Re: [Super-tux-devel] Magic system

[Ingo R. <gr...@gm...>]

"Christopher A. Webber" <cr...@li...> writes:

> Ingo and I also had a huge clash over this idea... I thought that
> tux should have a magic meter that would be refilled by collecting
> coins, and used up by firing fireballs and such. To add a bit of
> strategy to the game, you know? Ingo absolutely hates this idea, but
> I think it is great. Perhaps I could squeeze it in as an option then

The problem with ammunition is that the time you collect it and the
time you use it, are too far apart from each other. So you either have
to be carefull about collecting all coins, which can easily get
borning in case you don't need them or will end up running into
situations where you need fireballs, but are in real throuble because
you havn't collect coins in the beginning. So ammunition basically
ends up frustrating the player most of the time, since the out come if
you have enough or not, depends largly on that you know before hand
what happens in a later part of the level.

The kind of ammunition that I do like however is 'short term ammo',
ie. you collect a fireflower, get three very powerfull balls to shoot
and once done with them, the power is gone, no way to 'refuel' it
other by collect another fireflower, which should be rare of course.
If one makes it impossible or at least very hard to keep the ammo, ie.
by using the run-button for shooting, so that the player no matter
what, will have used it up pretty quickly, one can make sure that the
fireflower would only be a short term bonus, not something that you
collect about large periods of time.

For example the fire and shooting abilites in Yoshi Island are done
this way, eat a fruit and you get shooting power, but only for a
handfull of shoots, problem while having such a fruit is that you are
unable to eat enemies. So you get one 'weapon' while you lose another
one, so one has to be carefull about what to eat in which situations.
Since all fruits are used up pretty quickly one doesn't need to care
about them much to keep them for later situations and such.

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