Let's talk afterburners!

[Pepisolo]

One thing that I like the concept of in this game, but dislike the implementation of is the afterburners. It just doesn't feel like an afterburner. When I ignite those burners I want to get more of a sense of speed. The ship should be harder to control. Currently you can just hold it and do circles on the spot. There's no sense of momentum. I might as well just hold the button down and get a permanent speed boost, no need for speed power ups.

So, here is a solution that I've been trying to simulate in my mind while playing. When you ignite the afterburners you should be thrown forward -- no more hitting the afterburner and then zipping back and forth with no turning circle. The controls would effectively then switch to a more turning on an axis system, although the turn would be much slower depending on the speed you're going. To summarize:

Hold afterburner>momentum forward>controls become left and right for rotation>rotation slows depending on the speed you're going

Hopefully I've explained the the gist of what I'm saying and there's probably going to be a lot of resistance because this is kind of mixing two different control schemes, but I think it's so crazy it might just work! Afterburner mode would provide the speed and momentum, normal thrust would provide the precision for dodging.

I was imagining this mode while playing, zooming down a tunnel when I happened to accidentally destroy some obstacles at the same time that I collided with them -- it was as if I'd Starsky and Hutched through them with my speed!

[ptarth]

I'm okay with the afterburners as they are.

[Pepisolo]

I'm okay with the afterburners as they are.

Fair enough. They seem very boring to me with no sense of inertia or fun. Useful for speeding up backtracking, though.

[TheVampire100]

I use them onyl to get fast through rooms I've cleared. Afterburners do not appear useful to me in combat. It is more likely to make a mistake and speed into bullets when you use them as without them.
In a side note, I still wouldn't use them in combat, even with the suggested changes from you.

However, how about this: Instead of having a fixed sprint button (because this is what it is now) what about a dash/dodge button). It gives you a short boost into the direction you steer (with WASD or the analog stick). A small boost so you can dodge that one shot that almost got you. I think I would use somethign like this more in combat.
The boost is very short, only about oen second and you have to wait another second or two until you can use it again. So just like a dodge roll in action games but with a top-down view on you.

[Misery]

Chris can correct me if I"m wrong, but I think the ORIGINAL purpose of the afterburners is very specific:  Making backtracking and such less time consuming and annoying.

I mean, for pretty much ANY of the games of this sort, be it Isaac, NT, Our Darker Purpose, Rogue Legacy, Vagante, or any of the zillions of other games that fit into this genre, one of the absolute least-fun things in those games is backtracking.  There's often many reasons to do so, sometimes simple, sometimes complicated and with a strategic purpose, but most players dont like the actual act of travelling through that.  Unless your character/ship/thing is very fast, it becomes super tedious! 

Now, that being said:  I actually kinda agree in some ways with the idea of making the afterburner a little harder to control.  I'm just not sure HOW.

There's a few things I think it should NOT be doing:

1.  It shouldnt ever be annoying to use in cleared rooms.  The idea of having rotational controls come into play would probably cause this.  A meter of some sort that empties as you use it and slowly recharges would also cause this.

2.  It shouldnt ever be so risky that you NEVER use it in battle.

3.  It shouldnt be the sort of thing where you need to use it CONSTANTLY in battle.... see Our Darker Purpose for an example of this one.  I seem to recall that Chris in particular strongly dislikes that particular problem in that game.

4.  It shouldnt allow for enemy/boss patterns to be broken.

5.  It shouldnt make any speed item powerups worthless.


So, those are the things that I personally think should be kept in mind with the afterburner.  But I agree, trying out some changes to it, not a bad idea at all.   Figuring out what those might be though, well.... suffice it to say, this one's not my job to do, heh.   You guys can probably think up some better ideas here than I could, that's for sure.  So considering those points, what do you think?

[Pepisolo]

Chris can correct me if I"m wrong, but I think the ORIGINAL purpose of the afterburners is very specific:  Making backtracking and such less time consuming and annoying.

Interesting. If the original purpose of the afterburners was to speed up backtracking then the current implementation pretty much does that perfectly, albeit in a bit of a boring and functional manner. It does seem to break your rule number 5, though. With an infinite supply of afterburner which manoeuvres equally as well as the normal thrusters there's little point to the speed power ups.

I think that having the rotational afterburner come into play could work and achieve all the things on your checklist, but there's a good chance that it might not, too. The main worry I have about it is how the player transitions from directional control to rotational control. Let's say I'm holding left to go left then hit the afterburner, as a player I'm probably still going to be holding left which would then start to make me veer off course. I think a small straight ahead only window after hitting the afterburner would help with this potential problem. If I were a coder and involved in the project it's something that I would probably try to implement just to see if it works in practise, but doing so may very well be a waste of time to test.

