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Insomniac
02-01-2009, 09:54 AM
Presenting Ninja BeatZ

Mark and myself have recently been working together on some game dev related things and not that long ago we had been talking about tackling some smaller projects to gain more exp before going onto a big project. The NAG comp was brought up and I tossed out the idea of some kind of rhythm action game, next thing Mark gave birth to the concept for Ninja BeatZ. We didn't start that long ago and with Christmas and computers crashing has left us very little time so all we have is a small simple demo which we hope you will enjoy and show our vision.


Here's Mark's concept for the game:

The game we are submitting is not the full version of what we have envisioned for Ninja BeatZ. Due to time restraints, we knew we would not be able to finish the game completely for the competition. So what we have planned is just a demo of how the battle will work.

The combat is a rhythm game first, and a fighting game second. The game requires you to push certain buttons according to the rhythm of the beat going. As the beat goes, the characters fight on the screen. The punches and kicks connect on the beats as they happen. Missing the beats, or hitting the wrong buttons, will result in your character either going on the defensive or taking damage.

It is crucial, however, to watch the combat as well as the rhythm, as there will be parts where you can push one of multiple buttons on a certain beat, and depending on the button you push, the fight will go a certain way. Different buttons could cause you to either deal a lot of damage, take damage, or even just back away. Watching the fight and choosing the best attacks at the right time will help you in combat.

The game we are submitting only includes one short fight to a basic beat. It shows enough to see what the combat will feel like. Please offer comments only on the demo. We know the demo is short and we know that that could count against us in the competition, but we would still like to hear what you think about our game so far.

We have planned the following for our game, if we were to carry on working on it:

The beat to change according to how the fight is going. Half beats could come in... complicated beats. “Happy” beats could come in if you were doing well, and more “sad” beats or “scary” beats if you were about to die.
A special attack that could be activated at certain points in each fight. Pushing the flurry button could bring out a fast beat with many buttons to push. Hitting each button on time would be very hard, but could offer great reward for pulling it off.
Many branches off of fights so that each fight could be played out in multiple different ways.
A basic plat-former and a story that the player would play between fights. When the player approached an enemy the fight would start.
In the platforming section, platforms would go according to rhythm on the stage.
A single difficulty. This difficulty would start of easy, and as the game went on, fights would become very hard. The final bosses would be on a difficulty similar to what you could expect to find on some of the expert songs in the Guitar Hero series.


Here's a screenshot:
http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/9473/ninjabeatzscreen2rg3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Ready for downloading: link (http://www.quickshare.co.za/files/8iyfrt1e/NinjaBeatZDemo.zip.html) (1.5MB)

We look forward to your feedback.

Darth
02-01-2009, 10:45 AM
Hi.. I'm Mark....

In our demo, you cannot die. As Insomniac mentioned, we were rather short on time and didn't manage to as much as we wanted. Just think you playing the new PoP... dying is so last gen anyway :P

But back to business... We have not had the time to get in losing animations. Missing your beats will cause you to have to try that line again. We did get in multiple endings though. Depending on what direction you push at the end, you could do one of four different endings.

We will have the game up a little later, We are almost complete :P

Kensei
02-01-2009, 03:27 PM
Looks awesome, I can't wait to try it out :D

Insomniac
02-01-2009, 07:15 PM
Downloadble version has been added to the first post, enjoy.
Also a big thanks to SkinkLizzard for helping me with the head-bangingly frustrating bug squishing today :)

Dwayno
02-01-2009, 08:32 PM
This game is an excellent idea its just fun i like it.
:)
I noticed that there are snares where kicks should be everytime a button is pressed a snare is played or is that the way it was intended to be ?

Insomniac
02-01-2009, 09:03 PM
This game is an excellent idea its just fun i like it.
:)
I noticed that there are snares where kicks should be everytime a button is pressed a snare is played or is that the way it was intended to be ?
Thanks :)

It's meant to be that a snare is played when the right button is pressed so if you are successful then it provides feedback and adds to the music otherwise if you miss there's still the hi-hat sound keeping the beat.

