You could add weather to limit the ability to fly, make it so that if its raining and you try to fly you'll get struck by lightning. Maybe also add flying hazards like occasional bee swarms or hurracanes.
This would be a really smart idea! It would also allow you to choose different 'game states', like if there was a certain story mission or something where you didn't want the player to fly, you could have the weather stormy for the duration of the mission
When casting a spell on a broom, the broom could display a wobbling effect, cast too many spells too fast and you'll lose your balance and fall off your broomstick The higher your altitude, the more mana will be consumed You could also add sky enemies for a sort of "natural barrier", if you get hit at any time while flying, you'll lose balance and fall off, this will make players try to avoid sky enemies, perhaps there are sky serpents that live quite high up in the clouds, and some 'balloony' bulb creatures that sit at low altitudes, they'd sit near world borders to discourage you from flying past Also the higher up you go, the more the fog there is, if you go too high, you won't be able to see the ground, and sky serpents could dive at you from the outskirts of the fog. If there was a time in the game when you wanted to encourage the player to fly higher, you could signify where with floating lanterns, these lanterns would keep some of the fog and enemies away. Magical winds could prevent players from flying too far out, blowing them back into the game area, or you could use botw lost woods styled fog to prevent the player from leaving the game area
The ground fog idea is one of the best and simplest I've seen in the comment section. Plus it could add to the overall aesthetic instead of LODing everything into a blur.
Idea: upon getting hit or when there is no mana left, the broom stalls rather than gets destroyed. At higher elevations or in certain areas ( like above water) mana is consumed much faster, and when it dries up, the broom enters free fall. Certain areas may be labelled as having mana consuming auras, making flying more difficult and impossible to reach some out of bound zones
@@dreadking6142 could limit mana potions to a timer/max stack too - MMORPGS games do that (eg lostark boss raids, genshin's revival food cd). Prevents you from spamming!
I think players should not be able to acquire the broom relatively easy. Maybe you should put it Mid-game so the players can experience the basic mechanics of the game, especially the portals.
but forcing players to not experience such a nice mechanic seems really bad in terms of basic game design. I don't agree so early but most certainly not mid game.
No I think you should do like a dungeon to get a scroll of how to use broom and poof you can use the broom ( the dungeon is not easy and there many puzzle and thing like parcour you know)
A classic way to go about it would be to have race/challenge sections which give you brooms in early game in controlled environment. So players start thinking it's just a gimmick, then surprise them with making brooms avaiable mid-game. It would also make sense, to only having your own broom for free-flight after you already got enough experience. Said challenges could even be the key to a first free broom you get once you finish the questline.
@@irondolphin1559 But think about the elytra in Minecraft. It is gotten late game so that you cannot fly everywhere and make the game so easy in the early game.
lol this made chuckle. It is very strange isn't it. That's the life of a gamedev YTber I guess. I could work on this boring thing I don't want to work on, or something fun I think will make an interesting YT video
i have two funky ideas - enemies specific for air combat with brooms could be cool, like bomb spells with huge aoe for ground target and more precise magic missiles to deal with flying enemies, the the witch can work as a figher bomber plane, maybe some mission specific thing like a bossfight agaisnt a dragon where the mana cost for flying is reduced to zero during the flying phase for this setpeace - second one is silent hill aproach for render distance, so the player can fly as high as the sun(hopefully without burning their brooms) but a fog hides the distant terrain to save some frames
big’ol monsters in the sky. towers that shoot different magic, flying dragons or other creatures that attack, etc. You could even say in the lore that the sky is its own domain and so you’ll only be attacked by those creatures when you’re flying. This would also allow you to lock off the sky in some areas, you’d have to destroy a tower next to a boss battle or whatever you have in mind in order to take to the skies with out getting shot down.
Awesome video! What Anthem did (which I think was pretty clever) is to over-heat the engines if flying too high, and cool them when flying down. It’s kind of having a max ceiling distance, but you can tailor it to different areas, where some heat the engines faster than others (and the user doesn’t perceive it). Of course, your game doesn’t have any engines, but maybe the magic energy doesn’t reach when the player is high up in the air, or there’s a giant flying whale that eats the player if they reach a threshold 😁
@@AIAdev I actually had to look up if Tesla’s wheel cap design was prior to GC’s logo. Turns out… It is. But it’s also been compared to other stuff too, like IGN’s logo and Toxic waste 😁 So Tesla is a step up!
I like this idea as well, but since we are discussing the non-engine aspect, maybe the faster you go, the higher the risk, for a broom to catch fire, thus injuring the player, and slowly destroying the broom in itself. Resulting in cost mechanics to recreate or purchase to buy a new one. This added risk encourages gamers to search for the best uses for the crazy flying to avoid the risk. What do you think?
You could make large mountains and have the game in a large valley with a height limit for how high you can fly. The mountains can the border of the game, and height limit for flying can be just under the mountain peaks =]
Maybe when attacking an enemy on a broom the player will slowdown after dealing Damage to the enemy and not be able to use the boost to get away with the broom while being engaged in battle.
Having the speed be reduced will actually make it easier to aim at the ground You can experience this by playing any plane related games, the proper way to aim at the ground is to lower your speed so you have more time to aim while doing the flyby Lowering the speed will probably end up turning a multiple flyby job into a 'fly one time and decimate all enemies in the area'
@@ironheavenz True I didn’t think about that. But Mana should decrease quite fast while fighting and flying that could help balancing it, but I do completely agree with your point
I agree that slowing the broom will probably not solve the problem. But maybe you could make the camera shake, when the player uses their wand while flying? It seems natural to me, that controlling the broom should be more difficult, when the player is focused on other spells. I also like the idea of blocking the boost while fighting.
I'm sure this will be drowned out in the other comments, but could you do something like increasing the mana consumption of flying the higher you go? you could make it super restrictive and have it scale up really quickly so players can't go too high otherwise their mana depletes super quickly. Love the look of the game so far, keep it up.
yes!! this would be great to avoid players going to unwanted places in the beginning of the game/going super fast and not letting the game load. Each broom could have a “area of action” that consumed the default amount of mana, and if you go outside it, your mana would be drained so quickly that you would not be able to proceed flying.
Maybe when attacking enemies on the broom, your "aim" are much larger, as in, it will hit randomly within this circle. Since your witch is both focused on staying on the broom, as well as slinging spells, so it makes sense that they can't be as precise and delicate, and are more likely to just throw something in a general direction, in hopes that it hits something.
My best guess for now would be to have a really optimized LOD and also not make flying too fast so that a computer wont try to render too much at once (but you’d probably wanna balance the flight speed anyway so that the world doesn’t start to feel small when you can travel like that I think). Maybe you could use games like Breath of the Wild, flight simulator and GTA as reference since they all have pretty big open worlds and flight systems? Especially Botw because it has a similar artstyle
How about the higher up you go, it drains mana faster so by the time you get to that height, you run out. Alternatively, you could add a cloud layer, your vision gets lower as you go higher or something I don't know really.
You should try making either a way bigger map, make flying slower, or just make it to where you can’t attack while flying or use items unless your hovering somewhat low to the ground
You could make the long-distance flight only accessible from specific points on the map. The limiting factor would be your mana because, in theory, you wouldn't be able to reach areas you aren't supposed to without first progressing enough. You could also make ascension take a % of the total mana per second starting from a standard flight height, this would implement a maximum "roof" to your flight, but it wouldn't feel like the game is forcefully limiting your movement. Personally, I think flight should be split into inter-area flight and intra-area flight. Inter-area flight would take less mana for distance, but you'd be limited to higher altitudes and only able to land at specific landing platforms, while intra-area flight allows you to fly starting from the ground but takes significantly more mana in order to limit how long and how far you can fly from your starting position. Areas with less "mana concentration" could make your mana usage skyrocket in order to make the player avoid places like cities, large oceans, or important story areas. This is unrelated to flight, but I'm going to give some more stuff here if you want to read it: - I think you should think about how you're going to make every enemy unique. When you look at an enemy from a distance you should be able to tell what it does and how to prepare for it, unique silhouettes are very important for this! Ultrakill does a fantastic job with strong silhouettes (however atm it lacks some variety in attack patterns, but it's still in development). - Think about the player's desire for how to play when making tools in the player's arsenal. Make sure you aren't forcing the player into your playstyle unintentionally, give them the freedom to play how they want. Try to _encourage_ fun play styles rather than discourage worse ones. If the player wants to lame out the AI for 30 minutes when it would usually only take 5, let them. Because if you properly encourage the right behavior you will _never_ have to forcefully limit their options. I'll compare two similar games that accomplish the same goal differently: Doom Eternal and Ultrakill are the types of games that want you to play a specific way, but they both guide the player in different ways. Doom punishes the player for not using other weapons by making each enemy have _very_ specific weaknesses, if you don't exploit those weaknesses you _will_ die. It forces the player to have fun by making the _only_ play style the "fun" play style. Ultrakill, however, encourages weapon swapping by putting a cooldown on your weapons but disregarding ammo. You can shoot as much as you want, but you aren't going to get nearly as much satisfaction out of it unless you play aggressively and use the weapons' synergy. Adding synergy between the majority of the weapons not only makes you feel badass, it makes you _look_ badass. Sure, you _could_ use only the revolver for the entire game, but it doesn't give the same damage output, it makes you look really lame, and it isn't as fun as using all the weapons at once. There's a reason why Ultrakill has 24k positive reviews and 194 negative reviews, with most of the negative reviews being satire. Hakita, the main dev, personally responds to many of the genuine concerns in the reviews, resolving most of them. I feel like I went a bit too hard into praising Hakita there, but you get the point. Using encouragement in game design makes the biggest difference.
