I played it some more trying to think of what could improve the game play ...
These are random thoughts discussing game play elements of other games and trying to draw some conclusions:
1. A 2D game almost by nature has to present simple navigation challenges. Wolf3d is about the only game to not do this (but also maybe the first even close to 3D game so it could get away with that?).
Doom 2 on some of the levels had sneaky little areas
requiring you to run and take a leap of faith and jump into an open area. Some bobbing platforms or such, some blind leaps of faith or cleverly place wind tunnels might be fun to do.
2. Paths. You might establish a multiple paths philosophy where the "high road" is always the most rewarding but the toughest to maintain physically and the low road is like the "sewers" and is easy to maintain but lots of monsters or rather unfun. And maybe you can fall from a higher "level" to the next lower tier if you blow it.
3. Pacing. Start a bit quiet maybe. With sparse monsters but a few trivial and unavoidable physical challenges. Like how the Quake start map makes you jump over lava if you want to do hard. Makes you go through water to go to E4. Makes you open a door to go to E2.
4. Stick with
box map style if you can if you goal is easy map construction from all your little set pieces. If any of the above you feel is useful and if you do decide to do somewhat linear gameplay, you could have a ramp appear every once in a while in your forward progression. The player would be presented the choice and get to understand that concept quick.
5.
Shield key? Everyone is familiar with
strafing to the left and right to avoid monster fireballs. However ...
consider the "let's not and say we did" idea of just having a shield button. Why? ---> On a simpler controls platform like an iPhone, you need 3 buttons for navigation (forward, left, right). You sure
don't want to have to add more for strafing, which is only used to dodge monster fireballs. And no you don't have to have a backwards key on a simpler controls platform (and it could be same button as shield, where a double tap is shield).
6.
Target lock. You *could* use QuakeC to make pressing the attack button establish a target lock on an opponent closest to middle of your view, draw a crosshair sprite in front of the enemy (animated?) and then the RELEASE of the key fires. This could simplify the playability. The awkwardness of aiming on an simpler controls platform.
7. Weapon levels. I haven't seen all the guns in Retroblazer. QuakeC can do seeking missiles (
homers, heh). For maximum fun ... add denator bombs (press once to drop, the next press explodes) ... better than proximity mines because the player gets the satisfaction of triggering the explosion, has the opportunity to "screw it up" (maybe a small horde of 20 are coming, and the player activates the explosion too soon and only kills 6) and you can really make finding them important for encountering hordes!
[Since you seem to have interest in stuff like iPhones, consider creative ways to use as
few keys as possible on a computer as a dry run of the minimal controls concept.
QuakeC can control the action of double taps ... Jukki did this for his PSP mod ... like maybe holding +attack and not releasing changes weapons and cycles through them slowly. Maybe a
double tap of the forward key jumps or fires! Or maybe a double tap of left changes weapon forward, double tap of right changes weapon backwards, double tap of back is shield, etc].
^^^ Thoughts and ideas. Good, bad, useless or in poor taste
