It is time we finalized the species and jobs of the characters we will use. Recently there has been a bit of talk about changing some of the characters, so it is probably best that we finalized this discussion as soon as possible.
Anything we agree upon here is final. After we have finished here, there will be no more discussion about this.

What we currently have:

Captain: Floyd the Wolf
Pilot: Felix the Eagle (has one robotic arm instead of a wing)
Navigator: Jean the Cat
Technician: Ivan the Gerbil
Medic: Rita the Medic Armadillo
Janitor: Hugsy the (Deranged) Hamster

There has been some talk about changing some of the characters or adding new ones. Specific characters mentioned were a monkey, a cheetah and an otter. The otter specifically, to handle water levels.
We have two options here. We could change some of the existing characters, or we could add more jobs. Something like an arsenalist or a second pilot.

Discuss away.

Well, we need characters that are different enough to be useful. For example:

Brute strength (can break metal crates?) EG Gorilla, dinosaur
Waterbound (can swim fast / not need air) EG Frog, otter, fish
Agile (can move fast, jump high, or dodge traps easily) EG Cat, cheetah
Flight (can glide or fly or jump really high) EG Eagle, bug
Small (can squeeze through small spaces) EG Mouse, squirrel (maybe pay homage to Hannah?)
Technologically advanced / "smart" (can change things, or use tools) EG Cyborg, monkey
Average (can do a little bit of everything fairly well) EG Dog, human

Those would probably be some of the best abilities, though I didn't put an excessive amount of thought into it, and some can definitely be changed. I like the idea of having maybe a human too. Everyone likes people. =P

brute strength would defeat the purpose of there being a distinction between steel and wooden crates. So I can't think of any good gameplay elements that could come out of that.

we should definitely have a waterbound character. I would like to play water caves without having to worry about air.

an agile character would be fun to play with, but obviously wouldn't be good at precise maneuvers. Maybe the cat would be best for this role.

for the Flight ability, we could just make gravity really light on them, or we could add a feature where if you hold the up key, then you fall slower. I prefer the up-key idea, since it could add some interesting mid-air movements. And maybe we can make it so that if you press down, you dive down faster?

I'm not sure how we'd use the Small ability, unless you were small enough to crawl under spikes that are only one tile above the ground. Other than that (and maybe arrow dodging), there's not much that you can do with this.

The tech ability, I imagine will make certain objects in the envirnment only useable by such a character. And I don't really like that, or it's not very interesting.

And Captain Floyd should be our average character. I don't think a human will fit very well into this game, or at least into the art style.

I suggest giving Felix those flight abilities, Jean the Cat would have speed, and Rita the Armadillo would have that morph-ball-crawl ability that lets you crawl in mid-air and crawl faster than she runs but with less stopping-frictio

As for Ivan the Hamster, we can give him wall-jumping and ledge-grabbing. The two could work really well together.

Will Hugsy have any abilities? Or will he just be like Floyd, with his only redeeming qualities being his appearance, animation, and the bonus levels that he comes with?


As for adding even more characters, I guess that depends on how they will be implemented. If we're keeping things linear and giving each character they're own set, then we what we have now is good. But if we're doing that Super-Mario-World-like map where you travel around in a party, then we could have room for more characters.

I don't think Hugsy should have any special abilities, but he should walk slower than everybody else. Just a suggestion.

Yeah, I'd like a character with no special abilities as well.

Captain Floyd doesn't have any abilities.

I thought he had a 'Howl' ability.

that was a suggestion. I don't remember it getting decided on. In fact, I forgot all about it...

I'm not very fond of the six different characters. For me it'll be too confusing to remember what all the characters do. HatIC was okay because it only had two characters to remember. Also, is this going to be a "get all characters to the end" game or a "choose a character, then get them to the end" level?