"Consumption rate per altitude" make sense even if it can be quite punishing. Most of the time you'd already consume a lot of mana just getting high instead of going forward and hovering around so it for sure would require planning around mana potions to even be viable. Totally a "just because you can doesn't mean you should" situation. The idea of "inter-area" flight consuming less mana could work easely if wind/mana currents are visible to guide the player around. They'd be encouraged to go this way instead of wandering randomly. Some may be official, while others act as shortcuts or even the only way to reach some secret areas (unless you got that many mana potions on you... xD) Another component that could work would be "flight experience", starting with only hovering first, then as you use brooms a lot the character would gain diverse passives from max_altitude to mana_consuption or even "silly trick animations" to filler in between level caps. This way, they only get to fly high after a long time (on top of having enough mana with global level-ups by then) To compensate for the now mid/late game high flight, challenge/races on wind currents may be a fun way to entertain the player during early game.
Amazing video! For the flight restriction I would add 3 things: 1. Mana consumption rate: The lower tier the broom, the more mana it will drain. This will make it more satisfying to getting a better broom. 2. Weather: This will increase the scope but adding a weather like strong winds on mountains or sandstorm in deserts will make it so you need a better broom to fly in those areas. So you have to travel on land until you find one. 3. A broom health bar. A health bar would mean either the broom will break or it has a recharge time. After 2 minutes of use you have to wait 10 min or something. The better the the broom the less cooldown. Or you have to repair the broom at a town when it breaks. Hope this helps!
Love the video AiA! Always an experience. Also: As for a fix to the scopification, maybe fog? It's how WoW's dealt with it for years, and, while not the prettiest, it also isnt the ugliest solution and its very functional in the sense of the world actually being OPEN. Love ya, gl on the project!
maybe just make brooms INCREDIBLY expensive mana-wise to use. make it just cheap enough that you can fly around a small area, but not enough to break progression. better brooms are either faster or cheaper, allowing you to go further the deeper into the game you are
For a ceiling there could be two stages, at first the player character could start icing up, shivering or gasping for air and then if they continue, they could start losing health due to the cold or lack of oxygen. This way you could make Mana Valley an actual valley, as wide and as long as you like but with mountains on the edge that cannot be flown over. This could make for some cool narrow spots, canyons or tunnels to fly through. Mountain Valleys often form rivers, and at one end you could have a giant Glacier that it's too cold or high up to travel too far along and at the other end you could have a fjord that is populated by giant Archer fish that shoot at you or just a truly huuuge magic Koi that leaps out of the water to eat you. For the broom and the attacking problem, Maybe brooms require the wand to be inserted into them in order for them to truly fly properly, Otherwise all they can do is float just above the ground you'd still be quicker than on foot and able to cast spells but you would be forgoing the flight and boosting functionality.
You could make it co-op, so couples could play together. Witches and warlocks could have different strengths and weaknesses and use of those abilities to solve puzzles together!
I play a lot of Genshin Impact- which is also an open world with a sense of flying. One of the ways they keep players from exploring areas they shouldn't be in usually requires a form of "quest-locking" or only being accessible once a main quest is finished. 1.) One island is in the middle of the ocean and broken up into several smaller islands which encourage the usage of boats instead of flight. The entire stretch of islands also has a giant, invisible, forcefield that prevents you from entering it. 2.)Newer places are locked behind an elaborate cave system called "The Chasm" which you cannot so much as fly over until you finish the main quest to get there. So all in all, to prevent accidentally exploring the main map you could try: 1.) Adding a level requirement to an area to prevent flight 2.) Allowing you to fly to the area but continually take damage. This could be from magic that went rogue or maybe from weather conditions. 3.) A forcefield or need to de-spell an area to enter it 4.) Quest-locking an area All the best in your game endeavors! I just subscribed and I'm excited to see your progress!!! ✨✨✨
you should add flying enemies and enemies with far ranged attacks to make flying less OP, you could also add stuff like drafts which can make for either a good obstacle or a speed boost depending on where it's facing.
To stop players from getting to the world edge you could make that the whole map is an island, and when you get too far a chunk of the water (the one you see) and yourself gets drawn backwards, so you think youre moving even if you arent, and when you lose your mana you just die.
To scale down the Scope, you could make each area a Floating Island. With the “areas between” being “too dangerous to fly between” So teleportation is the best idea to get between islands. Some players have suggested weather causing problems for people on brooms to dissuade flying out of bounds. Maybe a storm or fog makes flying out there dangerous. Or maybe there are OP enemies out there, Subnautica is a map with no limits, but the actual play area is pretty small, if you leave the map, there are dangerous enemies that converge on your location. So the world still FEELS big Just a couple ideas! :)
I have a few ideas to balance flying out. 1) mana is drained depending on altitude and speed. So the faster you go, the more mana you use, and the higher you go, the same effect happens. The altitude can be a way to keep players under a certain altitude and to discourage traveling over mountains into unknown areas. 2) Attacking while flying increases mana cost and decreases damage output. This makes it so that for more difficult monsters, the player will have to land to fight properly, while with trash monsters, it becomes easier to farm as they likely can be one shot at higher levels. 3) I think that hovering is an okay mechanic to have, but it won't be in place. It will have a slow fall. Accuracy of spells is decreased and mana consumption per spell is also increased. 4) Monsters need to be able to somehow attack the player while in the air, so some spells that the monsters can use with a higher degree of accuracy can be a nice addition. 5) Barriers such as altitude restrictions for certain brooms, the inability to fly against fast moving winds, altitude and water are all ways by which you can limit a players current movement freedoms. Flying against wind consumes more mana and reduces speed and stuff like that can limit a players movement without a physical barrier in place, so it feels like its still open world.
I said it last and I'll say it again I am very excited for this game. But make sure to take breaks you don't want to be over worked and have this project to become more like a chore than a fun activity. Once again great work the minute it comes out I will buy it.
If you go down the wrong path you'll make a Minecraft and everyone knows what happens to low end pc's when they try to work Minecraft. You can also add a speed cap due to air resistance. (Getting yeeted off your broom and losing it when you try to do pedal to the metal) Atmosphere reduction as you go higher either harder to breath equals harder to concentrate and have a (height)^3 percent chance for you to randomly lose conscious or have the spell stop working which means you fall. Also same thing with temperature if you go to high. Denser mana concentrations that limit where you can go therefore causing you to not go near them or just straight up die or see the first idea where two much mana means it explodes the broom or it goes a little bit to fast by consuming to much mana to quickly. To stop people from just camping on brooms you could also add AA plants that shoot stuff like acid or pollen.
I’ve been working on my own game with DBZ-style flight for a while, and here are some tips: 1. Speed is (literally) relative to scale. If you can fly around really fast and attack, then add big enemies and big projectiles to compensate. 2. Perceived speed is relative to the closest object - this is inherent to the perspective projection. (This is another reason why “water levels suck” (TM).) The higher up you fly, the more counter-intuitively boring it will feel. My solution is to increase flight speed the higher up you go, while making flight very expensive - it’s a form of “fast travel”, or cape from Super Mario World. 3. With a proper LOD system for all elements, flying up high should actually be far less visually expensive than staying on the ground. The real trick is to make it look visually pleasing! Volumetric clouds and atmospheric scattering go verrrry far here. Repeating textures in terrain will become very obvious. 4. There *needs* to be something to do in all that free space. BotW is a great case to study here. Wherever you go, there are always visual “affordances” offered by the game, in terms of Link’s kit vs enemies, Korok puzzles, resources strewn about, etc. If you can’t make something here work, then you might need to axe some features :/ Good luck, always excited to see your progress! EDIT: and I just realized this is an old video 😂
You could make an enemy who can tp, so you have to use a game mechanic to immobilize the enemy; for example a machine that can be activated in a forgotten temple allows to immobilize the monster that is there. Or simply allow him to teleport, and you have to dodge his attacks. Finally you could make a very powerful and scary boss, quite rare and mysterious. The problem is that when he sees you, it's better for you to run, a bit like the guardians of zelda breath of the wild. (This will and challenge and action). Hope my advice will help you...
You could ad a variable to the mana cost of flying which increases with altitude (or distance from the nearest ground if your feeling fancy), that would kinda prevent the player from going super high up unless they are in the end game and have a ton of mana. And on top of that it wouldn't feel as restrictive as a hard set altitude limit. You could even expand the idea of increased mana cost for restricting flight with maybe some magical weather phenomenon that increase the cost when flying through.
fog can be used as surface mist that would "hide" details away and you could go with lesser lod in the environment. It'd be like flying in the morning, a charming atmosphere to the game. Would also encourage actual exploration, as it would still be likely for the player to miss things unless they get close, and that would make the map feel big.
1) "Flying" exp and level-up after using brooms for a long ammount of time could be a natural way to balance it. Mix in the learning of cool animation "tricks" just for flavor and you only gain an altitude boost once every few levels. Like this, you only end up flying high in the sky around late game, if no crazy grinding occurs. 2) For more nuance, brooms could aslo have a max_altitude cap, so only the rarest (or upgraded ones, if you choose this over other stats) would go that high. 3) Another, more punishing approach would be that the more height, the more mana consumption...Which can be frustrating yet force players to plan their travels.
Also, as discussed with other commenters, "guiding wind currents" (visible trails in the sky) on which your mana consuption get really low could be a good way to guide the player around. (the max altitude can be overridden while riding a current so you can use them to show points of interest while travelling) If you limit early game to hovering around, race/challenge using wind currents can be a great way to make the player experience the fun of high flight and fast flight before they can unlock better brooms allowing that for free flight.
Hey love the game but later in development you should add witch arena or witch trials. Witch arena is pvp between witches. Witch trials is a couple mini games which witches compete
Hey, Just wanted to say thank you for your comment and really appreciated the kind words. I love the content you have on here, awesome work. Will definitely tune in to future uploads!
So this is largely the same idea as many of the other comments, but: You could make points of interest (let's call them "leyline vents" for the duration of this comment, but they could be anything) on or even under the ground that contribute towards a mana consumption scaling factor, which are themselves scaled by distance. Ergo, the further you are from a "leyline vent" the more quickly you'll run out of mana. Go too high and you'll come crashing back down soon enough. Unlock two "leyline vents" and the space between them has effectively become a safe travel zone, at least as far as mana is concerned. From there you can make different vents have different radii to give yourself more control over the world, and make the vents be in safer or more dangerous areas to modulate difficulty. Plus, a completionist like myself would then be motivated to unlock every vent, even if i don't have any need to broom around an area any more.