Darth
02-01-2009, 10:20 PM
Thanks :)

It's meant to be that a snare is played when the right button is pressed so if you are successful then it provides feedback and adds to the music otherwise if you miss there's still the hi-hat sound keeping the beat.

Its also designed so that contact happens with the characters on every button.

For example, as you push a right arrow, the snare sounds, and the character hits the enemy towards the right. So contact happens as you play it. You'll also see, the two times you push up, the character is punching or kicking the enemy up into the air on those beats, down has the character either doing a low kick or slaming the enemy down.


For a bonus.. also see how, when a characters foot touches the ground (or his hand for that matter), it stays there until he lifts up his foot, and it doesn't slide.

Dwayno
02-01-2009, 10:48 PM
Its also designed so that contact happens with the characters on every button.

For example, as you push a right arrow, the snare sounds, and the character hits the enemy towards the right. So contact happens as you play it. You'll also see, the two times you push up, the character is punching or kicking the enemy up into the air on those beats, down has the character either doing a low kick or slaming the enemy down.


For a bonus.. also see how, when a characters foot touches the ground (or his hand for that matter), it stays there until he lifts up his foot, and it doesn't slide.

ive noticed that even at the end when you can press any direction depending of which you press determines the finishing move , another thing is that the character just moves even if i dont press anything he just fights with or without the snare sound.

Darth
02-01-2009, 11:24 PM
ive noticed that even at the end when you can press any direction depending of which you press determines the finishing move , another thing is that the character just moves even if i dont press anything he just fights with or without the snare sound.

I wanted to make it that if you didn't press the button right, your attack would miss or be blocked, and then you would go on the defensive. Once you were on the defensive, if you missed that button you would take damage, but if you got it right you would block and go back on the attack.

But once again, we didn't have the time to do so.

dislekcia
02-01-2009, 11:58 PM
I wanted to make it that if you didn't press the button right, your attack would miss or be blocked, and then you would go on the defensive. Once you were on the defensive, if you missed that button you would take damage, but if you got it right you would block and go back on the attack.

But once again, we didn't have the time to do so.

That's a really cool idea, especially for a fighting game on phones... There was a sort of "competitive" DDR clone that did something similar, except players would push sequences of buttons that other players would match a few beats later.

Kensei
03-01-2009, 12:15 AM
I had a very quick play through, didn't get very far :p

The concept is there, but the play mechanism seems a bit...er... clunky; bear in mind this is coming from a [spoilt] Guitar Hero fanatic :p (I have played it on the Xbox, DS and yes, even the iPod :D )

It seems when I get to the left, left, Up arrow combo I keep missing the first beat so I have to repeat the previous line again (the Up down one) - this might be an issue later if you expand on this concept.
I would imagine a beat based game is hard to execute in practice, but some fine tuning might be needed... if only I could think of exactly how to make this concept better :|

I'll give it some thought and get back to you... but I LOVE the concept :D

liquid.silver
03-01-2009, 01:37 AM
I wonder if you could make it into something like the following: basically just a normal platform fighter, but a sequence of times to use/avoid special techniques rolls down the screen. You can try and beat the boss another way, but will almost certainly die as you'll never land a super technique and you'll always get hit by his. If you manage to block at specific times (shown on the scrolling 'list') to avoid really strong attacks and use your really strong attacks at specific times (also on the 'list') when the enemy is open, you could beat the enemy quite easily. In between the special moves, you have to fight normally and maintain a correct distance to the enemy to be able to use your super techniques at the right time, but not too close so as to be able to avoid his super techniques. Not sure if this would work on a cell phone, but i think the general concept is sound. You could also have special moves that make an opening in the near future, depending on the current situation...

This should create quite novel gameplay for a platform fighter as opposed to the normal button smashing that frequently occurs. Would be interested to see if it works.

Nandrew
03-01-2009, 12:22 PM
I like the concept, though admittedly I was a little confused by the presence of two bars at first. One suggestion for a future version would be to have a clear "CURRENT" and "NEXT" set of labels to help people figure out what's going on.

I like the concept quite a bit though, it would be interesting to see this expanded.