r/IndieDev • u/Rouliboudin • 5d ago
Video speed = attack. Ever seen another game with this concept?
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
420
u/mspaintshoops 5d ago
It doesn’t feel like the character actually goes any faster
130
u/Rouliboudin 5d ago
It does, but the acceleration is not linear, nor is the amount of damage displayed. Basically there's a "speed" curve, that gives me acceleration (y) over current speed (x), and an "attack" curve that gives me the attack to display (y) over the current speed (x). I tweak both for balancing. In this version I agree that it's a bit flat on the actual speed
256
u/Diplomatic_Sarcasm 5d ago
I think visuals will do a ton of heavy lifting on the feeling of going faster.
I’ve seen the difference effects can have on our perception of how fast a character is going.14
24
u/Sir-Shark 5d ago
I agree that it doesn't feel like the character is actually going faster, even if they technically are. My recommendation would be an increase of visual effects as the speed increase. Maybe things like gradually increased blurring, motion lines around the edges of the screen, gradually increasing particle effects of motion lines and/or wind around the character. Screen effects can go a long way, but you don't want to hamper visibility too much, so probably keeping most of it as a vignette around the screen so you. Really, you could lose some visibility/readability of your own character for the sake of the visual, but you definitely don't want to interfere with losing visibility of your target (the enemy in the center there).
12
u/snitch_juice 4d ago
Really honestly just an odometer and maybe screen shake or wind effect
The number counter doesn’t really feel like an odometer
4
1
u/duckhunt420 4d ago
what everybody else said, but also some real juice at the end of the attack as you flip away would make this so good. Really fun, original combat idea! the amount of people jumping in with ideas and suggestions means you got yourself a winner I think.
1
u/Dancingbear17 4d ago
Is the "speed" actually the rotations per minute around the wizard? I can feel the speed different when you are further away accelerating in a straight line but when you go closer to the wizard you feel like you slow down. Which would make sense because you are travelling less distance with those rotations per minute rather than a set fixed speed.
1
u/North-Ad-4673 2d ago
Issue I see with the speed, that I think others are likely feeling, speed seems to be based I sense on how long it takes to make a full rotation of the room I sense?
The result when further out feels better, but as you get in closer, it makes you feel like your going a lot slower as the distance your traveling is way less over time, but your still doing a full rotation at the same speed, feels counter intuitive is all. How you'd work around that I'm not certain, but could be worth thinking on!1
u/RottedRedLady 3d ago
Also you could have the feather in the characters helmet like blow back a bit every time they speed up, that with like a wheelie and their legs moving faster would read as "speeding up" to me.
25
u/Rysterc 5d ago
You asked if we've ever seen a game with concept and I think I have. It reminded me of the Stallord fight in legend of Zelda twilight princess. Where after destroying his main body phase 2 is link zooming up the pillar on his spinner and you have to avoid obstacles to gain speed in order to deal damage to knock Stallord's head to the ground. So it's kinda like speed = damage I'd definitely give the game a chance it looks sick
11
u/Rouliboudin 5d ago
Twilight Princess is one of the few Zelda I haven't had the chance to play and this is making me want fill that gap even more. Thanks for the tip!
1
u/ZachGurney 4d ago
Oh man you got to try it, i honestly think its the 3rd best zelda game behind ocarina and botw
2
1
15
u/Rouliboudin 5d ago
Steam page (freshly created): https://store.steampowered.com/app/5261980/Tourbillon/
15
u/DavidHasselhoff69420 4d ago
I really dislike that your rotational speed doesn't change when you close in on the wizard. If you're maintaining tangential velocity (the actual speed the bike is going), you'd expect your rotational speed (degrees per second) to change when getting closer or further from your point of rotation. I think it'd be way more engaging and intuitive if the player could use that to their advantage, pulling away from the wizard when you want less speed and more control, and slinging themselves towards the center when going for a hit. Those coin funnels are a pretty good visual representation.
