FreeGameDev

• Cake seems very overpowered. The stun seems a bit excessive me, I think it should be removed. As of 0.7 it's possible to fire it backwards, I don't think that should be allowed with a weapon so accurate.
  
• Bowling ball, otoh, takes some skill to hit with, especially at a distance. I have a suggestion to make it more valuable: don't destroy it on collision with a kart, allow it to keep rolling. Maybe destroy it if it hits as many as 4 or 5 karts.
  
• A dummy box weapon that has the appearance of regular boxes but doesn't rotate (or is visually distinguishable in some other subtle way) would be a nice addition. It would have the same random negative effect as a banana peel.

claymore {l Wrote}:

• Cake seems very overpowered. The stun seems a bit excessive me, I think it should be removed. As of 0.7 it's possible to fire it backwards, I don't think that should be allowed with a weapon so accurate.

claymore {l Wrote}: Maybe destroy it if it hits as many as 4 or 5 karts.

claymore {l Wrote}:

A dummy box weapon that has the appearance of regular boxes but doesn't rotate (or is visually distinguishable in some other subtle way) would be a nice addition. It would have the same random negative effect as a banana peel.

ctdabomb {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:Cake seems very overpowered. The stun seems a bit excessive me, I think it should be removed. As of 0.7 it's possible to fire it backwards, I don't think that should be allowed with a weapon so accurate.

I think it is fine

Auria {l Wrote}:Indeed, a protective bubble is something we have thought about, we just haven't got to actually doing it

claymore {l Wrote}:How about a defensive bubble which blocks all attacks on your karts for a few seconds? When it blocks a shot successfully, it could ripple or something. Again, the player would be rewarded for successfully predicting an attack.

MCMic {l Wrote}:One thing that I liked in Mario Kart and is missing in STK, is the possibility to use almost each weapon in a offensive or defensive way.

We should be able to stop bowling ball with bubble gum, fire cake in other cakes, explode rubber ball with a cake fired backward at the right time, and so on.
I think that some of this is already possible (I remember shouting a bowling ball in an other one for instance, but you'd have to be really quick)

• I changed my opinion on cake a little. The amount of stun perhaps isn't so bad, but the spinning stars visual effect shouldn't start until the kart hits the ground.
  
• Zipper weapon should function more like track zippers (rather than providing only a small speed boost, immediately bring you up to a certain speed) to make it more valuable and differentiate it from nitro.
  
• Experiment with allowing bomb to be passed back directly to the kart that gave it. Otherwise, it's very difficult to pass it around.
  
• Parachute works strangely. It lowers the cap on your max speed (as it should), but it also prevents you from accelerating? This makes it more punishing to karts who have just come off the track, which I hardly think is desirable.
  
  Also, how is the length of time that parachute lasts determined? It doesn't last a uniform amount of time for all affected karts, indeed it seems to last longer on slow-moving karts.
  
• Certainly don't give 3 parachutes in one box with this behaviour.

• Dummy box: appears as non-rotating, or slowly rotating box; effect is same as banana peel.
  
• Rocket booster: attaches to the kart and forces moving at a very high speed. Probably given to low-placed karts only.
  
• Bubble: blocks weapons. Perhaps use bubble graphic from overworld, or have a shield of stars as ctdabomb suggested. Lasts ~3 seconds? Doesn't block rubber ball for kart in first place. Ripples on successfully deflecting an attack.
  
• Mirror: temporarily flips the track orientation horizontally for everyone. Switch left and right key mappings so pressing left still moves left.
  
• Smokescreen: a trail of smoke billows from your kart, impeding visibility.
  
• Ghost: become invisible (and so not targeted by cake), pass through other karts and obstacles. Skid marks, engine sounds are still present.
  
• Magnet: momentarily repel nearby karts.
  
• Torch: plunges track into (partial) darkness, with only your own kart equipped with a torch to light the way.
  
• Revealer: for some period of time, indicate weapons karts are holding as an image hovering above the kart (and on display at top left of screen).
  
• Copycat: when used it turns into the last weapon to hit a kart. For example, if the last message to appear was "x ate too much of y's cake", you will get cake.
  
• Snowball: freezes karts. Frozen karts have any animation paused, are surrounded by a giant ice cube, have rescue disabled, and continue sliding in the direction they were travelling.

claymore {l Wrote}:Also, how is the length of time that parachute lasts determined? It doesn't last a uniform amount of time for all affected karts, indeed it seems to last longer on slow-moving karts.

