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[Annabelle Kennedy]

yes a huge difference it will severely disable my enjoyment of it.. its my only complaint about the demos.

for a game that's supposed to be centered around frenetic action and exciting battles.. it will feel stale..

also tiny levels!

but the camera movement is infinitely more important to me.  feel free to ignore this though, its not my project.

[Stij]

I was pondering about the scaling issue, and I remember one pixel game that has scaling camera: Star Control 2. There's just a different sprite for each level of "zoom". Of course, SC2's sprites are static ships, so I'd imagine they were much easier to make then detailed, animated fighter sprites.

Still, something to think about.

[Melly]

If all of this game looks anything like this it'll make my eyes weep out of pure joy.

[Xion]

Thought it'd be cool if Outer Wall was a vertically scrolling level, travelling up, slowing down, stopping at the top, and then beginning to scroll back down again, slowing, stopping, and beginning again from the start.

edit: also, could a gauntlet-esque camera work, where the view sort of lies at the average of all players' coordinates, and if they get too far away from one another, they go outside of the view and die? No scaling, larger levels, happy people. Offscreen items could be represented by an icon at the edge of the screen. (Just an exclamation point or something, to reduce the sprite requirement)

Also also, AWESOME TILE AND LAYOUT IS AWESOME.

[Soulliard]

edit: also, could a gauntlet-esque camera work, where the view sort of lies at the average of all players' coordinates, and if they get too far away from one another, they go outside of the view and die? No scaling, larger levels, happy people. Offscreen items could be represented by an icon at the edge of the screen. (Just an exclamation point or something, to reduce the sprite requirement)

That's what I was thinking would work best, only I think the camera should zoom out if the characters are too far apart. Zoomed out pixel art is ugly, but random deaths are just not fun.

[Lucaz]

What of having empty areas at the sides of the level, filled with wall or nothing at all, so th camera can move slightly, without leaving player outside the screen? If the player are all on the left, the camera centers on them, and some of the right part of the level is out of the screen, and if they disperse, it centers back on the whole level.

[Zaphos]

That's what I was thinking would work best, only I think the camera should zoom out if the characters are too far apart. Zoomed out pixel art is ugly, but random deaths are just not fun.

If we zoom relatively quickly between integer zoom levels (1x, 2x, & 3x?) and assume a decent screen resolution (say, 1280x960 ish) to allow the 3x zoom to still show a decent amount of the level, then it might be okay visually?  Provided the transitions can be done without being too jarring.

[battlerager]

Yes, scrolling and then zooming out if the characters are too far away from each other.

We should at least TRY that. 

[Hideous]

That's what I was thinking would work best, only I think the camera should zoom out if the characters are too far apart. Zoomed out pixel art is ugly, but random deaths are just not fun.

If we zoom relatively quickly between integer zoom levels (1x, 2x, & 3x?) and assume a decent screen resolution (say, 1280x960 ish) to allow the 3x zoom to still show a decent amount of the level, then it might be okay visually?  Provided the transitions can be done without being too jarring.

You can't assume a resolution like that. I have 1280x800, for example. And not everyone has widescreen, either.

[Zaphos]

You can't assume a resolution like that. I have 1280x800, for example. And not everyone has widescreen, either.

Er, I didn't mean 'assume exactly that,' just assume something large enough.  Could also assume 'at least 1024x768' and just don't offer the third zoom level unless the screen resolution is large enough to make it useful.  The main thing is that the resolution needs to be large enough that 1x zoom is enough to show the full stage, 'cause you can't really go below that nicely.

[Gainsworthy]

I'd like to see zoom tried, sure, but I've got a feeling it'll be rather awkward in a game like this. Maybe I'm wrong, though.

I'm all up for auto-scrolling levels, though! Keep things interesting.

[William Laub]

Keep in mind that in Smash Bros, the scrolling level forced people to focus almost entirely on climbing and ignore the other players. It might work, though, if it scrolls slowly and at a constant speed instead of quickly and with varying speed like in those others.

[Stij]

Y'know, we could always just do splitscreen.

[Valter]

I like it, but the single block towards the top might trip people up without adding much use to the stage. I love the tiles, though, and I would recommend using at least that tileset for the stage.

I'm also of the opinion that there should be a bit more to it than just those few ledges. I would recommend adding a bit more height to it, and also messing with the KO details. Would it be cool if the wind would help blow you back onto the stage if you get knocked to the right to far? It would probably help and prevent the stage from getting too one-dimensional.

[narasu]

I'll have to say no to Stij, that'd be pretty frustrating because most of the time the players will be close to one another anyway.