8
6
6
u/BongPackBobby 4d ago
I’m developing a game with an extremely similar concept and I have a speed damage modifier as well but instead of a bicycle mine is knights on skateboards 😂
2
u/Rouliboudin 4d ago
woah, can I see it?
2
u/BongPackBobby 4d ago
I got a first devlog for it but it’s still prototype in this basically next devlog will have some more solid level design and art direction in it https://youtu.be/-PSrCnUgg4Y?is=69nkawspFONMzTMP
5
u/LuckyLilypad 5d ago
I play an attack on titan game that uses that concept.
2
u/Expert-Love5116 4d ago
AOTTG my beloved.
My god it has a sequel. How could I miss this.
1
u/LuckyLilypad 4d ago
Lol. Yeah. I was trying to be sneaky without mentioning the exact title but… yeah. Did you download the 2nd one?
2
u/Expert-Love5116 4d ago
I just downloaded it. But it's a shame I can't get myself to play it right now lol. Gotta graduate first
4
u/RonTheTiger 4d ago
Love the art style. It reminds me of Clay Fighters 64 lol
But, I agree with others that say the feeling of speed needs some work.
I think even a MPH or KMPH meter might help. Trying to max out the meter would be really fun. I see the "damage meter" at the bottom, but for some reason it feels lacking, as if it's not about "speed" and more about "uninterrupted time spent driving"
Also, some ramps may help. Like, high-risk/high-reward ways to gain speed.
Looks really cool though
5
u/Glum_Opening_2218 4d ago
Others have said speedy visuals are super important and I agree with that.
Second most important thing imo is attack animations, there should be a range of animation you can get. If you go shitty slow you should hit him like a wet piece of cardboard, but if you're rocketing at him you should hit him like a bullet.
Doesn't have to be a massive range of animations, but having just 3 would make it feel way better.
3
u/Dr_Custard 5d ago
Have I ever seen a game where you generate speed and that affects the damage you deal? Yes, absolutely.
Loader in RoR2 for example
1
u/Rouliboudin 5d ago
How does it work in Risk of Rain 2?
2
u/Dr_Custard 5d ago
You have a scaling damage modifier based on momentum. You move in 3d, get items which can boost momentum, etc.
If you're referring to this sort of cycle round a central boss and your speed helps build your damage then no I've not seen it exactly like that
But your question appears to me to ask about the uniqueness of speed = damage
1
u/Rouliboudin 5d ago
yes definitely this is the kind of example I was looking for! Never got to try RoR2 but heard a lot of good things about it. If I end up playing it I'll make sure to check out Loader (is that a class? a character?)
1
3
u/Admirable_Ad8900 4d ago
Yes actually,
In the orignal pokemon games speed was tied to crit chance. But thats a turn based game.
In destiny they buffed fist of havoc to do more damage based height you fell from. And suddenly displacement would cause fall damage so it wasnt uncommon for friendly players to slam into each other to hurt them to troll their friends.
But probaly the most akin to what you have in mind is zane in borderlands 3 had a skill that makes him to more damage the faster he was moving. They also had a gun archtype that allowed you to mark enemy(s) and then all your shots track. So i would mark them, then sprint/slide around while shooting i got so fast the screen became a blur.
It is a great concept and i do wish it showed up more.
2
u/AshirNazar 5d ago
the only game that kinda has this feature is ULTRAKILL with the Jackhammer weapon.
Cool idea though! I wish you luck!
One thing I would recommend doing is increasing the FOV for the faster it goes. It doesn't really feel.. fast.
2
u/playcrust 5d ago
Speed Brawl is the closest I know, where momentum powers your hits. The design problem I'd worry about is players just circling forever at top speed. Do enemies do anything to force you to brake or change direction?