The first thing we have to make sure of is that the characters are capable of having some capabilities in both water and land. We also need to make sure that the characters do not overlap each other with similar abilities in order to keep each character equally enjoyable. I also agree with Livio that having a brute strength character would make their levels rather dull, as the main purpose of this game is getting past blocked areas through deciphering traps, not through smashing them.


For the sake of consistency, I also eliminated the human suggestion. Now, unlike Livio, I really think that having a technological character would be interesting and fitting. I mean, the planet they're on is supposedly mostly advanced and technological--this character could serve a great purpose in the last level, where everyone's abilities are needed to find their escape ship, or whatever that goal ends up being. This character could also be the one who leads to secret maps and levels, as some secrets might require electronic passage. If you've ever played Lego Star Wars, it's sort of similar. Some areas of a level could only be accessed when you unlocked a later character and backtracked in the level with them.

Waterbound: Otter
Agile: Cheetah (we should have a discussion on whether a cheetah is more fitting than a cat for a speedy character)
Flight: Eagle
Small: Armadillo
Technological: Gerbil
Average: Wolf

Here's what we can end up having as far as those categories go. Only after we confirmed the species and roles of the characters should we discuss their attributes, but for now we can go over what their unique abilities are. Livio, the more and more I think about it, the more I agree that character's shouldn't have timed, super powerful specials but permanent, situational abilities, instead. I really liked what your suggestion was for the eagle, too.

Otter: Exceptionally quick swimmer
Cheetah: Wall jumps
Eagle: Drift
Armadillo: Roll
Hamster: Technology
Wolf: None

I loved your idea for holding the up key in order to make the eagle float in the air. I imagine that, once the up key is held, Felix would spread his wings in the air, and his fall would be reduced significantly. When the up key would be let go, he would fall at normal speed, and when the down key would be held, Felix would tighten his wings by his sides and fall at a faster rate. This could seriously make falling traps ridiculously cool. As for the armadillo roll, it should make Rita go faster, able to get through smaller crawl spaces, able to crush spikes(?), but unable to jump out of as punishment. With that and a laggy get-up animation, people will be forced to not use only the roll in fear of dying, losing to a speed trap, etcetera.

Perhaps with the gerbil, beyond just being able to access certain parts of the level, they could be the only one able to kill enemies, too. We should really take the robotic arm intended for Felix and snatch in on this guy, and his arm could be what gave him all of these abilities. Maybe if a certain key is held, his robotic fist glows, and if he comes near an enemy he automatically takes a swing at them. I'm assuming we're not including huge enemies (such as snow beasts), so this shouldn't be a problem. Also, it's a rule of thumb that the "average" characters never get special privileges. Sorry, Floyd.

Now, we were also discussing the involvement of a monkey and a hamster. Both are not necessarily needed, but if worked right, both could be good additions. The monkey would have the ability to climb walls instead of simply hopping them, but I'm not sure in which direction to go with the hamster. What were some of the ideas you guys initially had in thinking of a mutant hamster?

I'm thinking the world map should be where you only control one character, however, that character represents the group of all the characters you've unlocked so far. And whenever you enter a level, a small menu comes up asking which character you're going to use.

hmm, yeah I considered the backtracking possibilities of certain abilities, but I'd prefer it if each character was balanced enough to have some unique levels that could be built around them. If all they have unique to them is crawl under small spaces, that's not very interesting.

Or maybe I should reconsider this. I mean, if the campaign is going to be like what I just said it would be, then we could certainly add such characters.

that could be cool. And we could counter it by not allowing her to break through steel spikes. Also, it's a good idea to add some lag to the end of that animation, and also make it hard for you to change direction (unless maybe you bump into a wall?)

I still don't see the usefulness of the tech ability. It just seems like a blatant way to allow only one player to access an area.

I never liked the idea of a character being able to destroy enemies, but maybe it could be useful if enemies were involved in puzzles.