Maybe more than using mana, they have to use "mana stones" or something that you dont have at the hand all time, fast traveling like that in a world that must be explore has to be something "exclusive", something like if you need to go back to some place you just past bc you missed something around there, use a mana-stone, fuel up the broom with magic and fly, this maybe could make in a future "the ultimate broom" that one that use mana and not mana-stones. Limits are the base of a game, you can do what ever you want, but to do it, first you have to pass through this ways. Keep going, its looking fantastic, small detail mecanics are what big games are made of.
Great video man! Love to see your content. As for nerfing brooms, maybe for each zone or area the player has to activate a tower or complete some event in order to have the ability to fly there (like a mini sidequest). Kind of like in breath of the wild you have to interact with a tower in order to access part of a map for that area. This forces players to explore the area at least a little on foot but doesn't inhibit functionality entirely and rewards the player for putting in the effort. Maybe to prevent players from quickly running in to activate every zone, each tower or event spawns a few enemies they have to defeat first. If you don't want to completely strip the broom away, make it so if they use it in an unactivated area it quickly drains their mana pool limiting how far they can travel.
I like this approach, especially the last part. A similar solution would be that the player has to destroy some kind of de-buff beacon to fly or reverse its effect from inhibiting you to buffing you. There may even be beacons with different tiers. The lower their tier, the lower is your maximum flying height. Destroying the beacons one after the other increases your flying height. That way fortresses won't be easily breachable. You destroy a beacon and invade the fortress? Too bad, you have to destroy another beacon to fly to the top of the tower. The beacons should have to be lower than the maximum flying height but somehow guarded by enemies or a puzzle.
I think a magic researching system to unlock spells, tools, armor and gadgets(possibly similar to Thaumcraft’s research system) would be sick. Using spells, defeating enemies, using something to analyze enemies, boss drops and visiting locations could grant research points. Also some researches could be tied to specific goals like defeating x boss. This would also allow a smooth integration to a questing system. Furthermore leveling/enchanting of the player, items and spells would be sick. Different effects or resistances could be applied to armors and tools. Aspects about the spell could be modified(casting speed, damage, range, homing, cost, subeffects, attack radius). What would also be cool is if you could have a familiar(owl, rat, toad, pigeon, etc.) that you can summon, that can follow you, aid you in battles, help with rituals, brews or enchanting and can possibly provide specific benefits if there are multiple different familiars.
Idea to fix flying view: Section the map as a grid (invisible) also have your map made multiple times with different resolutions of mesh. Figure out what distance you need certian details to be seen. Buildings, Landmarks or anything that needs to be seen anywhere. Mark these as high priority. These need a few meshes to swap through. High, medium, low and potato poly mesh (By poly I mean Tris or Verts) Medium objects as well but mark as medium. These will need a High Poly mesh and a lowpoly mesh. Immediate object in the scene marked as low. This you only need the highmesh. Now the grid is used to divide the areas based on where the camera is. If you are on the upper most north part looking south, you render in each part of the map at diffrent resolution. Everything in the next cell, might be medium, so you have them on a low poly. If smaller things are there. Spawn them into place (even just move a pre-spawned object from nowhere). I hope this makes sense, I am a 3D artist who also programs games for fun. I will try to find a refrence video and put it in the reply that will explain it better (I'm writing this a 2 in the morning and done this months ago). I hope this helps : )
ua-cam.com/video/kML67qB9Chk/v-deo.html This essentially talks about what I said just as different parts and as separate concepts. It is much more comprehendable. "Play time performance" is where it begins. Although it is a very good watch (It may have been the reason I have done it a few times myself tbh 😅)
Yo. Good stuff. Witches are dope. Not an indie designer but a designer with some opinions you could potentially consider. Flying in games definitely creates a larger amount of balance issues than future AIA will want to handle. For level design reasons, flying breaks almost everything if you want it to be fun. 1) Limit flight height. Keep mana consumption the way it is, otherwise flying becomes useless which is something you probably will not want. Controlling flight-specific zones can also be beneficial for balance. Things like no flying in town, caves, etc. 2) Flying enemies, weather, and more aerial player-related issues make flying a player scaling space just as land does. Flying enemies are higher level then ground enemies and don't interfere with the player unless they are in their space or something along those lines. 3) Lean into spell-flinging on brooms. Players will more than likely want to do it and will try to do it. If you control the want before the need then you can balance gameplay around "air born" spells before the players realize they can be OP. (Do something like attaching them to a broom or spell can only be cast at Y height if you're checking the player's distance to the ground for fall damage...you could be checking players speed wall falling as well, I don't know your code X_X ) 4) Reference a game that has flying and land combat like Anthem. What did flying do for that game? Was it good, bad, what more could exist, and all that jazz. Don't repeat mistakes that already have happened and stuff like that.
Great video as always. One way to do it would be to make it cost mana the higher up they go (at an exponential rate or something similar so it's basically hard capped). This way players are incentivised to fly at low altitudes to preserve their mana but they are able to go for a sight seeing tour once in a while. But not too high or their mana bar would be drained in seconds. And you got an immersive reason for it too. Higher altitudes, thinner air, harder to maintain lift.
The flying looks super fun in this! Also, your video editing is amazing! I like that the flying uses mana - especially considering that you drop your stuff when you die, so you can't just hop on a broom and fly away in a panic unless you have the foresight to leave early or distance yourself enough to use a potion. But, it feels like being able to attack while flying could be a problem later down the track when players have a lot of mana and mana potions. Maybe enemies that shoot ranged projectiles/hitscan could help? (I feel like I'm not helping with the feature bloat here... sorry about that.) Very excited to see where this goes - already wishlisted!
you should land lock the broom flight so its constant distance above the ground but then make it so they are not constantly moving forward for a balanced trade off (the broom would obviously be faster than walking/sprinting) (i realize land lock is not the best word because i think they should be able to broom across the water) Another thing i thin you should add is a button to press to activate the broom (if that's not already implemented) another enemy you could add could be a bat that rests upside down in trees till you got close enough then it could attack you!!
I would create some type of no fly zones or turbulence, so if you go to high then the flight becomes extremely unstable and you potentially hit a no fly zone which just disables flying for a set amount of time (doesn't remove the player from the broom but just makes it stop floating). This will create a more natural barrier that players won't feel as much as something like an invisible wall. As for the rendering problem you're going to have to make extremely heavy use of the LOD system if you want to render at an extreme distance, Fog helps to hide render distance and if done correctly can also look visually appealing. You could also put a depth of field blur on the camera when you're on the broom so it focuses the player's vision and prevents them from seeing anything they aren't really looking at. As for the danger of the broom, I would maybe add some flying enemies like eagles or something that will attack you occasionally that way the player has to conserve MP for rapid escape if necessary, you could also add some ground based enemies that act like surface to air missile launchers, in that they only attack when the player is flying and they have tracking projectiles. Some other people mentioned weather so you could make it where if it's raining it drains significantly more magic to fly, or have a chance for the player to get struck by lightning. You could also drain mp based on the height the player is above the ground, so if a player is relatively low they can go for longer periods but have to deal with the danger of obstacles like trees, but if they go above the trees then they are safer but can't go nearly as far.
You could add sections were if the player wants to explore further they have to be grounded. You could also add narrative appropriate barriers to why they player can't or at least may not want to fly over certain areas. Essentially you could add something like a barrier or go a more play based route were there's some type of enemy that shoots players down depending on were they are story wise and maybe there's a slight chance to slip through depending on certain factors.
I think brooms should act as a useful tool for navigating...sometimes. In the early game especially, I can see the brooms moreso acting as ways to get out of combat or hairy situations, meaning I think the mana consumption should be much higher. Additionally, if you want to fix the problem with players "peaking under the curtain", maybe including clouds that obscure the players view, or having a fog effects that gets denser the higher up the player is. Last recommendation is including some sort of "boost pad" you can find in the air while flying around that will restore mana and put you in the boost state(maybe instead of being able to activate in manually). These could be rings, special birds, fairies, whisps, or something of the same matter. Bonus points if its something tha player can change the position of which would allow the creation of some pretty sick "broom courses" players could make.
I think the phrase "follow the fun" is important for game design. If flying is fun then it should be an early feature that is woven into the core of the game. Maybe work into the lore some large anti magic pillars as an out of bounds guard? Stuff that saps the players magic abilities if they cross them. Then set the game on an island. So brooming out into nowhere would be a sentence to fall into the water. This keeps the play area secure and makes sure flying is still encouraged and fun.
You could cap the max height reached of every broom. The basic broom would only be allowed to fly a few feet above the trees, and also quite slow, so its main use really is to go over medium sized bodies of water. In contrast, finishing the game will give you the ultimate broom, which gives infinite flight, so you can watch over the whole map when you completed everything. Anything else in between, you know what to do. Just scale them linearly.
It would be fun if the brooms were actually a monster in the game... In some witch stories the broom has a personality and some "sass". So adding them as a monster type, and having your character tame them would be a nice way to add some "fun difficulty" obtaining them. And in that way there could be broom farms, and maybe some minigames for you to tame your broom. As for the whole flying to infinity and beyond... Adding fog is a way of dealing with map issues, but I don't see it as a negative point adding a max height to flight. And about air combat, you could create a monster that is a "helping raven" or something... When this raven sees you attack a land monster they call up more ravens nearby and attack you. Maybe this way you think twice after attacking any land mob.
this video is so good, the flow is really good and transitions are so smooth was such a good watch! cant wait to see where your game goes from here keep up the awesome work uso :)
Flying stationary enemies, flying enemies that can follow the player, grounded enemies with predictive projectiles, grounded enemies with homing projectiles. Maybe a group or clan of evil witches than have similar abilities that the player has than can spawn after a while of the player flying or flying over a specific area
You should add wizards that would be cool! oh and if you do would it be Harry Potter style with wands and brooms or staffs with more powerful magic? Oh and maybe mak the world loop?
