Hi Dark, Yes, good point. I know exactly what you mean. About the best example I can think of to relate to what you are talking about is Tomb Raider Prophecy. As you may or may not know Tomb Raider Prophecy was a side-scroller released in the late 1990's for the Nintendo Gameboy. While there were plenty of staircases to climb it also featured a series of ledges you need to jump over or jump up and grab. For instance, in level 2 when you enter the ancient mountain temple there are a number of ledges you need to get to. You need to run and jump onto ledges high above you, walk a ways, run and jump onto a higher ledge, and so on. There are also cases where you are standing on a high ledge and need to jump across a chasm to a ledge far below you. This is imho something I've strongly considered for MOTA. Although, I have elected to leave it out of the early levels as I'm not sure how easy or difficult it may be fore a blind gamer to play. It is certainly something I'm willing to try though. In fact, now the the updated Genesis Engine written in C++ is just about ready to use I could redraw level one with more ledges and things of that nature if you would like.
Cheers! On 3/17/10, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote: > Hi Tom. > > To be honest, while Tmnt (like turrican or metroid), was very advanced for > alternate routes, ---- it even featured different perspectives in levels, I > was thinking on a much smaller and less profound scale with my example. > > To put it another way, in all the audio side scrollers thus far, ---- > including Monti (and possibly mota), your character only can interact with > what is to their left and right. You cannot jump up to a ledge above you, or > fall down to one below, much less jump up a series of ledges to go through a > complex route. > > I know that both of your games employed stairs and ladders for vertical > movement which was certainly a step in the right direction, ---- but is stil > imho far less than what might be achieved in a side scroller in audio. > > In a game like Mario, you can jump to ledges above you or to one side, fall > down onto ledges below (often avoiding enemies on the way). > > Games like Mega man took this to an extreme, ---- for instance the dreaded > moving ledge section in guts man's stage where you had to time your drops > from one moving mine cart to the other, or elec man's stage where you had to > alternate betwene standard left to right movement, or jumping on > progressively higher ledges to scroll upwards. > > Metroid and turrican really took vertical movement to it's ultimate > progression, where making your way through the game required moving left to > right, or up or down, in any number of combinations. I remember for instance > one section in Turrican 1 which was shaped like a square. you walked across > the bottom, then jumped up some ledges at the side, then had to make your > way across some ledges at the top to the top left hand corner exactly above > where you entered, ---- however if you fell, you'd be on the bottom again. > > This was why Turrican was probably the game that really made me fall in love > with gaming (and weerd miner music chords), at the age of nine, the feeling > of totally unrestricted movement and exploration, even though the game > featured comparatively symple arcade style gameplay, with only a choice of > two or three basic shooting weapons (a third was added in Turrican 2), a > close range but multi directional surround shot weapon, and three special > limited use weapons. Actually, I think Mota already has more weapon choice > than Turrican did, however it was the huge explorable levels (and the award > winning music), that means there are stil a bunch of developers who use > their free time to produce turrican remakes and extra levels today, 20 years > after the game was first released. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
