I'm curious what you think the design objectives of this project are and how Unity will meet them. Please explain in detail.

You mean... My posts have bimbofication powers?? MIRACLES DO HAPPEN!

No but seriously, if that was not what you meant, that would be why I started with "Ok, I'm confused" because the way I read your post gave the implication that that was what you meant, and it sounded way too illogical to make sense. It is an invitation for you to say "No, that's not what I meant, this is what I meant..." if I had it wrong.

*dies*

Hey let's not crap on peoples engine choice. Everyone's got to start somewhere. Some of those simple engines can be a great way to learn the basics. I would encourage people to branch out and try something a bit more advanced though. Monogame or Unity would be my recomendations. C++ and directx/openGL if you really want to jump in the deep end

Personally, I highly recommend learning the basics by doing tiny and trivial mods for existing games on real engines than going whole-hog upon something chintzy; that way, everything you ever learn is more immediately applicable to "real" things. But to each their own.

Greasyi, that is completely unwarranted. I've already been over this with Takyon and it was probably unwarranted when they did it too. Regardless of Stencyl's reputation, it is still more effective for game design than wishing at a screen, so unless you are offering to personally code the game in another engine, it is entirely unproductive to insult me when I am simply trying to help.


@EdgeOfTheMoon: I considered learning Unity, but I heard they pulled support for exporting into Flash (and at the time, flash seemed like the best distribution method for free games, since people can be leery of downloading random .exe files). Of course, Flash seems to have been on a decline in popularity lately, so it might be worth considering again.

Edit: Greasyi posted while I was still typing, so i didn't see their latest post. On the topic of mod vs starting from scratch, I prefer starting from scratch. If you learn the basics and build up from there, you will have a stable foundation of knowledge. If you just tweek existing programs, you can end up missing things.

I don't think anything too ambitious is really being proposed here in terms of actual game design: action-platformer with player character transformations. With or without the "lose health to transform" modifier i suggested, it's not likely to die due to idea overload, unless folks get too lost in proposing specific transformations.

Actually, what i would do is design the transformations *last*, because you can either pick them and get hamstrung in level design ("we need a part that's a good catgirl section in this stage"), or design the game and say "a flying transformation would really bust this level wide open," and then merely tweak the levels and bosses to fit. This allows free choice in level/enemy design and heightens the chances that the transformations will be truly intuitive, because they were designed to fit the challenges and not the other way around.

@Changer the flash export was always a bit iffy IME. But if you want to do browser stuff the Unity web player works great and is pretty widely supported and Unity 5 is going to support exporting to WebGL

Changer, if someone briefly interjects that they don't like a suggestion in a discussion of possible options, it's immensely warranted, and also "just trying to help". I also don't see how that could ever be considered a personal insult to anyone, ever, unless you're trying to say that you work for Stencyl LLC and I've slighted the engine you've worked so hard on. Take a chill pill.

Well greasyi. What is your stake in this project? And how do you think Unity can help?

I do not need to have programmed the engine to be annoyed at being dismissed out of hand over my choice of engine. Here's the thing. You did not say "I prefer another engine", or provide any reasons behind your opinion. You just gave an offhanded dismissal of the engine, which Takyon had already done on the first page.

It's not only unnecessary, and rude, but it was also redundant. Besides which, given that I am pretty sure you have NOT spent a couple years working with Stencyl, I'm probably a liiiittle more qualified than you are to say what does or does not fall within the capabilities of the engine. And an action platformer falls into the difficulty level of "Could probably pull one off within the time limit of a Ludem Dare" for Stencyl. It's not like we are talking about trying to make a AAA title on a major console here.

*Whistles innocently*

Anyway I don't have much of an opinion on coding a game as I know nothing about game engines. But alternatively, a VN type of game might also be pretty interesting if someone was willing to write a story.

Okay ideas!

Vampire boss a Castlevania style level.

A beach level with a siren as the boss.

An Alien parasite boss with kinda Metroid style level.

A Lab level with a Scientist as the boss.

Each boss would have their own mind controlled minions each themed to them. Like the alien parasite would have girls with parasites on their heads and the scientist would have girls with some clear sign of a mind control device on them.

Maybe A stage hypnotist boss and their minions are all doing silly stuff you'd expect from stage hypnosis like chicken stuff and so on as an optional boss.

They're all just fighting to be the most dominant mind controller for no real reason.

Final Boss is a Puppet Master who helps you the most and give you the tutorials and goals so it seems like they've been controlling you the whole time too. Kinda like Atlas/Fontaine from Bioshock.

They have a boss rush section because after you defeat them all the final boss turns out to be controlling all of them.

Still not got transformation ideas down yet....

I was thinking that she doesn't physically attack enemies but uses some sort of hypnosis to subdue them or maybe break whatever mind control they have and they just kinda walk off or something.

If we're going with a Shantae sort of parallel, it would be an ideal transformation for Hypno-tan to turn into a Succubus, who can fly, and has the best seduction powers (Which makes fighting enemies easy). Of course, such a transformation would be *later* in the game where most of the gameplay is already said and done.

Other transformations could include a Naga transformation, which is more of the close combat fighter (Seducer?), reaching for enemies with her tail and breaking them down, also useful for entering smaller, more compact areas.

A belly dancer (Or some kind of dancer/musician) would be a consideration, being able to seduce enemies from afar, possibly controlling their movement, as well as being able to interact with music/dancer based objects and puzzles.

As for the game itself, I can and probably will help with programming, or just do it as a lead in GameMaker Studio, as that's what I'm most familiar with, and as long as you can animate it or give me an idea to make, I can do it. I *am* in the middle of another project, so either I would have to deviate time for this one, or wait until the first one is complete until I start on this one.

This may be jumping the gun as far as things go, but with A, D you have left and right. W ought to be jump... but could S be a context sensitive action, based on the state of the character? So an animal state could do more traditional platforming, like crouch and super-duper jump. Your default character would swing a watch at enemies... E and Q switch states.

Another control mechanic would be W, S, A, D as movement. Q, E as state switches. Num-keys to specific states would be decent but limits you to about five states; which isn't a terrible thing the way the world spins. Then you have either space bar or F be your action keys.

A final idea for controls would be to use A, D as left right, W as your context sensitive one, S as your switch... but that is so minimal as to be somewhat painful to think of.