I have an idea, to make sure that the player doesn't go flying anywhere, make it so that it can fly a certain amount over sea level (like 200 meters) and then add items/positions to make it fly higher (like 300, 400, 500 meters) And if you want, make so that the higher you fly, the more mana it takes
Flying is such a OP but crucial skill, i need it for traveling if u don't have the teleport spell or if u are on a special quest, but this also let's you skip a lot of dangerous mobs that may protect some good loot. But I recommend making the speed get's higher at higher altitudes, that will make easier to travel islands at a faster way, but at low altitudes it will be fast enough for not crossing the entire island in a instant.
I aspire to make games for a living. I had just gotten kicked out of my house this year (The start of february) and have been watching since you started this series, quietly dreaming myself. I see so much potential in this game, I am almost certain it will be a success. This devlog is not only entertaining, it's extremely informative and gives me some motivation and inspiration during these troubling times.
I think that flying up to a certain altitude should add a freezing effect to the broom until the broom becomes static, and then falls down. Kind of like what happened to ironman when flying too high. This way you can set the maximum altitude that the player can fly to without the need for an invisible barrier. This also gives the player an indication of when they are flying too high. Hope this helps!
you could make it so every area of the game initially has border/barrier to prevent flying over it and once the area is completed remove the barrier. This could be kinda cool in the game progression because the more you progress the more flight freedom you get, if it makes sense
When flying and casting spells spells cost more mana (x1.2 , x1.5 or whatever feels right) but customizable per spell. So just another attribute on each spell flyingCostMultiplier. With that they can't really spam spells while flying bcz they risk falling (unless it makes sense for certain spells - dunno maybe illumination spells or smth). Also when flying homing is disabled on all homing missile spells (or again introduce attribute isHomingWhenFlying). Maybe introduce some bats or other enemies in that mid-sky region that can attack and follow you when you provoke them from the ground , but their main thing is to be in air and tilt/move your wand so you can't get accurate shot (but could also be annoying to players so maybe check if it even feels good. (I'm kinda late to the party , and this is 2nd video from you I watched but maybe this helps)
I remember Harry Potter 2 for PS2 having a broom you could use outside hogwarts and I spent days just flying This reminds me so much of that but upgraded and balanced, looks like tons of fun! I also feel like every person that has ever heard about quidditch has an unfulfilled dream of playing it and EA never gave the true quidditch experience we're all looking for on any of their games This is amazing! Also: I'm definitely buying this
Aside from coloring the brooms can have different designs or some other accessory to distinguish each other. As for flying, it is rare to see Open World games with FLYING (not to be confused with gliding), the height limit and stamina/mana depletion are good. To not abuse the mechanic. Story wise, you could limit it further by dividing each area into zones, if you go beyond the boundaries while flying you crash down or a lightning strike hits. Of course this would make the player really restricted. Another thing you can try is what Final Fantasy XIV does, each new maps is filled with something called "Aether currents" these are some nodes scattered around the place, collect em all and the ability to fly unlocks in that area. There is an item that helps you pinpoint these as in: "Its M meters away southeast" again is really restrictive but it pushes exploration as a trade off. Can't think of much else 😅 this is harder than I thought it would be.
In order to stop sky ganking give the enemies ranged attacks. For example, Pomploos could spit seeds when players are out of melee range, but in a different, larger, radius of ranged attacks.
make some quirks on each broom! itd be so cool to see a broom that flies faster but cant go very high, or a broom that can hover but flies slower, more practical for battling enemies, or one that has its own unique attack or defense mechanism, im sure you can come up with plenty of your own ideas!
Haha I had the exact same thought process, which led me to making Smashball, where I had the benefit that flying was only allowed in the Stadium 😀 For your game it might be cool to really use the flying as a travel mechanic between the different scenes. Also instead of a snitch, there might be flying mobs to attack the player *cough* Dragons *cough* 🙂
you could make it so flight is used mainly to navigate a sort of space between space, where you enter portals and have to fly through the void to reach the next location which would limit the maps allowing you to keep a small size, and lets you make floating structures and all sorts of goodies and various challenges of the like, while also still being able to have fun zooming around at high speeds.
Now for the the problem of the player being able to see the entire map, just add mist, that should cover up things. Then for the player being able to just attack enemies in mid air, make a separate enemy that just has a ranged attack, or give the already existing enemy a ranged attack. it is pretty cool to see this game develop though, good job on it!
I think you should be able to tame certain enemies. It would be cool to maybe give an enemy a food they like will tame them, and maybe you can do research on these enemies and earn exp from them. (Maybe a researcher npc and side quests relating to them?) Maybe you could have options like researching / making them your pet. Researching can give some exp and making them a pet can either be a nice house pet or an ally that will fight with you. Maybe some can be stronger and weaker against certain bosses (did I mention that boss battles will be cool?) and it'll give incentive to making them pets.
I know I'm pretty late to the development in terms of what progress may or may not have already been made, but I was thinking about how to limit the scope of areas and such. I know that a common concept in magical fiction is barriers, so perhaps you can keep the world open to fly around in but wall off certain parts with barriers that unlock via some sort of story progression
Somehow this video got into my recommendations. Man, this is literally a game I've dreamed of making someday. I've rewatched the quidditch scenes many times. I'm 27 now and I still dream of flying on a broomstick. And I thought it would be necessary to create a game in which I could fly on a broomstick. For example, the game is about a cute young witch, who is flying on a broomstick, and also she has a magic wand.. Now I'm watching this video and I'm shocked that this is also a dream game for someone and he's developing it right now. I hope I live until you reach 100k followers and I can play the game of my dreams. Good luck.
I know it’s been a hot minute since you uploaded your video, but for your broom scope issue: - Having no fly areas, barred with either a stormy sky or some sort of tower that will shoot you down is a possibility (you could think of Borderlands world borders as well). - You could also make the magic of the broom just sputter out at high altitudes as a more natural height border, where you’ll fall back down a few meters or so before regaining flight capabilities. - I think reducing the time that one is able to fly could also help restrict player movement to a more lateral rather than vertical scope, but I’m not sure. Extra possibilities: - You could make it so that brooms have their own flight meter, completely unrelated to one’s mana pool and instead related to the broom’s own unique value and rarity. With this, you could make the idea of flying enemies much more viable to fight in the air, and have a limit to how much time someone could fly for with the rarity or type of broom they’re using. This might also help with broom usage duration, because in your video, I noticed that it would take a long time to deplete your mana pool fully just by flying. - You could also add damage reduction to enemies on the ground that you attack while flying, to where they would take less damage to avoid cheesing larger enemies out of combat. That’s something to worry about later, though. Looks great so far, and I look forward to your next update on the game!
Add a height gauge on the side, and increase mana usage when flying too high. Use the in-lore explanation that venturing too far from the planet reduces the effects of natural ley-lines, thus increasing the drain on your personal mana pool. For extra fun, add some glowing pools near the surface that you can fly over and skim to refuel mana for distance travel
Since attacking from broom is so OP against enemies who only have ground-based attacks, you could make flying and attacking at the same time a skill which can only be unlocked at higher levels / later stages of the game when enemies can fight back using attacks/spells/curses of their own which can reach you on the broom.
Probably set a height and speed limit for each broom. Weaker brooms can take you at best to next town, or maybe even halfway while consuming tons of mana, while higher, harder to earn brooms can go either faster, higher, or go for longer. Each one especializes in one aspect, not all.
If you saw it, let me know.,
I saw it. 🤣
saw what?
for sure
Nice level
@@TheEggyOne🧐
You could add weather to limit the ability to fly, make it so that if its raining and you try to fly you'll get struck by lightning. Maybe also add flying hazards like occasional bee swarms or hurracanes.
This would be a really smart idea! It would also allow you to choose different 'game states', like if there was a certain story mission or something where you didn't want the player to fly, you could have the weather stormy for the duration of the mission
yes
Wow I can’t believe I didn’t think of this.
@@Turquoised You could also make where the higher you go it uses even more mana, that way they will automatically be tempted to fly low
No if you fly to high youll get stuck by lightning i think that way better but i like the rest of your comment
Adding flying was a mistake because now I think it's becoming _my_ DREAM game...
:O
@@AIAdev :O
@@mrsun4630 :O
@@jappie6903 :O
@Shinymanager369 :O
When casting a spell on a broom, the broom could display a wobbling effect, cast too many spells too fast and you'll lose your balance and fall off your broomstick
The higher your altitude, the more mana will be consumed
You could also add sky enemies for a sort of "natural barrier", if you get hit at any time while flying, you'll lose balance and fall off, this will make players try to avoid sky enemies, perhaps there are sky serpents that live quite high up in the clouds, and some 'balloony' bulb creatures that sit at low altitudes, they'd sit near world borders to discourage you from flying past
Also the higher up you go, the more the fog there is, if you go too high, you won't be able to see the ground, and sky serpents could dive at you from the outskirts of the fog. If there was a time in the game when you wanted to encourage the player to fly higher, you could signify where with floating lanterns, these lanterns would keep some of the fog and enemies away.
Magical winds could prevent players from flying too far out, blowing them back into the game area, or you could use botw lost woods styled fog to prevent the player from leaving the game area
Dame that alot
nice
The ground fog idea is one of the best and simplest I've seen in the comment section. Plus it could add to the overall aesthetic instead of LODing everything into a blur.
This is a really good idea!
those are some great ideas
Idea: upon getting hit or when there is no mana left, the broom stalls rather than gets destroyed.
At higher elevations or in certain areas ( like above water) mana is consumed much faster, and when it dries up, the broom enters free fall. Certain areas may be labelled as having mana consuming auras, making flying more difficult and impossible to reach some out of bound zones
but that would just make people craft many mana potions and bruteforce stuff no?
although you could make repeated mana potion consumptions without landing give less and less mana per potion.
