Weekly Progress - Brian

Most of the progress this week was spent in meetings, discussing and brainstorming ideas. However, I came up with a couple ideas while at the meetings which I don't think I voiced, which might be helpful.

First, I think at the beginning of battles there should be some reason for the player to not be playing every instrument at once. This would give battles a more musical flow; they could start out quietly, with just a couple instruments playing, and then could crescendo until everyone is playing at once. This could be implemented in a couple ways. For one, the mime enemy that we discussed prevents the player from having each slot playing at once; perhaps at the beginning of a battle there are lots of mime enemies to keep the total volume down. Secondly, the fatigue system would also work well to accomplish this goal. Perhaps at the beginning of a battle you have five instruments, but only a couple enemies spawn. The player could turn all the instruments on, but most would become fatigued, and later on in the battle they would be worse off. As an alternative, they could only turn one instrument on, which would still kill all the enemies, but would save their other musicians for later on in the battle. This would also work in the middle of a battle; perhaps at one point in the battle a huge wave of enemies shows up and your musicians have to become very fatigued to fight them off. After that, there could be a lull, which would let you regain energy, but would also work well with cycles of musical tension / release.

Secondly, battles with only one type of instrument would be interesting both from a musical standpoint, and from a game play standpoint. I think we already touched on this in the meetings, so I apologize if I am just restating it. For example, there might be a percussion only battle which has lots of bomb enemies (can't be killed, only held back long enough until they explode). The percussion instruments would slow down the bombs, saving the player. The same effect would also work for brass chorales or string ensembles. This is just a level design concern, but I think it would allow for interesting and varied levels. In summary, I am stating a new use for the fatigue system, and giving an idea for a level design concept.