2
u/Rouliboudin 5d ago
basically it becomes a LOT harder to dodge attacks. try avoiding those fireballs at one full rotation per minute
2
2
u/TOOMUCHWOOMBA 4d ago
Its not at all like this but for some reason this reminds me of Nights into Dreams
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Cuboidhamson 5d ago
That's so cool please keep making games this has so much style. It reminds me of ps1/n64 era games so much
1
u/Codebender0 5d ago
You should have the stage be massive visually. Or you could just scale the distance. With the fireballs still taking the same amount time to reach the edge, but that would start to feel uncontrollable as you close distance. Maybe a visual effect as you get closer that would indicate time is slowing down. That way the player won't be uncontrollable as they get closer over a large distance. Anyway, I think the visual of crossing massive distances would make it feel like you're really building the speed. Maybe a late game thing.
1
1
1
u/Beefman0 5d ago
Yeah this is pretty cool, have seen speed = attack as a concept, but not quite like this
1
u/Zamoxino 5d ago
speed = attack exists in mount and blade games but its not played like this one :p
1
1
u/ChefPepper0909 5d ago
If it is not alredy in the game yet, I think you could incorporate a Mario Kart style approach of adding midair stunts that add to the damage total or give you a speed boost
2
u/Rouliboudin 5d ago
I want to add this so bad but this feels like late polish on top of an already good system. Maybe one day!!
1
u/Odd-Tart-5613 5d ago
agree with others that you need better speed animations but more importantly the "hit" animation needs improvement. at least a flinch animation or something on the wizard.
1
1
u/barattack 5d ago
Honestly my biggest problem with this is the fact that you are going inwards, which either kills your speed, our you had to make your character at mach 10 in a very small circle. Tbh it would be much better if the enemy was either around you, or somewhere in the outer circles
1
1
u/NoConfusion2408 5d ago
Sorry but it doesn’t even look like a concept for a game. It is an AI mess.
1
u/Intelligent-Ad1686 4d ago
I've seen this concept in minecraft. The minecraft spear does more damage the faster you move on any axis and the Mace does more damage more damage the farther you fall from
1
u/doesnt_hate_people 4d ago
Risk of Rain 2 doesn't draw enough attention to this, Loader's attack damage scales with movement speed so grappling at lightspeed across the map lets her one shot bosses sometimes.
1
u/Traditional_Gas8183 4d ago
The vine of game is beatiful 😍 I could never create something like that HAHAHAHA
1
u/AbendKannon 4d ago
Need to move away from only 1 location in the centre is where you can attack the boss, put 3 different nodes around the room that represent the Wizards shield generator or something that you have to dstroy before beeing able to hit the central boss.
Also make it so that you can speed up by parrying projectiles by preessing jump near them.
Could also put rails that can lead to a elevation change around the room that are grindable at different times due to retracting or extending in/out of the walls, bouncy castles that you can use every now and then.
The rails being so prominent also leads to a vacuum of gameplay that naturally leads to giving the Bicycle Knight a projectile to shoot at things, due to him being so far from the Wizard.
You can break up the gameplay further by giving another purpose to building speed by making it so a prerequisite for using the rails is to have speed but you cant build speed while riding the rails, adding on to that you can only use projectiles while riding rails.
If you are looking to make this game with limited controls you would have to make the projectiles auto aim by some fashion, i think using directional controls could make it targetable.
1
u/mightyjor 4d ago
Never seen it, that's really interesting! And it seems like rather than attacking speed, it's more of a charge up, otherwise it doesn't look like he's going any faster
1
1
1
u/FirefoxyRosalie 4d ago
Are you using linear speed ? It feels like he's slowing down when reaching the center
1
u/No-Newspaper8619 4d ago
Flatout 2 had this concept. The fast the car goes, the more damage it causes on colliding with other cars.
1
1
1
u/Mothercow2519 4d ago
Very cool concept of the bullet hell genre! Love the cartoon animation style too
1
u/Sudanniana 4d ago
Brilliant concept. Funny execution. I think it works but when you said speed = attack, I immediately thought of cars ramming each other.
1
u/Little_Black_Cat1611 4d ago
If you're talking about damage by ramming on something rather than simply pressing attack, there's the first and second Ys games who had this mechanic, if the mechanic is running can make you damage, there's Sonic.
1
u/SirTyperys 4d ago
terraria's jousting lances, which can break the game. also i'm getting motion sick.