@@dreadking6142 could limit mana potions to a timer/max stack too - MMORPGS games do that (eg lostark boss raids, genshin's revival food cd). Prevents you from spamming!
Could also prevent using the pause menu while on a broom to keep Mana potion abuse out.
Reminds me of WW1 planes...
I see... the very efficient and natural lake shape at 5:01
I can't control mother nature
the lake is procedurally generated shh 🤫
how mature smh
@@AIAdev 🤨
I think players should not be able to acquire the broom relatively easy. Maybe you should put it Mid-game so the players can experience the basic mechanics of the game, especially the portals.
I agree. I was thinking I might have a min level requirement for it
but forcing players to not experience such a nice mechanic seems really bad in terms of basic game design. I don't agree so early but most certainly not mid game.
No I think you should do like a dungeon to get a scroll of how to use broom and poof you can use the broom ( the dungeon is not easy and there many puzzle and thing like parcour you know)
A classic way to go about it would be to have race/challenge sections which give you brooms in early game in controlled environment. So players start thinking it's just a gimmick, then surprise them with making brooms avaiable mid-game. It would also make sense, to only having your own broom for free-flight after you already got enough experience. Said challenges could even be the key to a first free broom you get once you finish the questline.
@@irondolphin1559 But think about the elytra in Minecraft. It is gotten late game so that you cannot fly everywhere and make the game so easy in the early game.
Love seeing the progress of this project- you're developing things in a fun and strange order and it's very interesting to watch!
lol this made chuckle. It is very strange isn't it. That's the life of a gamedev YTber I guess. I could work on this boring thing I don't want to work on, or something fun I think will make an interesting YT video
i have two funky ideas
- enemies specific for air combat with brooms could be cool, like bomb spells with huge aoe for ground target and more precise magic missiles to deal with flying enemies, the the witch can work as a figher bomber plane, maybe some mission specific thing like a bossfight agaisnt a dragon where the mana cost for flying is reduced to zero during the flying phase for this setpeace
- second one is silent hill aproach for render distance, so the player can fly as high as the sun(hopefully without burning their brooms) but a fog hides the distant terrain to save some frames
big’ol monsters in the sky. towers that shoot different magic, flying dragons or other creatures that attack, etc. You could even say in the lore that the sky is its own domain and so you’ll only be attacked by those creatures when you’re flying.
This would also allow you to lock off the sky in some areas, you’d have to destroy a tower next to a boss battle or whatever you have in mind in order to take to the skies with out getting shot down.
Awesome video! What Anthem did (which I think was pretty clever) is to over-heat the engines if flying too high, and cool them when flying down. It’s kind of having a max ceiling distance, but you can tailor it to different areas, where some heat the engines faster than others (and the user doesn’t perceive it).
Of course, your game doesn’t have any engines, but maybe the magic energy doesn’t reach when the player is high up in the air, or there’s a giant flying whale that eats the player if they reach a threshold 😁
this is a great idea. Off to model a flying whale. Also... I'm surprised you didn't comment on the one part lol.
@@AIAdev whales solve everything
@@AIAdev I actually had to look up if Tesla’s wheel cap design was prior to GC’s logo. Turns out… It is. But it’s also been compared to other stuff too, like IGN’s logo and Toxic waste 😁 So Tesla is a step up!
@@AIAdev you talking about the ordinary lake?
I like this idea as well, but since we are discussing the non-engine aspect, maybe the faster you go, the higher the risk, for a broom to catch fire, thus injuring the player, and slowly destroying the broom in itself. Resulting in cost mechanics to recreate or purchase to buy a new one. This added risk encourages gamers to search for the best uses for the crazy flying to avoid the risk. What do you think?
You could make large mountains and have the game in a large valley with a height limit for how high you can fly.
The mountains can the border of the game, and height limit for flying can be just under the mountain peaks =]
Maybe when attacking an enemy on a broom the player will slowdown after dealing Damage to the enemy and not be able to use the boost to get away with the broom while being engaged in battle.
Having the speed be reduced will actually make it easier to aim at the ground
You can experience this by playing any plane related games, the proper way to aim at the ground is to lower your speed so you have more time to aim while doing the flyby
Lowering the speed will probably end up turning a multiple flyby job into a 'fly one time and decimate all enemies in the area'
@@ironheavenz True I didn’t think about that. But Mana should decrease quite fast while fighting and flying that could help balancing it, but I do completely agree with your point
I agree that slowing the broom will probably not solve the problem. But maybe you could make the camera shake, when the player uses their wand while flying? It seems natural to me, that controlling the broom should be more difficult, when the player is focused on other spells. I also like the idea of blocking the boost while fighting.
I'm sure this will be drowned out in the other comments, but could you do something like increasing the mana consumption of flying the higher you go? you could make it super restrictive and have it scale up really quickly so players can't go too high otherwise their mana depletes super quickly.
Love the look of the game so far, keep it up.
yes!! this would be great to avoid players going to unwanted places in the beginning of the game/going super fast and not letting the game load. Each broom could have a “area of action” that consumed the default amount of mana, and if you go outside it, your mana would be drained so quickly that you would not be able to proceed flying.
Amazing idea, hope he sees this!
Maybe when attacking enemies on the broom, your "aim" are much larger, as in, it will hit randomly within this circle. Since your witch is both focused on staying on the broom, as well as slinging spells, so it makes sense that they can't be as precise and delicate, and are more likely to just throw something in a general direction, in hopes that it hits something.
My best guess for now would be to have a really optimized LOD and also not make flying too fast so that a computer wont try to render too much at once (but you’d probably wanna balance the flight speed anyway so that the world doesn’t start to feel small when you can travel like that I think). Maybe you could use games like Breath of the Wild, flight simulator and GTA as reference since they all have pretty big open worlds and flight systems? Especially Botw because it has a similar artstyle
How about the higher up you go, it drains mana faster so by the time you get to that height, you run out.
Alternatively, you could add a cloud layer, your vision gets lower as you go higher or something I don't know really.
The ol silent hill trick, smart lol
You should try making either a way bigger map, make flying slower, or just make it to where you can’t attack while flying or use items unless your hovering somewhat low to the ground
great suggestions :P
for the brooms i recommend that you cap how high you can fly relative to the terrain, also the brooms feel more of a mid to late game thing.
You could make the long-distance flight only accessible from specific points on the map. The limiting factor would be your mana because, in theory, you wouldn't be able to reach areas you aren't supposed to without first progressing enough.
You could also make ascension take a % of the total mana per second starting from a standard flight height, this would implement a maximum "roof" to your flight, but it wouldn't feel like the game is forcefully limiting your movement.
Personally, I think flight should be split into inter-area flight and intra-area flight. Inter-area flight would take less mana for distance, but you'd be limited to higher altitudes and only able to land at specific landing platforms, while intra-area flight allows you to fly starting from the ground but takes significantly more mana in order to limit how long and how far you can fly from your starting position. Areas with less "mana concentration" could make your mana usage skyrocket in order to make the player avoid places like cities, large oceans, or important story areas.
This is unrelated to flight, but I'm going to give some more stuff here if you want to read it:
- I think you should think about how you're going to make every enemy unique. When you look at an enemy from a distance you should be able to tell what it does and how to prepare for it, unique silhouettes are very important for this! Ultrakill does a fantastic job with strong silhouettes (however atm it lacks some variety in attack patterns, but it's still in development).
- Think about the player's desire for how to play when making tools in the player's arsenal. Make sure you aren't forcing the player into your playstyle unintentionally, give them the freedom to play how they want. Try to _encourage_ fun play styles rather than discourage worse ones. If the player wants to lame out the AI for 30 minutes when it would usually only take 5, let them. Because if you properly encourage the right behavior you will _never_ have to forcefully limit their options.
I'll compare two similar games that accomplish the same goal differently: Doom Eternal and Ultrakill are the types of games that want you to play a specific way, but they both guide the player in different ways. Doom punishes the player for not using other weapons by making each enemy have _very_ specific weaknesses, if you don't exploit those weaknesses you _will_ die. It forces the player to have fun by making the _only_ play style the "fun" play style. Ultrakill, however, encourages weapon swapping by putting a cooldown on your weapons but disregarding ammo. You can shoot as much as you want, but you aren't going to get nearly as much satisfaction out of it unless you play aggressively and use the weapons' synergy. Adding synergy between the majority of the weapons not only makes you feel badass, it makes you _look_ badass. Sure, you _could_ use only the revolver for the entire game, but it doesn't give the same damage output, it makes you look really lame, and it isn't as fun as using all the weapons at once. There's a reason why Ultrakill has 24k positive reviews and 194 negative reviews, with most of the negative reviews being satire. Hakita, the main dev, personally responds to many of the genuine concerns in the reviews, resolving most of them.
I feel like I went a bit too hard into praising Hakita there, but you get the point. Using encouragement in game design makes the biggest difference.
"Consumption rate per altitude" make sense even if it can be quite punishing. Most of the time you'd already consume a lot of mana just getting high instead of going forward and hovering around so it for sure would require planning around mana potions to even be viable. Totally a "just because you can doesn't mean you should" situation.
The idea of "inter-area" flight consuming less mana could work easely if wind/mana currents are visible to guide the player around. They'd be encouraged to go this way instead of wandering randomly. Some may be official, while others act as shortcuts or even the only way to reach some secret areas (unless you got that many mana potions on you... xD)
Another component that could work would be "flight experience", starting with only hovering first, then as you use brooms a lot the character would gain diverse passives from max_altitude to mana_consuption or even "silly trick animations" to filler in between level caps. This way, they only get to fly high after a long time (on top of having enough mana with global level-ups by then)
To compensate for the now mid/late game high flight, challenge/races on wind currents may be a fun way to entertain the player during early game.
@@renookami4651 oh, clarification:
I meant for mana to be expended going up when you've reached high-ish altitudes already. Forgot to type that part.
I think something that might help is making the broom use up more mana the higher above the ground you're flying
Amazing video! For the flight restriction I would add 3 things:
1. Mana consumption rate: The lower tier the broom, the more mana it will drain. This will make it more satisfying to getting a better broom.
