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I though alot about how the game will play, mostly how the player will traverse the game easily with the controls they will need to use to play the game and the enemies he player needs to fight throughout the game.
My research into other beat-them-up games showed me how
I could aproach the player controls setup, the combat loop and rewarding the player for playing the game's missions.
Above is a video on the current progress of the combat system for my game.
So far I have successfuly made a few of the main player mechaincs for my game such as:
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The player can take damage until they die which will display a death screen and lets the player "respawn" again with full health.
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The punch mechanic which lets the player damages the enemy each time they press the punch key ("F"). When the punch key is pressed a small red collision box will spawn in front of the player, depending on which way they are facing. This box overlaps the enemy character then they will lose -1 health. If the enemy's health reaches 0 or below then they are destoryed from the game.
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The player can pick up coins and is saved each time the game saves.
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The save and load funcions are displayed at the bottom of the screen if they are successful: If the games saves = "Game Saved!", if save failed = "Saving Failed".
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Gampad input found is displayed on the screen as well in the same place as the saving textbox.
So far these mechincs are simple and not finished or will need me to work on the enemy sprite so I have a completely working beat-them-up game prototype.
I would like to expand on the enemy death mechanics as I could have the enemies drop coins when they are defeated. I could also have different types of enemies which could attack faster but may easier to defeat. Something i picked up when playing the scott pilgrim game and Halo, both games have different types of enemies which have a certain mechanic buff (more damage, attack faster, more deadly in numbers etc.) but have trade-offs so the player can think and plan on attacking that certain enemy.
I have worked out how to make AI find, chase and be die if they take too much damage.
The first thing i did was create the enemy sprite which was just a rectangle (64 x 200) and gave it six animations which later ic ould add sprites and its own set of mechanics which could add in the meantim. I needed to have to start off with was idle, walk and take damage animation which i had placeholders which would represent these three animations until i added the real ones.
I programmed the enemies to detect the distance which would detect an enemy, that enemy would be the player and have them move towards it. I took a page from an older game which had a top-down following AI system and i applied changed a few things to make it work better with my own game; that being a larger detect radius, faster walkspeed, being able to find the player's location so th AI can go and walk towards the player.
Once being able to make the enemy walk towards the player as long as the player is within the AI's sight, i allowed it to hit the player once every 1-2 seconds, this would later be replaced by a delay timer which would use random numbers between 1-3 to attck in the enemy is close enough to the player. The player' health bar is already working at this point and i was able to let my player get beaten up and ultimatly et defeated by the AI after a few punches.
With the AI being succesful in attacking and defeating my player i added a few new mechanics to my player which allowed them to fight back. For the enemy AI they spawn a rectangle block which would be the collision for the "fist" which if that recatangle makes contact to the player, the player would loose a bit of health each time they touched. I took this and made it work for the player for when they attack they could fight back and defeat the enemy.
As far as the player and enemy mechanics go as of now, the AI and player do the same mechaincs in terms of combat other than the player can stun the enemy Ai for a breif second which leaves a window open to land more punches. I have a few more ideas on how to improve on the combat but im not sure if i have enough time to add more and make my AI more smart than they currently are.
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