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Game Design > How to increase game speed?

#146772 - chatterbug89 - Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:45 am

I'm currently working on a game that is something like maybe space invaders or some space shooter (though very different at the same time...but, for the sake of the question the details are irrelevant). The game does not have "levels" but instead becomes increasingly more difficult at the game progresses. To become more difficult the movement of items, enemies, etc. all move faster.

Now, I have been debating and discussing with some friends how to handle the increasing speed of the game. I could have the game increase in speed over set amounts of time or I could have the game increase as the player gains more points. So, the speed of game can be proportional to time or points...

If the speed is proportional to points the game will always be difficult after so many points have been earned and could make the game sort of irritating if people are gaining points faster than before. While, with time, the game is always going to increase in speed the same ...which someone could perceive as boring.

So, does anyone have any opinions or preferences on this? What would work better? Any other ideas of increasing speed/difficulty would be interesting also.

#146782 - tepples - Sun Dec 09, 2007 2:10 am

chatterbug89 wrote:
If the speed is proportional to points the game will always be difficult after so many points have been earned and could make the game sort of irritating if people are gaining points faster than before. While, with time, the game is always going to increase in speed the same ...which someone could perceive as boring.

Many arcade games increase difficulty parameters based on the time since the game was last started or continued. WarioWare games do the same thing: scenes take about a constant amount of time, and after every 3 or so scenes, the game speeds up.

Or you could introduce a second metric of how much the player has done, and key the speed off that. For example, Tetris DS increases speed based on lines, encouraging players to get more points per line (e.g. back-to-back 4-line clear has 300 points per line, while a single has 100 points per line).
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#146955 - gauauu - Wed Dec 12, 2007 1:21 am

It also depends on what the "goal" of the game is. It sounds like it's really all about how many points you can get, so this makes it sound to me like you might as well scale the speed with the points. That way as players get good, they can get to the challenging (and interesting) parts faster.

#147178 - chatterbug89 - Sun Dec 16, 2007 1:13 am

Well, I took both of your comments into consideration and I think I'm going to advance by points, since points are the main objective of this game. Thanks for your opinions.

By the way, you should see my game by the end of the months submitted for the Drunken Coders Christmas contest ;-) That's what this was for.