2. Weather: This will increase the scope but adding a weather like strong winds on mountains or sandstorm in deserts will make it so you need a better broom to fly in those areas. So you have to travel on land until you find one.
3. A broom health bar. A health bar would mean either the broom will break or it has a recharge time. After 2 minutes of use you have to wait 10 min or something. The better the the broom the less cooldown. Or you have to repair the broom at a town when it breaks.
Hope this helps!
Thanks for the suggestions! 1 is already in the game, I’ll have to mull over the other two but they’re great suggestions!
Love the video AiA! Always an experience. Also: As for a fix to the scopification, maybe fog? It's how WoW's dealt with it for years, and, while not the prettiest, it also isnt the ugliest solution and its very functional in the sense of the world actually being OPEN. Love ya, gl on the project!
I like this idea, I'll have to try it out. Also, TY!
@@AIAdev Love to hear it. U got it broski!
maybe just make brooms INCREDIBLY expensive mana-wise to use. make it just cheap enough that you can fly around a small area, but not enough to break progression. better brooms are either faster or cheaper, allowing you to go further the deeper into the game you are
Great idea :)
oh my god this is I N S A N E 🤯 you should add more enemies, and yes why does your inspector looks different than mine 🤔
Good suggestion :)
Does my inspector look different? hmmm....
@@AIAdev thanks for listening to my suggestion, and yes it indeed does look different 🤨
he's using game creator asset
@@blankzyt 👌
For a ceiling there could be two stages, at first the player character could start icing up, shivering or gasping for air and then if they continue, they could start losing health due to the cold or lack of oxygen.
This way you could make Mana Valley an actual valley, as wide and as long as you like but with mountains on the edge that cannot be flown over. This could make for some cool narrow spots, canyons or tunnels to fly through.
Mountain Valleys often form rivers, and at one end you could have a giant Glacier that it's too cold or high up to travel too far along and at the other end you could have a fjord that is populated by giant Archer fish that shoot at you or just a truly huuuge magic Koi that leaps out of the water to eat you.
For the broom and the attacking problem, Maybe brooms require the wand to be inserted into them in order for them to truly fly properly, Otherwise all they can do is float just above the ground you'd still be quicker than on foot and able to cast spells but you would be forgoing the flight and boosting functionality.
You could make it co-op, so couples could play together. Witches and warlocks could have different strengths and weaknesses and use of those abilities to solve puzzles together!
I play a lot of Genshin Impact- which is also an open world with a sense of flying. One of the ways they keep players from exploring areas they shouldn't be in usually requires a form of "quest-locking" or only being accessible once a main quest is finished.
1.) One island is in the middle of the ocean and broken up into several smaller islands which encourage the usage of boats instead of flight. The entire stretch of islands also has a giant, invisible, forcefield that prevents you from entering it.
2.)Newer places are locked behind an elaborate cave system called "The Chasm" which you cannot so much as fly over until you finish the main quest to get there.
So all in all, to prevent accidentally exploring the main map you could try:
1.) Adding a level requirement to an area to prevent flight
2.) Allowing you to fly to the area but continually take damage. This could be from magic that went rogue or maybe from weather conditions.
3.) A forcefield or need to de-spell an area to enter it
4.) Quest-locking an area
All the best in your game endeavors! I just subscribed and I'm excited to see your progress!!! ✨✨✨
you should add flying enemies and enemies with far ranged attacks to make flying less OP, you could also add stuff like drafts which can make for either a good obstacle or a speed boost depending on where it's facing.
To stop players from getting to the world edge you could make that the whole map is an island, and when you get too far a chunk of the water (the one you see) and yourself gets drawn backwards, so you think youre moving even if you arent, and when you lose your mana you just die.
To scale down the Scope, you could make each area a Floating Island. With the “areas between” being “too dangerous to fly between” So teleportation is the best idea to get between islands.
Some players have suggested weather causing problems for people on brooms to dissuade flying out of bounds. Maybe a storm or fog makes flying out there dangerous.
Or maybe there are OP enemies out there, Subnautica is a map with no limits, but the actual play area is pretty small, if you leave the map, there are dangerous enemies that converge on your location. So the world still FEELS big
Just a couple ideas! :)
I have a few ideas to balance flying out.
1) mana is drained depending on altitude and speed. So the faster you go, the more mana you use, and the higher you go, the same effect happens. The altitude can be a way to keep players under a certain altitude and to discourage traveling over mountains into unknown areas.
2) Attacking while flying increases mana cost and decreases damage output. This makes it so that for more difficult monsters, the player will have to land to fight properly, while with trash monsters, it becomes easier to farm as they likely can be one shot at higher levels.
3) I think that hovering is an okay mechanic to have, but it won't be in place. It will have a slow fall. Accuracy of spells is decreased and mana consumption per spell is also increased.
4) Monsters need to be able to somehow attack the player while in the air, so some spells that the monsters can use with a higher degree of accuracy can be a nice addition.
5) Barriers such as altitude restrictions for certain brooms, the inability to fly against fast moving winds, altitude and water are all ways by which you can limit a players current movement freedoms. Flying against wind consumes more mana and reduces speed and stuff like that can limit a players movement without a physical barrier in place, so it feels like its still open world.
Let's go!! i've been waiting this devlog for 3 weeks!
The quality of this video and the game is on a whole another level. Keep up the great work.
Thanks syp! Your project is amazing too! You've made so much progress.
Was super excited for this devlog, thanks!
I said it last and I'll say it again I am very excited for this game. But make sure to take breaks you don't want to be over worked and have this project to become more like a chore than a fun activity. Once again great work the minute it comes out I will buy it.
you shouldn't put a height barrier and something like you get on fire if u go to high or the higher you are the faster your mana runs out (on broom)
If you go down the wrong path you'll make a Minecraft and everyone knows what happens to low end pc's when they try to work Minecraft.
You can also add a speed cap due to air resistance. (Getting yeeted off your broom and losing it when you try to do pedal to the metal)
Atmosphere reduction as you go higher either harder to breath equals harder to concentrate and have a (height)^3 percent chance for you to randomly lose conscious or have the spell stop working which means you fall.
Also same thing with temperature if you go to high.
Denser mana concentrations that limit where you can go therefore causing you to not go near them or just straight up die or see the first idea where two much mana means it explodes the broom or it goes a little bit to fast by consuming to much mana to quickly.
To stop people from just camping on brooms you could also add AA plants that shoot stuff like acid or pollen.
I’ve been working on my own game with DBZ-style flight for a while, and here are some tips:
1. Speed is (literally) relative to scale. If you can fly around really fast and attack, then add big enemies and big projectiles to compensate.
2. Perceived speed is relative to the closest object - this is inherent to the perspective projection. (This is another reason why “water levels suck” (TM).) The higher up you fly, the more counter-intuitively boring it will feel. My solution is to increase flight speed the higher up you go, while making flight very expensive - it’s a form of “fast travel”, or cape from Super Mario World.
3. With a proper LOD system for all elements, flying up high should actually be far less visually expensive than staying on the ground. The real trick is to make it look visually pleasing! Volumetric clouds and atmospheric scattering go verrrry far here. Repeating textures in terrain will become very obvious.
4. There *needs* to be something to do in all that free space. BotW is a great case to study here. Wherever you go, there are always visual “affordances” offered by the game, in terms of Link’s kit vs enemies, Korok puzzles, resources strewn about, etc. If you can’t make something here work, then you might need to axe some features :/
Good luck, always excited to see your progress!
EDIT: and I just realized this is an old video 😂
Thanks for the tips!
PS. I don't think 3.5 months is very old at all in terms of game dev lol.
You could make an enemy who can tp, so you have to use a game mechanic to immobilize the enemy; for example a machine that can be activated in a forgotten temple allows to immobilize the monster that is there. Or simply allow him to teleport, and you have to dodge his attacks.
Finally you could make a very powerful and scary boss, quite rare and mysterious. The problem is that when he sees you, it's better for you to run, a bit like the guardians of zelda breath of the wild.
(This will and challenge and action).
Hope my advice will help you...
You could ad a variable to the mana cost of flying which increases with altitude (or distance from the nearest ground if your feeling fancy), that would kinda prevent the player from going super high up unless they are in the end game and have a ton of mana. And on top of that it wouldn't feel as restrictive as a hard set altitude limit.
You could even expand the idea of increased mana cost for restricting flight with maybe some magical weather phenomenon that increase the cost when flying through.
fog can be used as surface mist that would "hide" details away and you could go with lesser lod in the environment. It'd be like flying in the morning, a charming atmosphere to the game. Would also encourage actual exploration, as it would still be likely for the player to miss things unless they get close, and that would make the map feel big.
1) "Flying" exp and level-up after using brooms for a long ammount of time could be a natural way to balance it. Mix in the learning of cool animation "tricks" just for flavor and you only gain an altitude boost once every few levels. Like this, you only end up flying high in the sky around late game, if no crazy grinding occurs.
2) For more nuance, brooms could aslo have a max_altitude cap, so only the rarest (or upgraded ones, if you choose this over other stats) would go that high.
3) Another, more punishing approach would be that the more height, the more mana consumption...Which can be frustrating yet force players to plan their travels.
Also, as discussed with other commenters, "guiding wind currents" (visible trails in the sky) on which your mana consuption get really low could be a good way to guide the player around. (the max altitude can be overridden while riding a current so you can use them to show points of interest while travelling) If you limit early game to hovering around, race/challenge using wind currents can be a great way to make the player experience the fun of high flight and fast flight before they can unlock better brooms allowing that for free flight.
Hey love the game but later in development you should add witch arena or witch trials. Witch arena is pvp between witches. Witch trials is a couple mini games which witches compete
What I love in games is a lot of movement options like double jumps dashes etc also make some epic spells with good animations
different spells are def planned!
Hey, Just wanted to say thank you for your comment and really appreciated the kind words. I love the content you have on here, awesome work. Will definitely tune in to future uploads!