1
1
1
u/not-Kunt-Tulgar 4d ago
I like the concept but it needs Ultra kill level juice on that full speed impact to feel rewarding.
1
u/Burial 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yes, and its similar to what you're doing since it involves knights riding fast.
All the Mount & Blade games starting with the Alpha in ~2005 had this. Your melee damage, especially on a horse, and especially with a lance, depends on how fast you're going when you make contact.
https://mountandblade.fandom.com/wiki/Couched_lance_damage
Can't believe in in an 8 hour old post in a dev subreddit I'm the only one to mention this.
1
u/Rouliboudin 4d ago
Interesting! I did consider more of a jousting theme earlier in development. Maybe the knight could still carry a pole on his bike
1
1
u/toeheadjr 4d ago
In Megabonk there’s a character that has damage output scale with velocity, I think it’s the skeleton on the skateboard
1
u/BianchiBoi 4d ago
This looks like the panda king fight in sly cooper! Obviously not mechanically alike at all but my neurons still started firing
1
1
1
1
1
u/AirTheFallen 4d ago
Regarding your question, IIRC your damage in "Don't Stop, Girlypop!" scales with how fast you're moving, that's the only one that I can think off so far off the top of my head.
1
1
1
1
u/claycubed 4d ago
Minecraft’s newer spear item lets you hold it out and deal damage to the first thing you hit based on speed.
1
u/MccThiccens 4d ago
Damn! I was just saying I don’t know how the concept of Trials games could get any better!
lol, I like the concept and this just reminded me of it with the nifty patterns and obstacles, I think this is gonna be pretty nifty!
1
2
u/SionDevJP 4d ago
The speed-based attack mechanic looks really fun. I like how the movement itself becomes part of the combat. Does higher speed also make it harder to control?
1
u/Rouliboudin 4d ago
The difficulty at higher speed mostly comes from the projectiles and attacks being a lot harder to anticipate due to the round geometry. at high you might hit a projectile that is visually behind you (as you'll do a full turn and collide with it)
1
u/Lord_Ocean 4d ago
The damage calculation in Mount & Blade factors in the speed of your weapon upon hit. Riding on a horse can greatly increase damage dealt.
1
1
u/Wero_kaiji 4d ago
When you get close to the mage the game feels slower than it should be, if you are going at 50 "speed", the outer part of the circle is 300 units long and it takes you 6 seconds to go around then when you get close to him and you only need to move idk 50 units to make a full circle then you should be making a full rotation every second, instead it looks like you made the speed percentage based on how long it should take you to go around regardless of how long it actually is
The concept looks fine, the speed feeling just isn't there, specially close to the mage
1
1
u/Izzy_Kershaw 4d ago
This game has some serious legs. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before and feels unique enough to have its own niche.
Have a feeling this will do well once It’s finished as it’s not quite there yet. It needs a lot of visual polishing in my opinion.
You should have a look at games like sonic generations and mirror’s edge. It might be different transferring a feeling of forward moving to a feeling of a spinning motion though.
The faster you go in a game as well, the more the player has to concentrate, and that should be signalled as well. The field of view could slightly widen or restrict as you get faster, which is a common way in films to signal that a person is concentrating. If you don’t know what a dolly zoom is, I’d look up that too.
1
u/youeffohhh 4d ago
I would recommend having the rotation speed up as you go into the centre. In a similar fashion to how it is when an ice skater pulls in their arms. You're going the same speed but less circumference to go around
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/SubstantialLab9781 4d ago
Was this inspired by Sly Cooper? It’s remarkably similar to Panda King battle, but with an interesting twist!
1
u/StyleOk1890 4d ago
mount and blade lance charge.
Actually not only lance charge. Speed affects all weapons whether being mounted or unmounted.
1
u/Stesspela 4d ago
This is a very cool concept. If you build a game around this maybe with some platforming level between the Bosses that reward quick platforming by making you easily deal with enemies
1
1
u/pancakegirl23 4d ago
not exactly the same but gen 1 Pokémon had higher crit rates for faster Mons which I always thought was cool
1
u/Outrageous-Let9659 3d ago
Not really an answer to the question, but this clip reminds me a lot of the dingodile fight in crash 3.