I think that there needs to be some way in which using the afterburner feels different. Maybe have the ship gain more inertia while afterburning so that it's not quite as possible to stop on a dime as it currently is. While burning the ship needs to gain some forward momentum, I think.

However, how about this: Instead of having a fixed sprint button (because this is what it is now) what about a dash/dodge button). It gives you a short boost into the direction you steer (with WASD or the analog stick). A small boost so you can dodge that one shot that almost got you. I think I would use somethign like this more in combat.
The boost is very short, only about oen second and you have to wait another second or two until you can use it again. So just like a dodge roll in action games but with a top-down view on you.

Something like this could work, I think. It would probably be more fun than the current version although maybe it wouldn't be as useful for backtracking.

[Misery]

However, how about this: Instead of having a fixed sprint button (because this is what it is now) what about a dash/dodge button). It gives you a short boost into the direction you steer (with WASD or the analog stick). A small boost so you can dodge that one shot that almost got you. I think I would use somethign like this more in combat.
The boost is very short, only about oen second and you have to wait another second or two until you can use it again. So just like a dodge roll in action games but with a top-down view on you.

This one isnt really going to work.

It creates pretty much exactly the same situation that Our Darker Purpose has with it's own dodge (point number 3 that I mentioned above), in that it ends up heavily encouraging the player to use it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over....  Chris has mentioned really disliking that in that game, more than a couple of times.   And while I like that game, that IS an aspect I really dont like about it either, not one bit.   Not to mention that it makes using the move to backtrack/get around cleared rooms faster VERY tedious because you have to keep activating it...

"Dodge rolls" in most games, not just of this genre, tend to cause these sorts of issues, unless they're VERY limited somehow.

[ptarth]

The idea of having the afterburners use energy like the secondary weapons hasn't come up yet (it probably would, so I'm just getting it out of the way). This way afterburner use is limited by energy production and you have to choose between secondaries or afterburners.  I'm not a fan of the idea.

[Cinth]

"Dodge rolls" in most games, not just of this genre, tend to cause these sorts of issues, unless they're VERY limited somehow.

Make it a 1942 esque and I'll love you forever and ever   

[nas1m]

How about simply having the afterburner only activate automatically in cleared rooms and providing a dodge roll for, well, dodgeing stuff in combat happening in rooms that are not yet clear? Seems like the best of both worlds to me...

[Pumpkin]

Just my personal comment:
I like the arferburner as it currently is. I never use it in fight, and thanks to it backtracking is much less a pain. I think it works just the way it was intended to.
Well, the "sense of speed" may indeed be improved, but that's redshirt-alpha! Mechanically, I find it just fine.

[Misery]

How about simply having the afterburner only activate automatically in cleared rooms and providing a dodge roll for, well, dodgeing stuff in combat happening in rooms that are not yet clear? Seems like the best of both worlds to me...

It still leads to the same problem, of using it over and over in combat.  Yeah, using it alot for backtracking is annoying enough, but it's the "during combat" part that can make it such a problem.  ODP has this issue in spades, really. It can also lead to some very strange balancing issues that I'm not going to try to explain.

"Dodge rolls" in most games, not just of this genre, tend to cause these sorts of issues, unless they're VERY limited somehow.

Make it a 1942 esque and I'll love you forever and ever  

You'd have to ask Chris about that one, heh.  I just make the murder bots.  

[Pepisolo]

Just my personal comment:
I like the arferburner as it currently is. I never use it in fight, and thanks to it backtracking is much less a pain. I think it works just the way it was intended to.
Well, the "sense of speed" may indeed be improved, but that's redshirt-alpha! Mechanically, I find it just fine.

I think if the current afterburner system were to be given some actual momentum (not just the illusion of momentum this time) then that could help. Currently, the afterburners do their job in speeding up backtracking, but not much else. Which seems a bit boring to me.

[Misery]

Just my personal comment:
I like the arferburner as it currently is. I never use it in fight, and thanks to it backtracking is much less a pain. I think it works just the way it was intended to.
Well, the "sense of speed" may indeed be improved, but that's redshirt-alpha! Mechanically, I find it just fine.

I think if the current afterburner system were to be given some actual momentum (not just the illusion of momentum this time) then that could help. Currently, the afterburners do their job in speeding up backtracking, but not much else. Which seems a bit boring to me.

They can help in combat if you use them properly.

Though that's somewhat up to each player's individual playstyle.  I do it mostly because I'm hyper-aggressive in games like this.