Really excited to see the progress of this game, keep doing your thing AIA! You've quickly become on of my favorite game dev channels lol
5:00 the beauty of nature... so inspiring 😢
nodders
So this is largely the same idea as many of the other comments, but:
You could make points of interest (let's call them "leyline vents" for the duration of this comment, but they could be anything) on or even under the ground that contribute towards a mana consumption scaling factor, which are themselves scaled by distance. Ergo, the further you are from a "leyline vent" the more quickly you'll run out of mana. Go too high and you'll come crashing back down soon enough. Unlock two "leyline vents" and the space between them has effectively become a safe travel zone, at least as far as mana is concerned.
From there you can make different vents have different radii to give yourself more control over the world, and make the vents be in safer or more dangerous areas to modulate difficulty. Plus, a completionist like myself would then be motivated to unlock every vent, even if i don't have any need to broom around an area any more.
honestly, for me its not even about the Game. I just really like your Character. You're actually pretty funny and i like your Editing :D
Maybe more than using mana, they have to use "mana stones" or something that you dont have at the hand all time, fast traveling like that in a world that must be explore has to be something "exclusive", something like if you need to go back to some place you just past bc you missed something around there, use a mana-stone, fuel up the broom with magic and fly, this maybe could make in a future "the ultimate broom" that one that use mana and not mana-stones. Limits are the base of a game, you can do what ever you want, but to do it, first you have to pass through this ways. Keep going, its looking fantastic, small detail mecanics are what big games are made of.
Great video man! Love to see your content. As for nerfing brooms, maybe for each zone or area the player has to activate a tower or complete some event in order to have the ability to fly there (like a mini sidequest). Kind of like in breath of the wild you have to interact with a tower in order to access part of a map for that area.
This forces players to explore the area at least a little on foot but doesn't inhibit functionality entirely and rewards the player for putting in the effort. Maybe to prevent players from quickly running in to activate every zone, each tower or event spawns a few enemies they have to defeat first.
If you don't want to completely strip the broom away, make it so if they use it in an unactivated area it quickly drains their mana pool limiting how far they can travel.
I like this approach, especially the last part. A similar solution would be that the player has to destroy some kind of de-buff beacon to fly or reverse its effect from inhibiting you to buffing you.
There may even be beacons with different tiers. The lower their tier, the lower is your maximum flying height. Destroying the beacons one after the other increases your flying height. That way fortresses won't be easily breachable. You destroy a beacon and invade the fortress? Too bad, you have to destroy another beacon to fly to the top of the tower.
The beacons should have to be lower than the maximum flying height but somehow guarded by enemies or a puzzle.
I think a magic researching system to unlock spells, tools, armor and gadgets(possibly similar to Thaumcraft’s research system) would be sick. Using spells, defeating enemies, using something to analyze enemies, boss drops and visiting locations could grant research points. Also some researches could be tied to specific goals like defeating x boss. This would also allow a smooth integration to a questing system. Furthermore leveling/enchanting of the player, items and spells would be sick. Different effects or resistances could be applied to armors and tools. Aspects about the spell could be modified(casting speed, damage, range, homing, cost, subeffects, attack radius). What would also be cool is if you could have a familiar(owl, rat, toad, pigeon, etc.) that you can summon, that can follow you, aid you in battles, help with rituals, brews or enchanting and can possibly provide specific benefits if there are multiple different familiars.
Idea to fix flying view:
Section the map as a grid (invisible) also have your map made multiple times with different resolutions of mesh.
Figure out what distance you need certian details to be seen. Buildings, Landmarks or anything that needs to be seen anywhere. Mark these as high priority. These need a few meshes to swap through. High, medium, low and potato poly mesh (By poly I mean Tris or Verts)
Medium objects as well but mark as medium. These will need a High Poly mesh and a lowpoly mesh.
Immediate object in the scene marked as low. This you only need the highmesh.
Now the grid is used to divide the areas based on where the camera is. If you are on the upper most north part looking south, you render in each part of the map at diffrent resolution. Everything in the next cell, might be medium, so you have them on a low poly. If smaller things are there. Spawn them into place (even just move a pre-spawned object from nowhere).
I hope this makes sense, I am a 3D artist who also programs games for fun. I will try to find a refrence video and put it in the reply that will explain it better (I'm writing this a 2 in the morning and done this months ago). I hope this helps : )
ua-cam.com/video/kML67qB9Chk/v-deo.html
This essentially talks about what I said just as different parts and as separate concepts. It is much more comprehendable. "Play time performance" is where it begins. Although it is a very good watch (It may have been the reason I have done it a few times myself tbh 😅)
Yo. Good stuff. Witches are dope. Not an indie designer but a designer with some opinions you could potentially consider.
Flying in games definitely creates a larger amount of balance issues than future AIA will want to handle. For level design reasons, flying breaks almost everything if you want it to be fun.
1) Limit flight height. Keep mana consumption the way it is, otherwise flying becomes useless which is something you probably will not want. Controlling flight-specific zones can also be beneficial for balance. Things like no flying in town, caves, etc.
2) Flying enemies, weather, and more aerial player-related issues make flying a player scaling space just as land does. Flying enemies are higher level then ground enemies and don't interfere with the player unless they are in their space or something along those lines.
3) Lean into spell-flinging on brooms. Players will more than likely want to do it and will try to do it. If you control the want before the need then you can balance gameplay around "air born" spells before the players realize they can be OP. (Do something like attaching them to a broom or spell can only be cast at Y height if you're checking the player's distance to the ground for fall damage...you could be checking players speed wall falling as well, I don't know your code X_X )
4) Reference a game that has flying and land combat like Anthem. What did flying do for that game? Was it good, bad, what more could exist, and all that jazz. Don't repeat mistakes that already have happened and stuff like that.
Great video as always. One way to do it would be to make it cost mana the higher up they go (at an exponential rate or something similar so it's basically hard capped). This way players are incentivised to fly at low altitudes to preserve their mana but they are able to go for a sight seeing tour once in a while. But not too high or their mana bar would be drained in seconds. And you got an immersive reason for it too. Higher altitudes, thinner air, harder to maintain lift.
You could keep flying super close to the ground. It would work like a floating car I guess. It wouldn’t be as fun be it would be a lot easier for you.
The flying looks super fun in this! Also, your video editing is amazing!
I like that the flying uses mana - especially considering that you drop your stuff when you die, so you can't just hop on a broom and fly away in a panic unless you have the foresight to leave early or distance yourself enough to use a potion.
But, it feels like being able to attack while flying could be a problem later down the track when players have a lot of mana and mana potions. Maybe enemies that shoot ranged projectiles/hitscan could help? (I feel like I'm not helping with the feature bloat here... sorry about that.)
Very excited to see where this goes - already wishlisted!
you should land lock the broom flight so its constant distance above the ground but then make it so they are not constantly moving forward for a balanced trade off (the broom would obviously be faster than walking/sprinting) (i realize land lock is not the best word because i think they should be able to broom across the water) Another thing i thin you should add is a button to press to activate the broom (if that's not already implemented) another enemy you could add could be a bat that rests upside down in trees till you got close enough then it could attack you!!
Amazing devlog! The game is turning out well, the flying mechanic is definitely fitting and it was fun watching you implement it. Keep these coming! 😁
Glad you enjoyed it!
I would create some type of no fly zones or turbulence, so if you go to high then the flight becomes extremely unstable and you potentially hit a no fly zone which just disables flying for a set amount of time (doesn't remove the player from the broom but just makes it stop floating). This will create a more natural barrier that players won't feel as much as something like an invisible wall.
As for the rendering problem you're going to have to make extremely heavy use of the LOD system if you want to render at an extreme distance, Fog helps to hide render distance and if done correctly can also look visually appealing. You could also put a depth of field blur on the camera when you're on the broom so it focuses the player's vision and prevents them from seeing anything they aren't really looking at.
As for the danger of the broom, I would maybe add some flying enemies like eagles or something that will attack you occasionally that way the player has to conserve MP for rapid escape if necessary, you could also add some ground based enemies that act like surface to air missile launchers, in that they only attack when the player is flying and they have tracking projectiles.
Some other people mentioned weather so you could make it where if it's raining it drains significantly more magic to fly, or have a chance for the player to get struck by lightning.
You could also drain mp based on the height the player is above the ground, so if a player is relatively low they can go for longer periods but have to deal with the danger of obstacles like trees, but if they go above the trees then they are safer but can't go nearly as far.
I literally started learning Unity to make a quidditch game and you're out here doing one effortlessly 😭 Great job, AIA!!👌
This is great news. Future AIA just needs you to call it Valleyditch and needs you to release it for free.
@@AIAdev then I'm gonna need that code cuz my brooms are a long way from flying that smoothly😅
Could you add some summon staffs to summon enemies that are passive towards you
You could add sections were if the player wants to explore further they have to be grounded. You could also add narrative appropriate barriers to why they player can't or at least may not want to fly over certain areas. Essentially you could add something like a barrier or go a more play based route were there's some type of enemy that shoots players down depending on were they are story wise and maybe there's a slight chance to slip through depending on certain factors.
I’m loving your content man. As an aspirational game developer these vids are not just entertaining but motivational and educational 👌🏿
I love watching your progress! Makes me happy to see people are making games with unitys game maker.
thank you :)
Cool stuff man. Love the editing as well.
Ah yes, the clasic performance messure of 'spider trains in a forest'
😅
I think brooms should act as a useful tool for navigating...sometimes. In the early game especially, I can see the brooms moreso acting as ways to get out of combat or hairy situations, meaning I think the mana consumption should be much higher. Additionally, if you want to fix the problem with players "peaking under the curtain", maybe including clouds that obscure the players view, or having a fog effects that gets denser the higher up the player is. Last recommendation is including some sort of "boost pad" you can find in the air while flying around that will restore mana and put you in the boost state(maybe instead of being able to activate in manually). These could be rings, special birds, fairies, whisps, or something of the same matter. Bonus points if its something tha player can change the position of which would allow the creation of some pretty sick "broom courses" players could make.
