of damage system. There were a lot of enemies that were cybernetic, and they were immune to things like the flamethrower because of their armor--but there was another weapon that did a lot of damage to them, the Fusion Pistol. When you came across a group of cybernetic and non-cybernetic enemies, you had to juggle constantly between the Fusion Pistol and the normal weapons. It was interesting!

This is a bit of a take on that.
Throughout your adventures across planets, you'll find a variety of mid-tier and high-tier enemies that are shielded--they're obvious in that they have a bright field of energy surrounding them, separating them from normal enemies. Your normal weapons will not do much against these shields, for obvious reasons, but the Hull Buster is capable of piercing through the shields to hit at them underneath. With enough of a pounding, the Hull Buster will break the shield, rendering them vulnerable to your other weapons.
With this set-up, the gameplay will be about constantly swapping between your Hull Buster and your other weapon, taking out shields and then cleaning up the remains with your weapons, constantly changing the pace of attack while dodging incoming fire.

Initial testing is incredibly bare-bones, but fun so far. This also sets up some interesting opportunities with other enemies. What if there are enemies that can give shields to other enemies? Or what if there were areas that were shielded off?
We're still in alpha, so we'll have to see how it turns out.

[RockstarRaccoon]

Interesting. With Metroid Doom, I've been looking at making various enemies have different damage for different weapons. I've found that with Possum zombies, I like making it all equal, until you realize that they get back up if you leave a body, so that means the Power and Wave beam don't cut it, but the imps are resistant to the Plasma Beam and Missiles, so you're left with having to consider the Ice Beam, which isn't necessarily a good option mist of the time because it's so unwieldy...

I like stuff like this in my shooters, it makes tactical thinking a serious component in shootouts...

[Astraxis]

Initial testing is incredibly bare-bones, but fun so far. This also sets up some interesting opportunities with other enemies. What if there are enemies that can give shields to other enemies? Or what if there were areas that were shielded off?
We're still in alpha, so we'll have to see how it turns out.

I love the idea, I'm curious to see how it works in practice. Killing Floor 2 has a similar system where various weapons having various effects on enemies: medic weapons can corrode enemies and cause them to stumble away from you, SWAT flashbangs disable enemies for a short time, explosives daze enemies, fire slows down enemies and spreads on contact, etc etc. I'm personally not a fan of regenerating armor on enemies, pisses me off more often than it provides a challenge; kind of an arbitrary way to bolster the enemy. Keep up the awesome work, the attention to detail is phenomenal and I'm excited to see what else you come up with!

[TerminusEst13]

Thanks, mates, I appreciate it.



This is a bit of a retrospective for me, here. I’ve shown off a couple of these sprites and items before, but never all at once. And it’s really, really nice to see everything assembled together in one place.

I'm no artist. This isn't just self-deprecation or taking the piss, I'm really not. But even with my complete lack of ability, I still managed to bring together public domain photos, stock photography, and errant pixels together bit by bit in order to make an entire host of items.

It's really motivating to see just how hard I've pushed against this inability to turn it into something. If anything, I guess I'm stubborn! What's that, brain, I can't draw? Fuck you, I'll do ALL THIS SHIT MYSELF!
Well, okay, not all. BatteryBlack did the sword, Mike12 did the cannon, and Mor'ladim did the HUD. And the textures are Freedoom.
BUT FUCK YOU, BRAIN!