The Wii has the potential to revolutionize fighting games! Right now it seems developers have only tried to replace button pressing with gestures. What I hope they would try is something that isn't possible on a regular controller (or an arcade stick). I have 2 game ideas that I hope developers try at some point in wii lifetime. They both use the pointer as an intergral part of their gameplay.
Game Idea 1: A powerstone type(true 3d plane) game where every character in the game can teleport to anywhere on the field at any time.
There could be a lot of ways approach this, right now I'm favoring having the player hold all 3 buttons(B trigger, C, and Z) simultaneously to disappear and release any button (or all) of them to reappear. Wherever the pointer is on the screen is where you will appear at. Imagine dissappearing as someone is attacking you and appearing behind them for an attack.
Controls(these could easily be simplified if this is too much for this type of game):
Analog stick for movement
C button for punch
Z for kick
B for block(I really really like the Virtua Fighter PKG system a lot but if
necessary a different setup can be implamented)
D-pad causes variation of button presses. for example press Z and up on the D-pad for a different kick than Z and down. So there would be 5 kicks in the game(up, down, left, right, neutral). They could have different properties maybe. One thing I have notice is the D-pad really isn't a great input device for streetfighter style games designed around an arcade stick but in my game it would be limited to the four directions that it is good at.
the "A" button could jump I suppose or it could teleport if it seems the control scheme should be simplified.
The most important part of the game is the teleporting. The way I originally envision it has the player holding down all three buttons and disappearing if the player lets go of every button except for punch then the character will reappear punching same with kicks and throws(I thought it should be block+punch). Ideally I'd like it so P+K and K+G are have unique attacks assigned to them.
To block someone behind you hold B and press the analog stick in the direction you want to face and you'll quickly pivot to where you need to be. This is necessary since people will be teleporting from all angles.
I was thinking there might need to be a "cooldown" period after you use the teleport to keep someone from constantly disappearly to stall the match(maybe 5 seconds without teleporting ability). I think it should reset automatically if you connect an attack so you can attack/teleport/attack/teleport/etc are different angles.
This game could have 4 players at a time.
EDIT: it NEEDS to offer four players at a time so there can be situations like if someone is surrounded by 2 or more people attacking you when you disappear and make them attack each other. Also it seems like in 2 player mode the game might encourage you to wait for your opponet to teleport and teleport after them so you can appear next to them right after they appear to get your 87.5% chance of landing a hit(based on if they can guess which of the 8 directions you attack from). With team battle and free for all this wouldn't be a problem.
Edit # 3: I am beginning to think blocking needs to cover more area. When you block it should cover not only the direction you press but the two directions next to it. So if you block and press down it blocks for south, southeast, and southwest attacks. So now the teleporter only has a 62.5% chance of landing an attack(significant but not overwhelming).
Also I hope they add a "strobelight mode" where everyone is forced to teleport and reappear every few seconds. Players would have to guess where their opponets are going to appear. After the match you could stroll through all the "pictures" and save any that you like.
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Now for game idea 2:
It is a more traditional fighting game that i'm almost suprised someone hasn't attempted yet. Basically a point and click fighting game. The basic concept of the game is you have to aim where your character will attack using the wiimote pointer. It uses that 2d plane that nearly every fighting game uses. You start the game with an on screen cursor showing you where you attack will go. This can be turn off which you will want to do as you get more comfortable with the pointer otherwise people will be able to predict your every move.
Controls(same PKG system):
C button for punch
Z button for kick
B trigger for block
A button for toggling the aiming cursor on/off
For movement there are several ways of going at this the game could have a "move" button and have it go to wherever the remote is at the time of pressing it. But that might be confusing because it might be very difficult inch foward or backwards after pointing the remote somewhere else on screen from doing an attack. The other approach is it could use the D-pad or analog stick for movement since it would be easy. I prefer the D-pad.
One thing the D-pad won't be doing in this game is extremely complicated inputs. I want the same variation pad structure of my first game idea for the D-pad(one button and one direction, no circular motions or back, foward, foward type inputs). It sounds like there might only be 10-20 attacks but that doesn't take into account that all attacks can be context sensitive based on where the remote is pointing.
There might be various ways of approaching this but I could only think of a convential way for now. It involves a collection of "zones" where if the remote in them it will recognise that and change the attack the appriorate one. For example in a typical 3d fighter their are 3 hit levels: high, mid, low. low attacks will hit someone when they are blocking normal but will be blocked, mid attacks break someone out of their low blocking stance etc. I was thinking there would be 3 height zones and 3 distance zones(close range, medium range, long range) for a total of nine zones(actually I want there to be a few other(reverse, sky, and out of reach) but from practical standpoint their will only be nine zones). If you take 9 zones times 5 you get 45 different punches and 45 different kicks in the game per character(actuall double that if P+K is used for extra punches and K+G is used for extra kicks). There actually would never be that many moves realistically(and moves like low height long distance punches would be to ridiculous to put in the game unless the character is like Dhalsim from streetfighter 2) but it's good to know there could be with a relatively simple control scheme.
