Gamestar Forum

Looping Level: An alternative to wraparound. The level is surrounded by copies of itself, so that you can run infinitely in a single direction without leaving the level. It's basically the same as wraparound, except it's smoother, it works with multiple screens, and it allows for infinite environments.

Badge: When the player picks up this item, they get a customized badge which shows up in a special folder of their Workshop. These badges can be refused, deleted or rearranged; this means that the player can build a collection of their proudest accomplishments.

Here are some new System Sprite ideas:



Attempt Keeper: This system sprite increments by 1 every time you restart the level.

Distance Meter: A system sprite which monitors the avatar's position. Settings include:

• What the meter should start at.
• How quickly the meter should increase/decrease as the avatar moves.
• Whether the meter should increase as the avatar moves up, down, left or right.

War Meter: A system sprite which compares the populations of two different enemies. The population of the first sprite is shown on top, and the population of the second sprite is shown on the bottom. If the first number reaches 0, you lose; if the second number reaches 0, you win.

Hidden System: A system sprite which is invisible to the player. The system sprite it represents can be chosen and edited in the settings menu, much like a Gift sprite.

Slot Block: A block with a horizontal or vertical opening running through it; bullets can pass through, but sprites cannot.

Wanderer: An enemy which moves diagonally and bounces off solid objects.

Ninja: This enemy becomes intangible whenever you fire a bullet, making it immune to all attacks. However, it has a short delay before disappearing, so you can frag it by firing at close range.

Locked Chest: A treasure chest with a red, blue or green lock. When a key is applied to it, it reveals the item inside.

Gold Gear: An optional item. When someone posts a review of your game, the number of gold gears she collected is displayed above the review. This would be extremely useful for people who want to design games with optional goals.

Power Brick: When you touch this block, every enemy on the screen is damaged. The block can deal 1 to 5 damage.

Beam Block: A destructible block which fires a continuous beam up, down, left or right. The avatar will be damaged if it tries to cross the beam's path.

I'd get as far away from the oceans as possible.

What would you do if we discovered aliens, but have no information about them?

To be honest, I settled on Omni_Builder in about 30 seconds; I've thought about changing to "Isometrus," but eventually decided that it would be more confusing than an improvement.

Omni_Builder refers to the fact that I like to build all different types of games. At least, that's how I envisioned it during my early days of playing Gamestar Mechanic, and I've tried to keep up with the title.

Naviron Minotaur: An enemy with no Turn Direction option. When it hits a barrier, it checks to see if there is a block to its left--if not, it turns left. If so, it checks to its right, turning right if free. Otherwise, it reverses its direction. This could be an interesting dynamic in top-down games, if enemies could actually navigate simple paths.

Karakuri Spring: A jumping enemy for top-down games. It hops like a Bunny or a Cricket, but it only inflicts damage while it's on the ground. This means that the avatar can run underneath it while it jumps by.

Blue Thief/Red Thief: Based on the Thieves from Chip's Challenge. When the avatar touches the blue thief, all its powerups are taken. When the avatar touches the red thief, all its keys are taken.

Timer Block: Destroys itself when the Timer reaches a certain value. This could be useful for choreographed events.

Zoom: When testing a game, you can zoom out the level, allowing you to see more of the game at once. This could be very helpful, especially if the designer wants to see how close an avatar can get to a sprite before it activates. This feature could also be available to teachers as one of their "cheats."

More Lose Messages: When the avatar is fragged, the lose screen could show an image of the enemy or block which fragged it.

Debug Mode: A little button in the bottom-right corner can be used to play the game in Debug Mode. In this mode, an extra System sprite is added which shows the framerate of the game and the number of sprites which the level is processing at once. In addition, enemies and blocks could leave colorful trails which indicate their paths and motion patterns.

Racers: Enemy tank sprites which are constantly turning slightly to the left or the right, causing them to move around in circles. The shooting version of these sprites could be even more interesting.

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(Edit: NOOOOOOOO!)

ONOMATOPOEIA

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