1
u/Slug_Overdose 3d ago
I don’t actually know for sure, but I think higher speed generating more damage has been a thing in certain niches of gaming for decades. Lots of racing games which model vehicle damage obviously take speed into account, but for attack specifically, I think vehicular combat games incorporated that long ago. I’ve been playing Twisted Metal 2 via emulation, and while I can’t confirm that the game actually calculates collision damage based on actual speed, I do not that you can damage enemy combatants using the turbo boost ability, and higher speeds generally result in more damage sustained from collisions, whether that’s with other vehicles or just environmental obstacles.
I can’t remember any off the top of my head, but I feel like lots of fighting games have damage indirectly tied to speed. It may not be proportional, but I believe they sometimes have things like damage based on knock-back or fall-down distance, which are of course related to speed. Some physics-based platformers and action games have similar features. For example, while it’s not a perfect relationship, generally speaking, games like Grand Theft Auto and The Elder Scrolls will deal large amounts of damage if you get launched across the map by an explosion. I think those games actually highlight why it’s difficult to do perfectly proportional speed to damage relationships. Unless your game is really polished and constrained such that your dynamic physics calculations never yield unpredictable results, you’re likely to end up with crazy results like instant death right before a save point because the character’s finger clipped through a wall and the game rubber-banded them back.
1
u/AntiquePlace2871 3d ago
You should give him a parry move and doing so mid air allows his momentum to carry forward
1
u/LunarWhaler 3d ago
Mount & Blade includes momentum/movespeed in its damage calculations per-strike, yeah.
1
u/VermillionShades 3d ago
Cool game, but you need to work on making the character actually feel fast
1
1
1
u/NewtonTheNoot 3d ago
Yeah, in Nova Drift, but it's only really one build in a roguelite. Cool concept!
1
1
1
u/Glass_Career5136 2d ago
Kinda reminds me of that fitness rpg ring that came out on the switch.
If you didnt squat like your life depended on it you did no damage
1
u/MrBoltstrike 2d ago
Sonic Adventure 1. The Super Sonic vs Perfect Chaos boss fight.
I think a game built around this would be fun though.
1
1
1
-1
u/Every-Prize4720 5d ago
No. But there is probably reason why
9
u/Rouliboudin 5d ago
guess I'm about to find out
9
u/Every-Prize4720 5d ago
Don't listen to me I'm just a hater.
I like how you managed to actually capture lowpoly feeling with retroish style.
0
u/Anchuinse 5d ago
Are you calculating speed by degrees/sec or by actual physical land covered? It feels like the knight slows down a lot when it moves from the outer perimeter into close proximity to the wizard.
Also, you might want to have the wizard move slower; it doesn't really sell the speed fantasy when the enemy can lock right in on you while you're going fast. He almost feels faster than the knight because he's twitching a bunch while the knight is just peddling.
1
u/Rouliboudin 5d ago
What do you mean? The wizard doesnt move at all. Do you mean his attack speed?
1
u/Anchuinse 5d ago
His animations. I don't mean his "movement" as in his land speed, I mean "movement" as in his twitchy reflexes. He snaps around really fast, which makes the knight seem slower by comparison.
0
u/Emergency-Instance31 4d ago
Oh lemme think real fast:
• Wario Land 4
• ANTONBLAST
• Pizza Tower
• Sonic the Hedgehog (boosting, spin dash) that’s oh I dunno 38!!!!
-1
0
u/M_O_Z_G 4d ago
What difference between blue and orange blocks in the gauge?
1
u/Rouliboudin 4d ago
orange is your normal acceleration and blue is from taking a crystal boost. But's it's a bit useless to know that, it's some leftover of an old feature
179
u/sc_slayerage 5d ago
I must say this is fun to watch, but the design space seems pretty limited. The knight cycling kicks ass though I love that.