Ideas for Future Milestones

This page outlines some general ideas I currently have for what to do in the future of Hexoshi's development, after the current milestone. If you have ideas you want me to consider, feel free to post them, or email them to me at onpon4@riseup.net.

General

  • Hexoshi will probably have a total of 6 bosses, giving some meaning to the name. However, that is not set in stone.
  • I don't like Metroid's idea of having bosses open up an arbitrary passage when you beat them. It confused me when I first played Super Metroid. Instead, the final area of the game should be opened up by some sort of items that need to be collected, which could be keys or (preferably) special abilities that need to be used together.
  • Hexoshi will need its own, custom theme music, which should be called "Hexoshi". I haven't decided what milestone it will be done in.

Anneroy's Abilities

Following is a list of ideas for abilities Anneroy might be able to acquire later on (in no particular order).

  • Railgun: This would be an alternative projectile weapon with limited ammunition or a reduced firing rate that inflicts more damage and can break special blocks and open special doors. Similar to missiles in Metroid.
  • Rubberizer: This would allow Anneroy to jump while in a ball form.
  • Sloth Ball: This would allow the hedgehog spikes to be kept out by holding the shoot button.
  • Grease Ball: The ball form could be made to spin in place really fast and then launch forward at a high speed. Similar to the spin dash in the Sonic games. We could say that we eliminate friction first, then use the spikes to suddenly gain traction and zip along.
  • Repel Gun: A "gun" that just propels Anneroy in the opposite direction you shoot, which can allow you to fly or at least hover in the air, kind of like the machine gun in Cave Story (but without the damage to enemies).
  • Ice Gun: A gun that just freezes enemies in place and allows you to use them as platforms. This would be a separate weapon, not an upgrade to the main gun, and would not inflict damage.
  • Flamethrower: A short-range, rapid-fire, slightly random gun that can melt ice.

Music

Following is a list of music I am considering using in Hexoshi at some point. Unless indicated otherwise, I'm thinking of using the music for one of the future areas of the game.

One thing that I want to make sure of regarding the music is that it can all be listened to for long periods of time without making the player feel exhausted. This means that any area music used should not use dynamic range compression and must give your ears a break. This is important because in Hexoshi, you're going to be hearing the same music for a long period of time (however long you're in the same area). I had to exclude a lot of otherwise nice music because it lacks any silence and is loud the entire way through.

Milestone 2

  • Milestone 2 will focus on expanding Hexoshi's world to include a second area.
  • Aesthetically, I'm thinking of making the second area have a lot of fungal growth (mushrooms) and very little plant life, in contrast to the generally vibrant animal and plant life in the first area.
  • More enemies will be added.
  • At least one boss will probably be added.

Procedural Generation

I'm thinking of changing Hexoshi to use procedurally generated rooms, chosen randomly. This would mean that instead of designing each room, I would design sections, one fourth of a screen each, that would be pieced together to produce rooms. The rooms would then be pieced together to produce essentially a random maze.

There are a couple of reasons I would like to do this. Firstly, this would make it easier to train Mantanoid A.I.: instead of having to learn every single room, they would just have to learn each section, and would then just map out a path from that. Secondly, this would make design easier; I would be able to make the world very big without much effort.

But most importantly, this would make every Hexoshi playthrough roughly the same experience. By that, I mean that you don't go in your second time already knowing where everything is; you have to find it all again. Essentially, rather than a maze game where everything is the same every time, it would be a maze game where everything is different every time.

This would also help to differentiate Hexoshi from the Metroid series in an important way: it's not just a Metroid-style game, it's a Metroid-style game that's always fresh.

Of course, the way Hexoshi's rooms are currently designed isn't really conducive to procedural room generation or procedural map generation. So at the moment, I'm working on a new system in xSGE for Hexoshi to use, called xsge_lvl. Procedural room and map generation should follow shortly after.