PouncingKitten Games

[mairsil]

Now that some of the details for OneZero have been released, I am interested in any comments or questions that some of you may have about the dual ship control.

Too gimmicky? Too difficult? Been done? What are your thoughts?

[ProgrammingAce]

I assume this is designed around a controller (joystick style design) as opposed to a keyboard?

The 360 controller would be perfect (Dual Shock would work as well, but it'd be a bit more dificult). I'm envisoning the sticks for movement (obviously), left + right triggers for firing, and the two shoulder buttons to cycle the weapons? Maybe click the two thumbsticks to join the ships, click again to break them apart?

If you're thinking about the keyboard, you're looking at using at least 12 keys. "WASD" for one ship, maybe "IJKL" for movement on the other. You can use ALT on either side w/ your thumbs to fire, and CTRL key's to cycle weapons...

One issue i see is if the two ships trade sides, it could throw the player's brain through a loop (left thumbstick is now controling the ship on the right side, etc). Maybe adding something like a divider down the middle of the screen so that if the left ship ends up on the right side, it starts taking damage/loosing energy or something. When the two ships join, they could fly anywhere. Just something that influences the player to keep each ship on the correct side of the screen for their own sake.

I definately think you should have the 'joining' process controlled by a button press from the player. I'm not sure what you're planning, but if the player is has to manually fly the two ships togethter, it could get dificult in the 'heat of battle'. As a bonus, if you set the 'join/break' function to the clicks on the thumbsticks, you could have the player choose which position they 'joined' at (for example, click the left stick and the right ship warps to the left ship's position). Otherwise you'll run the risk of merging the ships right in the middle of a bullet/enemy.

A game you might want to take a look at is Chaos Field...
Dunno, just throwing ideas out there... yell at me if i'm anoying...

[mairsil]