You know what? This would actually be very useful if enemies had other functions besides moving and killing players. If enemies could somehow be involved majorly in traps, like moving boulders, setting off crates, breaking ladders or other objects, then the ability to kill enemies would definitely be useful. That got me thinking of a lot of ideas, but that's not for this thread.



Right. Ball-form Rita would not have brute strength, but being shielded from spikes can hardly be considered that. I agree with her being slow to turn, too, and I also like being able to get around that weakness by bumping into walls. All good suggestions.

Pros of Rita Roll:
x2(?) speed
Go through (unique?) crawl spaces
Crush spikes

Cons of Rita Roll:
Slow turning maneuvers
Slow get-up lag
Cannot jump

Does that seem balanced? We should probably take one character at a time to get full discussion. I figure we'll start with Rita.

I haven't talked at all on this board, so don't be suprised if this sounds weird.

Going off Imtimi and Livio's posts, it'd be awesome if the was a way to kill monsters, so that they fall till they hit the ground if they were airborn and would just keel over if already on the ground, and then (coolest part Imo) you could stand on their bodies, like steel crates or boulders.

This idea just came to me out of nowhere.  

Yaya that's a great idea. Although, maybe have that only be a feature of specific enemies. I imagine some kind of flying drone where if you touch it, it gets scared and goes into its shell turtle-like. Then while it's stuck doing nothing, you could push it around and stand on it.

I just had another thought. We should be careful not to let these special skills take over gameplay. Because then no one would want to ever use Floyd b/c he seems useless. We should at least give Floyd some abilities that the others don't have. Maybe instead of giving him new abilities, we could take some away from everyone else.

For example, maybe Felix won't be able to crawl-jump, with those mid-air controls of his.

Here's another idea, what if the cat can't crawl? What if all she can do is duck, but because she's agile, you can run, duck, and slide through under things?

And maybe the gerbil won't be able to jump so high, but to compensate, he can wall-jump.

Well why not add an 'Switch Character' option just in case thr level proves to be impossible for the current character?

Weaknesses such as that come in character attributes, Livio. We don't necessarily need to take away crawling from characters, just their capabilities in areas such as swimming, jumping, and running. Average characters aren't ever ignored, really, because they're good in all areas of the game. The characters who do have balanced pros and cons are usually more situational but, all the same, just as fun to play. I'm actually a big guy about character balance. In fact, in the Super Nuke Bros. Melee project, I'm the direct handler of character stats. That also means I have access to characters who are unreleased, but I digress.

Trust me, though, Floyd not having any abilities doesn't put him at a disadvantage. The balance will come from attributes, which we should go over once we have species and abilities taken care of.

So I suppose I'm still the only one who thinks we should just have one character?

We're trying to be realistic about this, right? Why do we need so many characters? Sitting around thinking about them and their cool abilities is far from being productive, and when the time comes to actually sit down and design all these characters and give them all their unique animations, I think we'll realize that it just isn't happening. I'd rather not wait 'til then.

It's like we think, by some miracle, some extremely generous and talented artist/animator with a ton of free time is going to join the Interguild and do all the work for us, or the Interguild is going to get a sudden, rapid influx of new members who all want to help out. That's not going to happen. For all intents and purposes, it's just us right now.

If we actually want to finish the game at some point, we should be smarter with how we plan to focus our time and resources. We could reduce the workload by having one character, and transfer all these cool ideas of ours to different tiles. For example, if you wanted one of the characters to be able to jump off walls, it'd be far easier (and offer more flexibility) to just have a specific type of tile that makes it possible for the character to jump off of them, instead of designing a whole new character who has the ability to do that.

One way to do this would be to have two layers to the tiles. One tile is the main object (for example, terrain), and then on top of that terrain, you can put an Effect tile, like vines or goo or something, that would add the ability for the player to jump off that tile. The Effect tile could be applied to other tiles as well (like Metal Crates, Metal Dynamite Crates, etc). This would be easier than designing a ton of different characters with different abilities, and it would offer far more flexibility as far as level design goes.

