Round One.. Fight!

Phew, I haven't programmed anything this week... I just played. All the time... And not just anything, haha, no, I played Super Mario Galaxy! But now I finally finished the game, so I can get back to my code and see where I can improve and how to make a nice sidescroller engine which can be easily ported to an MMO. But even here are problems.

Galaxy Stations was first planned as a nice, fast, Metroid-Like MMO, and please don't tell me you wouldn't like that! Anyway, as I thought up the fight system, there were, as I said, several problems:

• We need a lag-free experience, so really fast combat is almost impossible
• Prevent spamming of shots and such
• To make it fun, make platforming a part of the fight system
• Every player should actively do something

So I thought up this system:

• Make larger loading times for weapons, with this modification it becomes a semi-realtime fight system
• Instead of freedom in shots, make different lock-on points on enemies, eventually each of these lock-on points has to be scanned (thus discovered) by the player first.
• Once locked-on, the character stays focused on the point he has locked on, until the object is out of range
• A character can hide behind stuff, to protect himself from enemy fire, and jump out when the time is right -> Freedom in movement

This is somewhat the basic fight system. Additional things include:

• Make different lock-on points handle fire differently
• If an enemy is not scanned, he has only one lock-on point in the middle
• Changing weapons and armor during a fight should be crucial (even though there should be a short waiting time before another weapon or armor can be put on)

Take all this with a grain of salt, as everything may change during development, but I have planned something in this direction