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

  <!-- friction is the friction increase when a parachute is attached.
        time is the time an attached parachute is active
        time-other is the time a parachute attached from other kart works
        done-fraction is the fraction of speed when lost will detach parachute -->
   <parachute friction="2.0" time="4.0" time-other="8.0" done-fraction="0.7"/>

claymore {l Wrote}:I had some more ideas, so I'll just post them before I try and implement some of them (will need sounds and graphics though). I have a working build now at least.

• I changed my opinion on cake a little. The amount of stun perhaps isn't so bad, but the spinning stars visual effect shouldn't start until the kart hits the ground.
  
• Zipper weapon should function more like track zippers (rather than providing only a small speed boost, immediately bring you up to a certain speed) to make it more valuable and differentiate it from nitro.
  
• Experiment with allowing bomb to be passed back directly to the kart that gave it. Otherwise, it's very difficult to pass it around.
  
• Parachute works strangely. It lowers the cap on your max speed (as it should), but it also prevents you from accelerating? This makes it more punishing to karts who have just come off the track, which I hardly think is desirable.
  
  Also, how is the length of time that parachute lasts determined? It doesn't last a uniform amount of time for all affected karts, indeed it seems to last longer on slow-moving karts.
  
• Certainly don't give 3 parachutes in one box with this behaviour.

claymore {l Wrote}:New weapons:

[*] Dummy box: appears as non-rotating, or slowly rotating box; effect is same as banana peel.

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Rocket booster: attaches to the kart and forces moving at a very high speed. Probably given to low-placed karts only.

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Bubble: blocks weapons. Perhaps use bubble graphic from overworld, or have a shield of stars as ctdabomb suggested. Lasts ~3 seconds? Doesn't block rubber ball for kart in first place. Ripples on successfully deflecting an attack.

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Mirror: temporarily flips the track orientation horizontally for everyone. Switch left and right key mappings so pressing left still moves left.

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Smokescreen: a trail of smoke billows from your kart, impeding visibility.

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Ghost: become invisible (and so not targeted by cake), pass through other karts and obstacles. Skid marks, engine sounds are still present.

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Magnet: momentarily repel nearby karts.

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Torch: plunges track into (partial) darkness, with only your own kart equipped with a torch to light the way.

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Revealer: for some period of time, indicate weapons karts are holding as an image hovering above the kart (and on display at top left of screen).

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Copycat: when used it turns into the last weapon to hit a kart. For example, if the last message to appear was "x ate too much of y's cake", you will get cake.

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Snowball: freezes karts. Frozen karts have any animation paused, are surrounded by a giant ice cube, have rescue disabled, and continue sliding in the direction they were travelling.

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Dummy box: appears as non-rotating, or slowly rotating box; effect is same as banana peel.

This could be interesting to try out. Main thing I have against it is that the learning curve would increase by quite a bit, and people would have to concentrate more and look further ahead to check for rotational boxes.

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Rocket booster: attaches to the kart and forces moving at a very high speed. Probably given to low-placed karts only.

I am not sure moving at high speeds is a good idea, unless there were some sort of auto-guidance. Also, this doesn't seem too different from zippers.

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Smokescreen: a trail of smoke billows from your kart, impeding visibility.

Sounds like backward plungers. I doubt we need another sight-blocking weapon.

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Magnet: momentarily repel nearby karts.

Or maybe use a shockwave instead, like in the game Blur. A bit simpler to understand exactly what it does, me thinks.

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Revealer: for some period of time, indicate weapons karts are holding as an image hovering above the kart (and on display at top left of screen).

3 Strikes Battle would be cool with this. Otherwise, I am not so sure if the info would be particularly useful in a normal race.

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Copycat: when used it turns into the last weapon to hit a kart. For example, if the last message to appear was "x ate too much of y's cake", you will get cake.

Would not work well with the minimal GUI, and frankly that would just be a bit too much to try keeping in mind. It would very easily become a distraction if people tried to read while driving, leading to bad driving and thus could do as much harm as good. Also, having too many special weapons will sharpen the learning curve.

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Snowball: freezes karts. Frozen karts have any animation paused, are surrounded by a giant ice cube, have rescue disabled, and continue sliding in the direction they were travelling.

Sounds cool, but frankly I think this would be better done with oil spills. Then we could replace the bubble gum with oil, and get a similar gameplay result to this snowball idea, with a little less graphical work to be done.

