I've been debating over some game mechanics for The Gauntlet in order to get the game to flow a little more smoothly. One of the big things that I want to take care of is to give each mover, be it player or enemy, pixel-based movement along the grid system, with circular collision detection.

Basically what that means is that when your character moves or when an enemy moves, they will move in their specified direction by a number of pixels until they've reached the next tile, then they'll stop. Detecting when two movers have bumped into each other will, instead of being done on a tile-by-tile basis, instead be done with collision detection where if one mover is within a certain distance in pixels to another, they've bumped.

What that means is that you, as the player, won't be harmed by enemies until you're actually close to them in terms of pixels. So if you're moving onto a tile that the enemy is moving off of at the same rate, you'll never touch. Likewise, if you see an enemy moving onto your tile, you have a brief moment to start moving your character away from that tile before the enemy will harm you.

Hopefully those changes will remove some of the frustrations from the older system - the difficulty of trying to figure out which way enemies are moving.

I was thinking I'd give the game an over world map, which is just a quick way for the player to wander around the world without having to explore a bunch of empty terrain. On the over world map there would be villages made up of individual houses that the player can enter for a zoomed in view, and dungeons, which are places that the player can enter in search of loot.



Loot is the main reason for the player to enter dangerous areas now. Finding treasures will get you money, and money will get you where you want to go. You may need to pay for passage through a mountain pass, or pay a fee to cross a span of water on a ferry. Of course, you'll need to buy some equipment in the towns, too. But for the most, towns will be there as a place for the player to glean information on where to find things, and just to give the game a general feeling of not being so alone.

I'm thinking I'll throw in a nice little fade in, fade out visual effect for when the player enters a house or dungeon, or changes rooms within the dungeon. So when the player goes through a door, you'll see the door open, a glimpse of what's on the other side, then everything will fade out, then fade back in again with the player on the other side, then the door closes. This will help to differentiate areas, so that its easier for the player to know when an area has been reset.

I still need to figure out a good overall goal for the story though. Anyone have any suggestions? I was thinking either a "find your missing friend" or "find the legendary treasure" type of quest. So you'll find yourself on an island, hunting for treasures in order to pay your way and find the items that you'll need in order to get to your primary goal.