Jump to content

Photo

Making an underwater area


  • Please log in to reply
2 replies to this topic

#1 Castelia

Castelia

    Fred Durst stan

  • Members
  • Location:down under

Posted 19 October 2016 - 11:25 PM

So I was looking at DMap flags, and I noticed one called "Underwater Wave Effect". I realised this essentially means I can make an underwater bit, but when I started making one, I stopped. I didn't know what enemies to put there. This meant that (this is a bit of trivia for Link's Generic Quest) I had to scrap the whole idea, and I turned the entrance into a hint room.

Now, I'm absolutely hopeless at scripting, so I want to ask - how would you make an entirely vanilla underwater area? What kinds of enemies would you put? How would you make it interesting, and not just mountains with a path through them?



#2 kurt91

kurt91

    Follower of Destiny

  • Members
  • Real Name:Kurtis
  • Location:Eastern Washington University

Posted 20 October 2016 - 05:35 AM

1: Silently give Link an item that does nothing but act as a Link Tile Modifier to change his graphics slightly. Either visually give him the Mermaid Suit, or draw little transparent bubbles over him to make it look more like he's underwater.

 

2: Disable any of Link's equipment that wouldn't make sense underwater. That means taking away things like Roc's Feather, Candles, Magic Book (Partially because you're underwater. The book would get wet!), etc.

 

3: Duplicate some common enemies, so that you can swap graphics around. Depending on the tileset, you can come up with a ton of special underwater enemies. Even if they act the same, swapping the graphics as well as small changes to damage and movement speed will make them feel like unique enemies. (And no, I don't mean that your tileset will necessarily have underwater enemy graphics. I mean that you can look for new graphics to add that will match the originals. For instance, something Classic styled could use a color-reduced version of the Hydrocity Pirahna enemies from Sonic 3, since they don't have an outline.)

 

4: Decide on what kind of aquatic gimmick you want to use. Are you going to have an area that you drain and refill with water? Make it using two separate Maps, one drained and one underwater. When underwater, things like pits and floor spikes don't hurt you since you're swimming over them. (Make them separate Combos with the *None* type) When drained, you have full access to your equipment instead of the reduced gear you have while swimming. Want to make it more complex? Make a multi-floor flooded area, with pits positioned over each other. They act like Direct Warps that drop you multiple floors when drained, since the pits are placed over each other. When flooded, they act as Dive Warps that only drop you down one floor, so you have more choices on how deep to dive when underwater.

 

Another gimmick that you could use would be the idea that just because Link is swimming underwater doesn't necessarily mean he can breathe. One way to do that would be to make your graphic-changing item act as a Ring that slowly damages Link to represent him slowly running out of air. Draw bubble tiles that act as Fairy combos and they can be spots where Link can get a quick breath. (May sound like an odd idea, but there is precedent. Super Mario 64 used your HP meter as your oxygen meter, with the added mechanic being that you could quickly heal damage by jumping in water and going up for air.)

 

A really simple trick you could go for would be to invert the push-blocks-into-pits idea. Normally, you push a block into a hole to plug it and let you walk over it. Use screen carry-over secrets, and you can have puzzles where you push floating objects to where there's a gap in the ceiling (represented by a lighter-colored spot on the floor where light is shining down. Solve the puzzle, and the carry-over secrets cause the room above to have a matching path of floating objects that you can walk over to reach new areas.

 

Hell, want to really make a labyrinthine area for your players? Do all of the above...


  • Anthus and Aevin like this

#3 Anthus

Anthus

    Lord of Liquids

  • Members
  • Location:Ohio

Posted 21 October 2016 - 11:21 AM

That's a lot of good ideas, Dementio, I might actually use some of those cause I have always wanted to have an underwater area too.

Raising and lowering water to cross spikes and gaps is particularly interesting.


0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users