I think the phrase "follow the fun" is important for game design. If flying is fun then it should be an early feature that is woven into the core of the game. Maybe work into the lore some large anti magic pillars as an out of bounds guard? Stuff that saps the players magic abilities if they cross them. Then set the game on an island. So brooming out into nowhere would be a sentence to fall into the water.
This keeps the play area secure and makes sure flying is still encouraged and fun.
You could cap the max height reached of every broom. The basic broom would only be allowed to fly a few feet above the trees, and also quite slow, so its main use really is to go over medium sized bodies of water. In contrast, finishing the game will give you the ultimate broom, which gives infinite flight, so you can watch over the whole map when you completed everything. Anything else in between, you know what to do. Just scale them linearly.
It would be fun if the brooms were actually a monster in the game... In some witch stories the broom has a personality and some "sass". So adding them as a monster type, and having your character tame them would be a nice way to add some "fun difficulty" obtaining them. And in that way there could be broom farms, and maybe some minigames for you to tame your broom.
As for the whole flying to infinity and beyond... Adding fog is a way of dealing with map issues, but I don't see it as a negative point adding a max height to flight. And about air combat, you could create a monster that is a "helping raven" or something... When this raven sees you attack a land monster they call up more ravens nearby and attack you. Maybe this way you think twice after attacking any land mob.
this video is so good, the flow is really good and transitions are so smooth was such a good watch! cant wait to see where your game goes from here keep up the awesome work uso :)
thanks so much!
Flying stationary enemies, flying enemies that can follow the player, grounded enemies with predictive projectiles, grounded enemies with homing projectiles. Maybe a group or clan of evil witches than have similar abilities that the player has than can spawn after a while of the player flying or flying over a specific area
You should add wizards that would be cool!
oh and if you do would it be Harry Potter style with wands and brooms or staffs with more powerful magic?
Oh and maybe mak the world loop?
I have an idea, to make sure that the player doesn't go flying anywhere, make it so that it can fly a certain amount over sea level (like 200 meters) and then add items/positions to make it fly higher (like 300, 400, 500 meters)
And if you want, make so that the higher you fly, the more mana it takes
Another awesome video and some more great progress for the game! Fantastic job! ^-^ I can't wait to see where you take this project!
Thank you! 😄
Great and fun work man, thank you, keep doing such delightful content if possible!
P.S. eagerly waiting to try out your game in the future
Flying is such a OP but crucial skill, i need it for traveling if u don't have the teleport spell or if u are on a special quest, but this also let's you skip a lot of dangerous mobs that may protect some good loot. But I recommend making the speed get's higher at higher altitudes, that will make easier to travel islands at a faster way, but at low altitudes it will be fast enough for not crossing the entire island in a instant.
I aspire to make games for a living. I had just gotten kicked out of my house this year (The start of february) and have been watching since you started this series, quietly dreaming myself. I see so much potential in this game, I am almost certain it will be a success. This devlog is not only entertaining, it's extremely informative and gives me some motivation and inspiration during these troubling times.
I think that flying up to a certain altitude should add a freezing effect to the broom until the broom becomes static, and then falls down. Kind of like what happened to ironman when flying too high. This way you can set the maximum altitude that the player can fly to without the need for an invisible barrier. This also gives the player an indication of when they are flying too high. Hope this helps!
you could make it so every area of the game initially has border/barrier to prevent flying over it and once the area is completed remove the barrier. This could be kinda cool in the game progression because the more you progress the more flight freedom you get, if it makes sense
When flying and casting spells spells cost more mana (x1.2 , x1.5 or whatever feels right) but customizable per spell. So just another attribute on each spell flyingCostMultiplier.
With that they can't really spam spells while flying bcz they risk falling (unless it makes sense for certain spells - dunno maybe illumination spells or smth).
Also when flying homing is disabled on all homing missile spells (or again introduce attribute isHomingWhenFlying).
Maybe introduce some bats or other enemies in that mid-sky region that can attack and follow you when you provoke them from the ground , but their main thing is to be in air and tilt/move your wand so you can't get accurate shot (but could also be annoying to players so maybe check if it even feels good. (I'm kinda late to the party , and this is 2nd video from you I watched but maybe this helps)
I remember Harry Potter 2 for PS2 having a broom you could use outside hogwarts and I spent days just flying
This reminds me so much of that but upgraded and balanced, looks like tons of fun!
I also feel like every person that has ever heard about quidditch has an unfulfilled dream of playing it and EA never gave the true quidditch experience we're all looking for on any of their games
This is amazing!
Also: I'm definitely buying this
Aside from coloring the brooms can have different designs or some other accessory to distinguish each other.
As for flying, it is rare to see Open World games with FLYING (not to be confused with gliding), the height limit and stamina/mana depletion are good. To not abuse the mechanic.
Story wise, you could limit it further by dividing each area into zones, if you go beyond the boundaries while flying you crash down or a lightning strike hits. Of course this would make the player really restricted.
Another thing you can try is what Final Fantasy XIV does, each new maps is filled with something called "Aether currents" these are some nodes scattered around the place, collect em all and the ability to fly unlocks in that area. There is an item that helps you pinpoint these as in: "Its M meters away southeast" again is really restrictive but it pushes exploration as a trade off.
Can't think of much else 😅 this is harder than I thought it would be.
In order to stop sky ganking give the enemies ranged attacks.
For example, Pomploos could spit seeds when players are out of melee range, but in a different, larger, radius of ranged attacks.
It’s funny that you put slime of slime rancher sound for enemy
make some quirks on each broom! itd be so cool to see a broom that flies faster but cant go very high, or a broom that can hover but flies slower, more practical for battling enemies, or one that has its own unique attack or defense mechanism, im sure you can come up with plenty of your own ideas!
Haha I had the exact same thought process, which led me to making Smashball, where I had the benefit that flying was only allowed in the Stadium 😀 For your game it might be cool to really use the flying as a travel mechanic between the different scenes. Also instead of a snitch, there might be flying mobs to attack the player *cough* Dragons *cough* 🙂
you could make it so flight is used mainly to navigate a sort of space between space, where you enter portals and have to fly through the void to reach the next location which would limit the maps allowing you to keep a small size, and lets you make floating structures and all sorts of goodies and various challenges of the like, while also still being able to have fun zooming around at high speeds.
Now for the the problem of the player being able to see the entire map, just add mist, that should cover up things. Then for the player being able to just attack enemies in mid air, make a separate enemy that just has a ranged attack, or give the already existing enemy a ranged attack. it is pretty cool to see this game develop though, good job on it!
I think you should be able to tame certain enemies. It would be cool to maybe give an enemy a food they like will tame them, and maybe you can do research on these enemies and earn exp from them. (Maybe a researcher npc and side quests relating to them?)
Maybe you could have options like researching / making them your pet. Researching can give some exp and making them a pet can either be a nice house pet or an ally that will fight with you. Maybe some can be stronger and weaker against certain bosses (did I mention that boss battles will be cool?) and it'll give incentive to making them pets.
I know I'm pretty late to the development in terms of what progress may or may not have already been made, but I was thinking about how to limit the scope of areas and such. I know that a common concept in magical fiction is barriers, so perhaps you can keep the world open to fly around in but wall off certain parts with barriers that unlock via some sort of story progression
Somehow this video got into my recommendations. Man, this is literally a game I've dreamed of making someday. I've rewatched the quidditch scenes many times. I'm 27 now and I still dream of flying on a broomstick. And I thought it would be necessary to create a game in which I could fly on a broomstick. For example, the game is about a cute young witch, who is flying on a broomstick, and also she has a magic wand.. Now I'm watching this video and I'm shocked that this is also a dream game for someone and he's developing it right now. I hope I live until you reach 100k followers and I can play the game of my dreams. Good luck.
I know it’s been a hot minute since you uploaded your video, but for your broom scope issue:
- Having no fly areas, barred with either a stormy sky or some sort of tower that will shoot you down is a possibility (you could think of Borderlands world borders as well).
- You could also make the magic of the broom just sputter out at high altitudes as a more natural height border, where you’ll fall back down a few meters or so before regaining flight capabilities.
- I think reducing the time that one is able to fly could also help restrict player movement to a more lateral rather than vertical scope, but I’m not sure.
Extra possibilities:
- You could make it so that brooms have their own flight meter, completely unrelated to one’s mana pool and instead related to the broom’s own unique value and rarity. With this, you could make the idea of flying enemies much more viable to fight in the air, and have a limit to how much time someone could fly for with the rarity or type of broom they’re using. This might also help with broom usage duration, because in your video, I noticed that it would take a long time to deplete your mana pool fully just by flying.
- You could also add damage reduction to enemies on the ground that you attack while flying, to where they would take less damage to avoid cheesing larger enemies out of combat. That’s something to worry about later, though.
Looks great so far, and I look forward to your next update on the game!
I feel like I just uploaded this video! Great suggestions, I’ve been processing everyone’s suggestions… we’ll see what I do!
Add a height gauge on the side, and increase mana usage when flying too high. Use the in-lore explanation that venturing too far from the planet reduces the effects of natural ley-lines, thus increasing the drain on your personal mana pool. For extra fun, add some glowing pools near the surface that you can fly over and skim to refuel mana for distance travel
I love this
Since attacking from broom is so OP against enemies who only have ground-based attacks, you could make flying and attacking at the same time a skill which can only be unlocked at higher levels / later stages of the game when enemies can fight back using attacks/spells/curses of their own which can reach you on the broom.
Probably set a height and speed limit for each broom. Weaker brooms can take you at best to next town, or maybe even halfway while consuming tons of mana, while higher, harder to earn brooms can go either faster, higher, or go for longer. Each one especializes in one aspect, not all.
0:05 I appreciate the ragdoll physics. Too funny. 😂
Flying looks super fun and I can definitely see you chasing the fun with this game.
Thanks Skeffles! Ya, I’m kind of trying to find my way as I go.