EDIT # 2: This aproach might not be completely satisfying for some people because they might want to strike exactly where they point. For example mid heighth attacks can hit your opponets chest or stomach and it has nothing to do with where you point the remote. Also someone who points on the border between two zones could become frustrated when it does the wrong move. The player could want to attack their opponets shin and instead attack their opponets chest(there really should be that big of a difference in the animations of a very slight difference in where you point the remote). Even though I still like my earlier idea It seems a more exact pointing system would be worth attempting also. The way this would need to be done is to make many more smaller zones that are too small for the player to notice if they are off by a bit.
A more exact pointing system potentially has problems. The first problem is a whole new defensive system might have to be designed and there's a chance it wouldn't be as intuitive(and intuitiveness is the main advantage of using a remote to point where you want to attack). I suppose they could keep the old low/mid/high system where mid attack break lows blocks etc. and just have the different choices of where the opponet hit have realistic reactions. With this there is still problems when someone attacks on the border between high/mid or mid/low.
A solution to this problem might be to have the defending player point at their character to where they want to defend. This could be determined by heighth only so it could be less complicated. Under this method a "radius of defense" would surround where the player pointed to defend. Within the radius everything that hits would be blocked(the size of the radius could as large as 50% of the character if developers wanted it to easy to block or it could be very small if developers wanted most attempted hits to land or somewhere in between). If a character crouches their radius should shrink because the potential hit area for the character shrank. They could make it so that the closer to the center of the radius the attack is the bigger advantage the defending player receives from blocking. The closer they get the more likely it is they can get in a guaranteed afterwards. The problem with this is it could make aiming an important skill in fighting games and I wouldn't look foward to that. The part about the center of the radius might not be that important.
Another potential probelm is it could reduce the number of moves in the game. With zones every move is context sensitive. With near exact attack placement this is very difficult to keep. I mean every attack area would still have specific attacks for every input but the player wouldn't want to have to point a small area in order to access a certain move. An easy solution would be to make groups of tiny zones where a move would be context sensitive. They could have 3 height zone groups and have the same number of moves as before or they could have 4 or more and have even more moves. It's not perfect but if the zone groups were constructed in a way certain moves switched to other moves after they stopped making sense to attack a certain area(for example a headbutt attack of up + punch would automatically do something else if the player targets low enough). It would be a lot of work for developers to work this out situation by situation but it could be really interesting.
The details aren't important. There are lots more approached developers could take. Recently my nephew brought it over Godzilla Unleashed. We weren't able to play multi player because I only have one nunchuck. I thought it was okay but thought the gamecube one had better controls. My nephew thinks it was great because he says it seems like you are the monster on screen. This is something I've been overlooking when thinking about wii fighting games.
I was thinking they could make one where the game knows how faster you swing the remote(to sort of measure "angryness"). I remember when we used to play street fighter 2 on snes we would sometimes push the buttons really hard and expect to see our characters strike harder. I know they can already make games concept like this with the analog buttons(analog triggers on Dreamcast, Gamecube,XBOX???, and Xbox360??, and analog face buttons on ps2???, and ps3???) but there is none that I know of.
I think motion could be like the non jump button in super mario bros. It would exaggerate actions(in mario if you walks forward it would be you run). The controllers knows how fast its moving right? You could move it fast, medium, or slow/stopping. If this was applied to a street fighter 2 style game the game could work with only 2 buttons and the current state of controller speed while you press the button would determine if you did normal, strong, or fierce strike. You could use motions to exaggerate anything action you give to the characters. Let's say you block and do a fast motion then maybe your character would parry the hit. To balance this maybe you hard blocking doesn't let you hold guard continuously and you are open for a short time. With 3(or 4) buttons, a D-pad, and an analog stick there's tons of potential for mapping tons of moves and actions.
Also since the last time I edited this post I played Smash Brothers Brawl! I understand the decision to make it controls similar to meelee. I would like it if smash brothers type games became it own sub genre on wii with lots of experiments in controls. One thing I think SSBB missed out on was an opportunity to have an 8 player mode. The gamecube didn't have this ability and it's very possibly the wii2 won't have the ability to have 8 controller ports. The window is closing. I hope someone else picks up this idea. Remember if someone makes a SSBB type game there will be comparisons to SSBB. If it has 8 players the game developers will want people to compare it with smash brothers. That would get a lot of people curious to try it.
Topic: Your Revolution game ideas HERE! (Read 53678 times)
