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[William Broom]

What he means by looping is that when you fall off the bottom of the screen, you loop around to the top.

And yeah, I think standard mode should be a 'last man standing' thing like in Smash Bros. It does mean that sometimes people have to wait around for a while if they've died, but the alternative is just so anticlimactic and arbitrary.

[Soulliard]

A better alternative to looping would be that if you fall off the stage, you would take some damage and respawn without losing a life.

[mokesmoe]

Let me clarify to clear the confusion.
He is suggesting 3 modes.

1. Ring-out: People only die when knocked off the stage, they have unlimited health.
2. Stamina: People only die from running out of health. Falling off the edge doesn't kill you, you just move back up to the top.
3. What we have now: A combination of both. You can die from both running out of health, and falling off the edge.

Hope that helps.

[Soulliard]

I like those options, only for Stamina mode, falling off should still cause some damage. Otherwise, it will get overused as a dodging technique.

[mokesmoe]

I agree to the taking damage when falling, and the 'when the match ends' should be an option like "Match over at X deaths" or "Match over at X people left"

[Clemens]

Alright, thanks again for clearing things up!

I agree to the taking damage when falling, and the 'when the match ends' should be an option like "Match over at X deaths" or "Match over at X people left"

Hmm, I don't know. "Match over at X deaths" is more or less Frag Mode and using more than one player left and the match ends would seem kind of odd to me.

So, here's a modified version of the game modes list:

• Standard Mode
  Each player has a set number of lives. The player can lose a life by running out of hit points or falling off the stage. The match ends, when there is only one player left.
  
• Stamina Mode
  Same as Standard Mode, except that players don't automatically lose a life by falling off the stage, but it deals a small amount of damage. The match also ends when there's only one player left.
  
• Ring-Out Only Mode
  Same as Standard Mode, except that players can not lose a life through damage, but only from falling (or being knocked) off a stage. However, when dealing damage to another player, he will lose hit points, thus receiving a higher knock back.
  
• Time Mode
  Score a point for every kill, but lose a point for every death. The match ends when the set time runs out. Winner is the player with the most points.
  
• Frag Mode
  Score a point for every kill. In this mode, the player has no lives (not to mix up with hitpoints) and the winner is determined by whoever reaches a set number of points first.
  
• Team Standard Mode
  As standard mode, but with teams. The game ends when one team is completely wiped out.
  
• Team Stamina Mode
  As Stamina Mode, but with teams.
  
• Ring-Out Only Mode
  As Ring-Out Only Mode, but with teams.
  
• Team Time Mode
  As time mode, but each team shares a single score.
  
• Team Frag Mode
  As frag mode, but each team shares a single number of kills.
  
• Tug of War Mode
  The battle consists of two teams. There is a single bar at the top of the screen with a marker in the middle. Dealing damage moves it in one direction, and taking damage moves it to the other. Win by moving the marker all the way to your opponents’ side.
  

Any more suggestions or thoughts? Otherwise I'll take it into the first post.

[Bremze]

Sounds nice, though it might work better if divided in three choices: mode(frag,time,life,team frag, team time, team life, tug of war), limit(x minutes, points or lives depending on the mode choices), type(standard, stamina, ring-out). When choosing tug of war, the second and third is unnecessary.

[Clemens]

Ah, alright! Good idea, thanks for the input - this could be the perfect when defining the structure of the main menu. 

However, we have wandered a bit far off the interface topic and the new "game modes" don't actually change much within the interface layout or design, so I'll write that up in a new main menu thread.

[shig]

Yeah, also it'd be a pain to test it, because a) you have to get eight people together to play it and b) you have to have six controllers and one keybopard or four controllers and two keyboards. Howevery I could imagine it enjoyable jsut because of the complete chaos that will rule the game. I think I could get a lot of fun out of that, but maybe that's just me.

I always though 8 player battles would be for online matches only. Also, in order to have a decent, or at least semi-understandable 8 player battle, you'd have to make two teams of four, and each team would have its own screen instead of all eight players sharing the same screen to prevent it from stretching too much.

[Clemens]

As far as I know, there will be no online multiplayer support. I think it would be quite possible with GM, but it would probably add whole huge new heap of work to the project and I think we should stay realistic about this and get a straight offline version done first.

But I don't know what Brain Soup has planned in this area, so I also could be totally wrong..

[narasu]

I think online play is not something we want.

[Soulliard]

I don't know much about online play. If it can done well without doubling our workload, it's something we should add. If it turns out not to be feasible... well, hotseat multiplayer is more fun anyway.

[narasu]

I've seen a little bit of the use of 39dll (the most common online library for game maker) and will definitely increase work by loads.

[Soulliard]

This is probably a good place to talk about menus.

Here's what I'm thinking:
-First, the TIGSource logo is displayed while the game loads its assets.
-The main title/menu screen, with the following options: standard battle, adventure mode (maybe), online (maybe), options, museum (maybe), quit.

-The Options Menu: here you can adjust controls, toggle full screen mode, toggle sounds and music, go back.

-The Museum Menu: character bios, item descriptions, music test, go back.

-The Battle Menu: first you go to the battle options screen: choose mode, select between stamina/standard/smash, set limits relevant to the mode (lives, time limit, etc.), set number of cpu players, toggle certain items (or all items), go back
-Then you go to the Character Select Screen: choose your character! After you've chosen, you can set a handicap. You can also go back to the battle menu.
-Then you go to the Stage Select Screen: choose your stage! Or go back to the character select screen
-When a battle is over, you go back to the Character Select screen

-Adventure Mode: select difficulty, then select character -or- load a previous game. Or go back to the main menu.

-Online Multiplayer: we'll see...

[Clemens]

Oh wow thanks - I was trying to punch up a post liek that all afternoon, but just couldn't get to a point. Now you beat me to it,n which I'm frankly quite glad about.

Admittedly, it's two o'clock in the morning here, so I'm gonan get myself some sleep, before I get into depth with an answer...

I'll be bäck...