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Project Started:	1st August, 2008	Last Update:	28th April, 2009
Project Owner:	frankodragon	Project Members:
Project Type:	Adventure-Shooting	Project Progress:

Power-Ups

Posted 4th Aug 08, by frankodragon

My last game didn't so well. For a few things, I slapped objects here and there, graphics weren't great and didn't have very manu power-ups. In Zarc's Bizarre Journey Home, I thought about what kinds of power-ups can a little dog with a wand could collect and use to help him-even if he's a bad doggy.

One is HP hearts. If you've been playing any type of adventure or RPG, you should know what these do-they restore health either a little or fully. At the start, that's all I had-something to stay alive. Then thinking about just having one lonely power-up is pretty boring-not fun at all. It's like fighting a 10,000 HP monster with a pea-shooter. So I cooked up several more power-ups for Zarc's wand.

One is simply a giant ball. Zarc is given ten (10) shots of this massive ball to defeat any enemy with one shot-except for boss and semi-boss enemies.

Another power-up is part automatic shooter-part shield. Small balls rapidly shoot out on all four sides of Zarc for twenty seconds.

The third is a 'Superball.' This is ball that randomly bounces off enemies and obstacles. Once one is shot, Zarc can use himself as a paddle to bounce off obstacles or enemies. Twenty Superballs are given whenever Zarc picks up the icon.

Posted by Farmer

4th August, 2008

Looks pretty nifty. The graphics could do with a *tiny* bit of polish to them, for instance the ground for the beach, but otherwise it looks really quite good!
-James

Posted by Zezard

5th August, 2008

You should experiment a little with how you can make more detailed graphics.

Grass, sand, gravel etc can oftenly be pretty well portrayed by just spraying colours that fits for the intended material, and making a chaos of differently coloured pixels. At a distance, it can look pretty good though, and it's easy to do. Just make sure that tiles fit together on the borders, you can copy half of the tile and flip it horizontally or vertically to achive this easier.

Just having balls as weapons is not very fun. Instead you could use the classic theme of elements, make one into fire balls, one into ice crystals and on inte lightning bolts or likewise. If you want them to be more doggish, pherhaps one can be a rotating bone, one could be rubber toys (the ones that make squeeky sounds) and one could be a fizbee or something.

If you plan to have tiled graphics, make sure that you have various corners and different angles of you tiles, to be able to make interesting and different looking environments.

Make sure to include powerups that has a constant effect, and not just the ones that you take and use directly. These items will have a pleasing effect on the player when found, and they can make the playtime longer too.

Don't forget to avoid making big areas, unless they have very varying graphics and lots of things that you can do and discover in them.

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