How to implement stealth in a TDS shooter?/Other TDS ideas.

[disturbed_one]

So, fellow 2d gamers. The question is simple. How would you implement sneaking in a Top Down shooter? My next project is going to be a game like that, and I was wondering what would be the best way to sneak around? What do you feel about crouching and low walls, movement speed with relation to sound detection etc.

EDIT: Also, I'd like people to express their feelings about different controls, camera following the mouse and anything else they'd like to see in a top down shooter.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Look up the 2D Metal Gear games, especially Metal Gear 2 (the MSX version, not the NES one that was made by a different team) and the GBC version of Metal Gear Solid (which was called Metal Gear Ghost Babel outside of the US). Kojima pretty much perfected top down stealth with those two, I can't imagine anything better without going 3D.

 

[disturbed_one]

I played some older MGS games, but I don't exactly recall how stealth functioned. Anyway the shooter could have elements of survival horror, and there could be creatures that wouldn't only rely on vision and sound, but smell also.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

Stealth in the old Metal Gear Games was basically you avoiding the guards line of sight. You could walk right past them and they wouldn't notice.

 

[Triangulon]

Check out the early Commandos games. Really hard and atmospheric using sight lines and sounds.

 

[disturbed_one]

Played Commandos when I was just a kid. What about other ideas to modernize a 2D game?

 

[Sean Hollyman]

Played Commandos when I was just a kid. What about other ideas to modernize a 2D game?

Just use something like the soliton radar from MGS, and maybe also include some kind of noise meter. The faster you move, the more noise fills the meter, and when it is high enemies can hear you.

 

[WarpZone]

No. No, no, no. Ignore all those other posts.

THIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZk9hxSmup8

Every sound effect has a VISIBLE radius. You can see the sound ripple out from every footstep and attack. You can see the sound collide with the enemy's ears. You can see the guards' line of sight. Every single way you can fail, you can see it right there on the screen. When you fuck up, you know EXACTLY what you did wrong. And it even has a great in-character tutorial that explains how systems work, one piece of the puzzle at a time.

It's basically perfect.

Do this, only zelda instead of castlevania, and you'll be golden.

 

[WoW Killer]

Commandos series is what I immediately thought of. The particular thing you might want to look at is the way you can click on a target to see their vision as like a pie-segment thing. The trouble with top-down is that it's otherwise difficult to judge what your targets can see (in a first-person view you can kind of get an indication based on what you can see).

How are you dealing with being seen, and the resulting combat? That's always been a problem of the stealth genre IMO.

 

[DoPo]

No. No, no, no. Ignore all those other posts.

THIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZk9hxSmup8

You know, I was just thinking of something similar. And somebody did it already. So, yeah, I was going to say "Something along the lines of Commandos with sound detectable in a radius." So basically that ^ but in top-down view.

 

[disturbed_one]

How are you dealing with being seen, and the resulting combat? That's always been a problem of the stealth genre IMO.

It's not completely a stealth game, but the lack and conservation of ammo is critical. That's why I'd like to make the player choose to fight or sneak their way through. If that's not possible, find an alternate route.

The thing is, I haven't decided if I should write my own engine (which is really time consuming, and I'd have to learn a lot to do it), or use existing engines and development environments. Possible routes to take are: Game Maker, Game Editor, Unreal Development Kit and Unity. I don't know whatwould be the best solution to that. Don't think this is just some stupid idea. Sketches, game mechanics and storyline are being developed, and I have a couple of guys interested in it. I've worked in 2D before, and I'm not too keen on 3D. That's why this TDS idea came to mind a couple of years ago. I've collected ideas and sketches and now I feel like I could start making the actual game.

No. No, no, no. Ignore all those other posts.

THIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZk9hxSmup8

Every sound effect has a VISIBLE radius. You can see the sound ripple out from every footstep and attack. You can see the sound collide with the enemy's ears. You can see the guards' line of sight. Every single way you can fail, you can see it right there on the screen. When you fuck up, you know EXACTLY what you did wrong. And it even has a great in-character tutorial that explains how systems work, one piece of the puzzle at a time.

It's basically perfect.

Do this, only zelda instead of castlevania, and you'll be golden.

I hope this comes for PC. The visualization of sound kind of looks like I imagined I'd code the sounds being detected, making a circle-like sprite at the point of the origin of sound, and if it collides with enemies, they "hear" it.