THFA Discussion

[SonicProject]

This is old material from a game that some of you may remember, most of you will not. This game was started all the way back to 2004, in its earliest form it was actually 2002.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040324092434/...me.net/thfa.htm

The web archive makes things easy for me, an old page from my old site will provide you with information about the game such as the story, controls and credits.

When you play this incomplete demo, I want you to keep track of all the design flaws that you can so that I may take note of them if I decide to revive the project. If at all possible maybe even reply with the length of a review. I would greatly appreciate it.

I have already noted some of my own.

• Graphics need work.
  
• Tails' plane needs to move faster.
  
• The level design is awful with enemy placement and such.
  
• That boss has a horrible design.
  
• Needs original backgrounds.
  

Also, should the plane have separate hit points or should I continue to deplete the gas tank for "health"?

THFADemo.rar

[Shadow Hog]

Well, personally, the concept's sound. But I do have some gripes with it:

1. Up and down are reversed. I don't care if you "stick [your] tongue at me" for a millenium, it's not going to excuse the fact that no side-scrolling shooter that I can think of reverses these controls. It's just not how it's done.
   
2. Acceleration via Shift key could be more smooth. As it is it's pretty jarring - you instantly gain momentum and instantly lose it? Aside from the unrealistic physics, in practice it feels far too abrupt.
   
3. I'd prefer a gun that shot out straight forward, immediately, instead of a gun that shot out from the bottom and had a bit of lag before it started to head forward. Maybe you can implement a generic vulcan gun as the main weapon and use the missiles as powerful attacks? This actually leads into my next gripe:
   
4. Limited ammunition. I wasn't even aware it was limited at first, and thus I fired without abandon at everything in sight - only to find out rather quickly that I could no longer fire, period, and had no choice but to ram into the enemies head-on. You shouldn't be left defenseless in a shooter. Ever. Even the earliest first-person shooters gave you a melee attack (or in the case of Quake 2, a weak ranged attack) should your ammo be depleted.
   

And that's my two cents.

[SonicProject]

Thank you for your helpful reply. Rep up.

1. Controls are reversed to simulate flight of a plane. I plan to do something better with it in the form of using the mouse as an option. Maybe even something as simple as allowing the player to customize whether the controls are reversed or not.

2. Thank you for stating this concern, I will keep it in mind.

3. I can understand where you're coming from and like the idea, I will likely use it.

4. You weren't left defenseless, there's missile capsules throughout the level. Maybe the vulcan gun can have infinite ammo? The missiles definitely will be limited.

[Shadow Hog]

@ 4: Yeah, that's what I meant. An unlimited weak gun, and a limited uber-powerful gun - that tends to be how it works in these games. (Except Radiant Silvergun, but that can be excused because it's freaking Radiant Silvergun.)

[SonicProject]

If it's not too ambitious do you think instead that some kind of shop which allows you to buy upgrades for your weapons as far as increasing the maximum ammo you can carry, would that work?