User blog:Dessertmonkeyjk/Constuct 1 - Co-op

Since I'll be busy doing mostly lore correlation, I've decided to explain some of the core game mechanics in in a series of blogs titled "Construct". This lets me go into more depth of what each concept is about, what role it plays, what connects to it, and why I chose it. So let's start with one of the very early concepts known as Co-op.

Role
So how does Co-op work in a 3D platforming/beat'em up enviroment? That is not an easy question to answer and is a delicate thing to make work well with everything else. Two to three players aren't typically running around at once which in a normal platformer can break puzzles, obstacles, enemies, bosses, and even entire levels. This in turn means that everything has to take into account that one to three players can be active in a level at any one time and all angles need to be covered in such cases.

So let's break down the elements here: There are three players; each player can only be one character; each character has a predetermined set of abilities; these abilities limit what they can do and where they can go; characters share common abilities such as climbing ladders; characters can use abilites to tag team quests such as obstacles; characters can use combat spectialty to play team roles in enemy engagements.

That's alot of traits to cover in multiple aspects of the game itself. So how do I counter this? I do what any sane person does and look at examples such as Guantlet, a 4-player co-op dungeon crawler. You'd be surprise what kind of inspiration you can draw from other genres. In this example, three characters specialize in both combat and mobility focused roles.

These are the summery of each character's range of movement, combat, and range weapon/tool.

Spyro

Mobility Range: Long

Combat Range: Medium

Range Type: Drop Shot

Elora

Mobility Range: Short

Combat Range: Long

Range Type: Kinetic Bolt

Colas

Mobility Range: Medium

Combat Range: Medium

Range Type: Grapple Rope

Associated Mechanics
As I stated before, Co-op can either make or break a game like this and should be planned in advance before assembling code. The following mechanics rely or are adapted to take into consideration the use of Co-op.
 * Control Scheme
 * Level design
 * Quests
 * Combat
 * Resurrection Piller
 * Enemies
 * Adaptive Dialouge

Why I chose this
Imagine that you see your friend playing a 3rd person, action-adventure, platformer, etc. game and ask if you can play as well. The answer is typically "No." since most platformers don't support Co-op in any compacity except the old stand by of handing the controller every time the other guy dies. This actually wasn't planned at all until I realised that the three character arcs would take a long time to complete solo and was prime for this potential that opened up all sorts of options. I'm actually puzzled on how to handle it too so I resort to looking at game design handbooks and other co-op games. It won't be easy to pull off, that's for certian but I'll do what I can on my own I guess.

Conclusion
That's the main lowdown on Co-op but due to its nature of being a critical keystone there is alot of things to cover such what its relationship to the other mechanics. Pretty much everything that is listed under Associated Mechanics I will go into more detail but for now I need to rework Malefor's info. I... apperently didn't do my reaserch very thouroughly and need to rework the foundation and whatever is connected to it.

Anyway, I'll be covering Adaptive Dialouge next when I get the chance. Toodaloo!