As other side projects have relented as of late, I've decided to tackle a few things in Inventaverse that I've always thought would be interesting additions. Before, Inventaverse was only about character advancement, adventuring, and death match style PVP. There's a reasonably large set of features designed to help the player customize and strengthen their favorite characters. Things like artifacts, skill trees, achievement-based skills, and incantations that allow the player to write their own custom spells and abilities.
Despite all the bells and whistles I've added to the game, I've seen little to no traction with the game community. I've had a few game play testers come through and try it out and while they seem genuinely entertained for a few weeks, after that, they drop off. Maybe I've created too little content I thought. Maybe character advancement is too grindy. Eventually it dawned on me that people become bored when they lose interest. To paraphrase: they lose interest because the problem isn't interesting enough to keep them from getting bored.
With that in mind, and with a little consideration, I ultimately decided to add a Capture the Flag style game mode to Inventaverse. After all, there was no 2D retro online CTF game and it made sense that from a new perspective, various details about the game morphed into something entirely different. Characters that seemed purposeless suddenly were very powerful in this new context. Speed now became an important consideration. Various artifact combinations that made no sense in the past, were now synergizing quite well together when considering this new and interesting problem.
I got to work right away, fixing a few bugs and implementing the new game mode.
Along the way I'd have short thought experiments where I'd ask myself questions from the point of view of a CTF player. Questions like: How would I configure my character if I were responsible for protecting the flag? What about as a sniper? Or even a capper, or flag runner? I logged into the game and suddenly various puzzle pieces started falling into place as I experimented with the various parameters of the game characters.
Take character selection for example. I know that being able to zip from one side of the map to the other is going to be critically important in a CTF game, but I hadn't yet tested to see just how fast I could make a character go. So, I picked the obvious choice at first, the Ninja. I grabbed two artifacts that add a speed boost (the Zapo Cola, and Pocket Watch), and configured an incantation to sacrifice some health for more speed. This proved useful for building up the ninja's running speed. Next, I timed him to see how fast I could run from one side of a map to the other. 23 seconds. Pretty good, but nothing compared to the speed of the Inventor (12 seconds). And while the Inventor was fast, he wasn't nearly as fast as the Psychopath equipped with the spy glass(2 seconds).
You see, the Psychopath can teleport to a location, and the spyglass allows you to see the entire map. The combination of teleportation and the spyglass results in being able to travel anywhere on the map with the small cost of some health. It was at this moment I decided that using special abilities would be prohibited while carrying the flag. It just makes it too easy to capture the flag. So, use anything you want to use on the way to picking it up, but after you have it in your hands, you're limited to walking it back to your flag base.
I was interested to see what kind of meta could evolve from this design choice. Would players stick to the instant grab but slow return of the Psychopath? Or would a more heavily armored flag carrier be the better option?
And what about defending the flag? It seemed like an obvious choice to pick the Gunslinger. Drop a stick of dynamite on the flag and wait for the enemy flag carrier to hop along and grab it up only to find himself insta-gibbed upon detonation. Or would the best choice be to go with force fields? I loved the idea of sitting near the flag base as the Witch, in stealth, casting a force field around the flag, then attacking as the enemy got close enough to grab. This seemed like too powerful of a combination to ignore, but for now I'd have to ignore it. The likelihood of someone easily countering that strategy in Inventaverse was high considering the massive tool set at the player's disposal.
I continued working to implement the flag capturing game mechanic, which didn't take long considering what I already had to work with in terms of game assets and code. I think I nailed it in a night or two. After that, I put a little time into making a fairly easy and small Capture the Flag map.
The many years I had spent playing various Tribes franchise games have taught me that small levels are thrilling, with a small set of players, while large levels with lots of nooks and crannies are harder to build but ultimately provide an epic experience as long as enough people are online to play them. I decided to go with a small sized map at first. 100x60 should be plenty of room to test out CTF game play with a few friends.
I spend about a week on development and level design, and I think I've got something that will at least give me an idea of what CTF in Inventaverse is like.
I'm excited to see how the first few matches go.
Until next time...