Arthur {l Wrote}:As you can see, I am quite wary of making the game more complicated, especially adding weapons that might make newcomers easily lose out or have trouble grasping the concepts. Additionally, I think we just can't have so many weapons or else the game would seem very chaotic. We'd need to remove some at least if we were to add more than a couple of those, and I think the ones we have already are pretty good. Maybe not the most imaginative ones, but they are easy to grasp and doesn't require too much skill to use.

claymore {l Wrote}:

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Dummy box: appears as non-rotating, or slowly rotating box; effect is same as banana peel.

This could be interesting to try out. Main thing I have against it is that the learning curve would increase by quite a bit, and people would have to concentrate more and look further ahead to check for rotational boxes.

I think this is a weapon that just needs to be tried to see how it works out. I'm not really sure how it would play.

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Rocket booster: attaches to the kart and forces moving at a very high speed. Probably given to low-placed karts only.

I am not sure moving at high speeds is a good idea, unless there were some sort of auto-guidance. Also, this doesn't seem too different from zippers.

The difficulty in guiding fast-moving karts is what I think counterbalances this weapon. It differs from zippers in that it provides a continuous boost, rather than a single instantaneous one.

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Magnet: momentarily repel nearby karts.

Or maybe use a shockwave instead, like in the game Blur. A bit simpler to understand exactly what it does, me thinks.

Yeah, you're right... shockwave is much better.

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Revealer: for some period of time, indicate weapons karts are holding as an image hovering above the kart (and on display at top left of screen).

3 Strikes Battle would be cool with this. Otherwise, I am not so sure if the info would be particularly useful in a normal race.

Me neither, I think it's another weapon that we would just need to try out to see exactly how useful it is. In any case, I'm not sure there's any harm in occasionally getting a less useful weapon from boxes.

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Copycat: when used it turns into the last weapon to hit a kart. For example, if the last message to appear was "x ate too much of y's cake", you will get cake.

Would not work well with the minimal GUI, and frankly that would just be a bit too much to try keeping in mind. It would very easily become a distraction if people tried to read while driving, leading to bad driving and thus could do as much harm as good. Also, having too many special weapons will sharpen the learning curve.

I think this points more to a problem with displaying these messages during the race and expecting people to actually have time to read them. An aural indication that a kart has been hit (and by what weapon) would be far more useful in this regard. But in the worst case, you could just hit the fire key at a random moment in time and get a pretty much random weapon.

Arthur {l Wrote}:

claymore {l Wrote}:[*] Snowball: freezes karts. Frozen karts have any animation paused, are surrounded by a giant ice cube, have rescue disabled, and continue sliding in the direction they were travelling.

Sounds cool, but frankly I think this would be better done with oil spills. Then we could replace the bubble gum with oil, and get a similar gameplay result to this snowball idea, with a little less graphical work to be done.

Not sure how I feel about this. I'm slightly attached to gum, but then there's a bit more strategy involved in placing oil spills so as to make slipping as dangerous as possible, like at corners or places where karts can go off the track. But I don't think the graphical work involved in Snowball would be too hefty.

• Perhaps explosions are overused? Maybe cake could splat, block a player's vision, and stop their cart for a moment, as would happen if someone threw a giant cake at you!
• Likewise, bowling balls should knock your kart over and push it, rather than blowing up. They should probably explode after a timeout.
• instead of time-bombs going off when you drive into a bannana skin, the timer should speed up
• gift boxes should add weapons to a stack - you keep your old/unused weapons but must use the new ones first

• anchors
• bubble-gummed wheels
• parachutes
• time-bombs
• a plungered face
• less time to pass-on your time-bomb

• throwable, slightly self-aiming, splating cake
• bowling ball, knocks over other karts, explodes after 5 seconds
• plunger, thrown backwards to impede vision, forwards to overtake.
• swatter, either flattens other karts, or bats weapons back at the nearest kart*
• oil, cars driving over it loose steering
• magic powers to turn bannanas into boxes etc

Binky {l Wrote}:H

• Perhaps explosions are overused? Maybe cake could splat, block a player's vision, and stop their cart for a moment, as would happen if someone threw a giant cake at you!
• Likewise, bowling balls should knock your kart over and push it, rather than blowing up. They should probably explode after a timeout.
• instead of time-bombs going off when you drive into a bannana skin, the timer should speed up
• gift boxes should add weapons to a stack - you keep your old/unused weapons but must use the new ones first