#tytans

So.  Movement.  Yea, movement.  Tytans had a WASD-based movement style from which I initially tried to deviate.  Upon further thought and some play-testing of the point-and-click movement system I implemented in Tytans II, I realized this deviation was a bad idea.

Tytans was fast, difficult, and simple.  The player faced the mouse, moved toward it with W, strafed left and right with A and D, and reversed with S.  This movement style was difficult to learn, and even more difficult to master.  It did, however, allow for a massive amount of control and maneuverability that was necessary in fighting the game’s bosses. 

The movement style I chose at first in Tytans II wasn’t nearly as smooth and versatile.  On the contrary, it was slow, awkward, and made combat follow and kind of stop-and-start, stuttery kind of flow.  I was reluctant to change it, though, because I felt doing so would mean sacrificing the larger active ability pool available to the player.

Tytans only had two (technically three if you count basic fire).  A non-damaging support ability and a damaging weapon alt-fire were the only tools at a player’s disposal.  The player did have a pool of three weapons (each with a basic and alt fire) to switch between, but actually switching between weapons mid fight didn’t make much sense to the player.  Finding one weapon that worked well and sticking to it made much more sense than frantically swapping between weapons.  Also the energy system discouraged spamming alt-fires.  That’s a whole different problem, though.

So I wanted Tytans II to have larger diversity in combat; and I reasoned that in order to do that, I had to remove some of the player’s flexibility when it came to movement.  After I gave the whole problem more thought, I realized that a nice compromise could be made.

With one hand on WASD (on a normal keyboard), there are two keys I immediately settle on as well: Space and Left Shift.  Realistically, I can also quickly access Q, E, V, F, R, G, and T.  With these keys, I would have more than enough to fit the roster of 6-7 abilities I planned the player to have.  Upon devoting even more thought to the problem, though, I realized that managing a roster of abilities that large, in addition to a more complex and harder to manage movement style, would quickly become unmanageable for any normal person playing the game.  So I cut down the roster to only 4 abilities (in addition to the basic fire, which will be on left mouse like any normal game).  By default, these abilities will be mapped to Space, L Shift, E, and Q.

Obviously, further play-testing will show if this is all manageable, but I’m fairly certain that I’ve arrived at a working solution.

TLDR; sacrificed good movement style from Tytans for more abilities in Tytans II, found good middle ground that allows me to keep aforementioned movement style.

If you read through all of the above: Thanks for reading!