I am building Elephant Rave HD at the moment and I am at the point of building the beams that fall down the screen to the beat of the music. The issue is that there is only one beam per beat… each beam, even when scaled up to the new screen size, is not nearly enough to get in the way of killing the elephant as it did at the tiny size at 225w (versus 800w). So what is the proper solution?
Loading 3-4 beams at a time seems like the mathematical solution… the game is 3-4 times bigger; however it means that beams are creating mega-overlapping beams at times when that many are loaded. Even when told to not load on top of each other they create a bit of mega-beam… and then if told to sit even wider it just creates a gameplay environment that is unsatisfactory for beams per beat.
So… what now?
Currently contemplating the issue. Maybe you have some ideas.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Is using a faster song out of the question? I’m stumped.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Could you not just make a different algorithm for each beam to follow?
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:18 pm
This is the simplest answer but it wont make game play any more fun then the original. Bigger playing field= bigger elephant
November 4th, 2009 at 8:36 am
im thinking….im thinking…. im thinking….. im thinking…. u should come up with an idea urself !!!!!
November 4th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Granted, this probably won’t help, but I don’t know how you’re placing the beams (if it’s just at a random X-position).
If you’re gonna go 3-4 beams at a time, instead of randomly placing them, why not make an array of beams, each spaced an elephant-width away? Then, whenever you spawn new beams, you can check to see if there is at least one empty spot between it and the next beam. If nothing else, it would at least make operating on the beams a lot easier.
Just a blind suggestion, because I have no idea how you’re doing it already. I tried watching the original Elephant Rave to see how beams spawn, but it’s hard to watch and not die…
(OR…you could do eighth notes…)
November 4th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Why not just introduce new things to avoid more quickly, like in the original when the jumps started coming along the bottom. You could have things that bounce and stuff that comes along horizontally. You could even have moving platforms coming in. Anyhoo, point is you could introduce more things from different directions earlier than planned
November 4th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
How about making a bunch of beam movie clips at the top and use random to make random ones come down on beats.
November 4th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
my first thought was a faster song
November 4th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
I know! Try making the beams spaced out and a different width. Oh! What would be cool would be an elephant rave type movie! Your animations are great. What program do you use to do all the drawing and stuff for your movies and how do you get it?
November 4th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
I first thought of using a bigger elephant, then I thought maybe you should add a lot more features, and ramp it up kind of like Parachute. Then it gets too complicated, so finally, I decided that maybe having 2 elephants to control, one with each hand (wasd, mouse or arrows) would make things interesting.
November 4th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
The elephant is 2~3 beams wide, so tell the beams to spawn at random values, but a minimum of 20px (or whatever it scales up to) away from the previous beam.
November 6th, 2009 at 11:40 am
oh god !!!! intelectul stuff ! guys… do u mind thinking 4 me ?
November 7th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Subdivide! Have beams in between beats, perhaps orchestrated in a long continous cascade. Also beams could stay down for a moment rather than hitting and receding instantly, either as untouchable hazards or obstacles that just cage the elephant in.
Another idea is to create a predetermined pattern for the beams, like in those top down shooter games where enemies fly in formation. I think CoolioNiato does that for some of his music games.
But wait a minute. I thought the Elephant reached freedom in Run Elephant Run. Why is he still in peril?
November 10th, 2009 at 2:09 am
Becuase Elephant Rave (original) was created before Run Elephant Run, and this is just an upscale of the original game, with varying degrees of similarity to the first depending on how this problem is solved.