We can still focus on character design and abilities, but for now, I say we keep it to one.

dando brings up a good pragmatic argument. We can't start making all these plans unless we know how we're gonna actually implement them.

However, I don't see a problem with it because whatever goes on in the artwork and animation area or the campaign-making area won't affect the game's programming progress. And I also imagine that even if the game is completely programmed, we'd all be playing Aeon with one character before we even make the campaign or any of its other features.

EDIT: seems like dando just killed this conversation

Are there character morph boxes, or do we get to choose and switch whenever we want? If the former, we would have more puzzle-making abilities, and flight / brute strength wouldn't be a problem. I think characters should be like pieces of the puzzle. You need to be a certain character in a certain place. OR you can choose one of two characters (both boxes near each other) which will make part of the level easier, but another part harder.

Read my post above that says i don't like the idea of having six different characters.

"Are there character morph boxes, or do we get to choose and switch whenever we want?"
The current idea, I think, is to pick one character (a particular character or characters is/are "suggested" and they can always be used to complete the level), and that's who you play as for the entire level. I -think- that lives have been done away with, so it doesn't matter how many times you die or restart or jump off cliffs exploring or whatever (we still need to decide about scoring, but wrong thread). You can pause, go switch character, and you'll be warned that, in doing so, you will restart the level.

I'm opposed to the idea of "morph boxes" that, like, change you into a specific character only, and perhaps have a limited use. I don't like the idea of puzzles that involve locating the boxes and switching to the right characters at the right times. I wouldn't be opposed to some sort of station where you can switch out with any character currently at your disposal. It would be a bad idea to expect the players to have some-sort of foresight when selecting their next character, and choosing wrong results in death or getting stuck, so hopefully this is not overused. I'd expect to already know which character I'm going to need come a switch station, by, say, having just passed the traps that I'm going to need that character for.

"So I suppose I'm still the only one who thinks we should just have one character?"
You know what else is going to take a while? Everything already. We always knew it was unlikely, and we always knew it was going to be hard, and we always knew it was going to take a while. We were *gets cornier* shooting for the stars, and in dreaming up multiple playable characters, we are only continuing to do so.

"Because then no one would want to ever use Floyd b/c he seems useless."
I'm scared of this too. All the other characters have special abilities that would make some levels completable only by them. The only way to do that with Floyd is to take full advantage of all of his "average" swimming and jumping abilities. One idea is to make a large amount of levels completable by Floyd (though you won't as likely find gems or secret exits or shortcuts or whatever) and making him the most often "suggested character"? Or we could do what Neo did with Armin, and give him a snowquivalent that only he can get through. Lol, that was bad game design, IMO. Armin was so useless, except for that. It doesn't really serve any purpose for the game-play, other than to make a place that one character can get to that the others can't.

"(has one robotic arm instead of a wing)"
I never really understood this... What's the reason for anybody having a robotic arm? I say we get rid of it.

"a cheetah is more fitting than a cat for a speedy character"
I find cats more personable.

"Go through (unique?) crawl spaces"
No need. Just put a row of spikes? That said, I really like all this talk about the rolling for Rita (I'd have it move on it's own as long as duck is held, with you starting going in whatever direction you were facing when you ducked, and bouncing against walls). Do we actually need to disallow jumping? Maybe we could make it work like the rock power-up in SMG, where you have a certain amount of time that you have to roll before you can stop, you bounce of certain walls while stopping against others, and you just have to time your jumps really well?

I like that we now have a character that can swim. I don't want to have a fish on the team, so it doesn't make sense to have infinite air-supply. Maybe the otter could have, just, a REALLY (like, 2 minutes?) long supply of air? Hopefully nobody makes an actual two-minute long swim, lol, but, you just put an air pocket into every room, you take a breath when you enter, and then you forget about it for a while. If you want the level to be completable by more than one character, you'd need to have a fair amount of air pockets anyway. This'd be a nice challenging way to hide secrets, by forcing players to reach the end of the level using another character other than the otter to do some lengthy and complicated swims.

