Developing Game ideas
While i was looking outside the other night i came up with an idea, based around a ball moving system and a joystick to shoot.
The basic premise of the game is, you are a ship exploring planets using a trackball, making the movement a bit difficult, as it is unconventional to use a tracking ball to move, unless the game is designed like that. i could make and endless plane shooter, where you need to destroy the alien planets that shoot at you, using a joystick for 8 way shooting and the trackball, with the trackballs movement being erratic i could name the game something wacky to fit the strange movement.
Looking at other spaceship shooter games, most use a joystick to move with 1 way looking and a button to shoot.
Gradius is a 2D side scrolling plane shooter that would have a similar aesthetic to my game, being in outer space shooting all sorts of projectiles, with a good design for the spaceship and the enemies you shoot.
1942 is a game set in the year 1942, set in the heart of world war 2 this game has you flying a plane top down style shooting other planes in a bullet hell/ shooter style. i like the look of the top down thin aspect ratio as it would show up on a classic arcade machine. a good idea i just had was to make my game look retro with old screen blur effects and retro pixel styled assets.
It would be pretty simple to make a hardware prototype and a quick software prototype for the top down plane movement, with a simple set of assets until i make the pixel planes and aliens and all of the art. i can use a simple trackball mouse, the college probably has one, and a specialised joystick, for the testing stage i can use a controller joystick until i get a proper one
there are a lot of different types of joysticks that could be used, i like the style of a flight simulator joysticks, with various triggers that could be used for various abilities like a rocket or speed boost, with cooldowns so they aren't spam Mable, i will need to playtest a bit to get the cooldowns just right, i could also look at other games cooldowns to see what a good starting point could be,
some basic prototyping would be really helpful for this project, letting me tinker around with the settings and gameplay before i commit and get to make some art for the game.