I'm not really getting it with this "technological" character? I don't like the idea or just randomly "being able to find secret areas" or something. It's like snow, and doesn't do anything for game-play. I'm going to go ahead and say we cut the character altogether, unless we can think of something so important that we need another character for.

This stuff about controlling the eagle's flying speed is a keeper. I'm picturing a falling a trap where you have to navigate in and out of falling objects on your way to the bottom. I don't know how hard that would be to set up, though... On problem, though, it that every single jump you're basically gonna have to hold the up button in order to make it to the other side. That could get annoying, when overused. An idea is to have him not ascend very far after pressing up to begin gliding, so you have to time your pressing of the up button or order to achieve the maximum jump distance. A limit on the amount of time that you can slow your decent in any given jump should be considered, but probably quickly discarded.

I posted earlier about an enemy that can move boulders (it was about only them being able to move spiked boulders, which you now see potential in, right?). I'm obviously for enemies that actually affect game-play in more significant ways. Enemies are characters too! So after we finalize the playable characters, we could start thinking about those, for sure.

So what have we got so far on all the characters? What else do we need to know? Any other characters that should or shouldn't be included?

This is what I've been saying in the Order of Operations and what I'll say again. We still know far too little about what we're going to put in the game to discuss the exact characteristics of the characters. It is nice getting so in-depth about Rita's rolling capabilities, or the specifics of how long the otter can survive underwater, but it is still far too early for that. What we need now is a cast of characters, with species, names, jobs and a rough draft of their capabilities.

So far we have Rita the Armadillo medic who can roll, Floyd the Wolf captain who is above average in everything but has no special abilities and Felix the Eagle pilot who has some sort of special jump. Before we discuss these characters and how we're going to use them, we first need to come up with the other characters.

If Jean is going to specialize in agility, hold down "SHIFT" to run faster? A longer jump but not as high? Or keep the jump height normal and make it's width longer?

I find that the disagreement over whether using a cat or a cheetah is a silly. Wouldn't they look almost the same?

that's really cool actually.agreed

how about for the eagle, the up-down mid-air controls only have an effect when you're fall speed is negative (meaning during the "down" animation of your jump). Unless maybe you want to take advantage of the dive functionality to come up with some kind of weird low-jump, or using the up key to get a super jump. As for slow-descent time limits, what if we made it like Yoshi in SMG2, where after time runs out, you'll begin falling again, but you can always follow it with another flutter after a certain amount of frames.

and yeah, we should start putting some thought into potentially cool enemies.

as for a character that runs faster, we can just make them run fast all the time, so that the trade-off is that they become harder to make precise controls. But of course, they could end up having like less air under water, or an agonizingly slow crawl speed (actually, a slow crawl speed could be taken advantage of to make more precise movements).

and I don't see how all this planning is useless. The way I see it, it gives people something to do while they wait for me to make progress on Aeon. I think to understand what you're saying, I'll need a more concrete example of how these discussions can be useless or counter-productive. Like, will we end up having created a bunch of tiles only to find out that they're not compatible with the game? (actually the earlier we come up with certain ideas, the better I can plan ahead to make the code compatible with it. Actually, I'm already making the engine quite flexible.) Or are you saying that we might come up with a ton of redundant crates, or things that will conflict in gameplay?

If I look at the previous stuff that's been decided on, half of that stuff has already been forgotten. It is better to leave those for when we actually are able to implement them so we won't forget about them.
And it is turning this thread extremely chaotic. The original question I asked was "What will the species, names and jobs of the playable characters be". Not only has that not been answered yet, but nobody is even taking an effort to answer it, instead focusing entirely on extreme specifics of the three characters we have decided on, when we won't even be able to test out these specifics to see which is best for months.