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Can Silver gameplay work?


MetalSkulkBane

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Knuckles conversation was interesting, so here's even harder question: can Silver be ever work?

And before you mention Psychonauts, Star Wars game or other tittle, I want to point out that in all of those games (that I can think of) telekinesis is just one of several powers you have. I think very few people beat Half-Life 2 using only gravity gun.

And that's when we're talking about dream scenario where Silver gets his own game. What if you wanna make him fit into Sonic platforming, like Mighty and Ray in Sonic Mania?

Honestly 2D or 3D I see only 2 ways
- Nerf him immensely, basically making him Tails with small variations
- Complete opposite, made him last unlockable characters who's  basically a god mode.

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Simple answer: yes. I think that with some effort any character can work as playable.

In depth answere: I think that telekinesis should play a role in his moveset but it should not divert the gameplay too much from Sonic's.

The simplest implementation of telekinesis for me would be the ability to cancel any momentum and float. Silver is not a flying character, so I would not give him all the gliding or flying abilities of characters such as Tails or Knuckles; I would just let him stop mid-air for a while at best. If you think, being able to stop instantly is a unique ability that no other character has; in some modern games, stomping might allow you to cancel the horizontal momentum but there's no character who can stop completely from any movement (even mid-air, canceling/ignoring gravity). So, you get this move where you can get stuck in place until the stamina runs out; a slow movement might be allowed but it shouldn't be the biggest priority.

Slowing down/stopping in place also fits the character since he's supposed to be slower (at least he was in 06); though Sonic gameplay is not about going slow, it's about going fast (faster, faster faster faster! Go go go gogo go go gotta go fa-). So what's the point of a move that let you stop in place if you are supposed to move? I think it should be the preparation for some other move. When you are in this status, Silver is surrounded by energy, and that's when you can use his telekinesis powers. Maybe when you activate that move, any badnik in a round aura around Silver is grabbed and can be thrown away later? Regardless, it's also useful for making precise platforming easier and break automated sections of levels.

The badniks captured by the telekinesis aura will spin around Silver like green shells in Mario Kart, and they work the same way (if you hit another badnik with one that's spinning around you, they both explode); but there should also be a button or a combination that would let you shoot them (one at time) with auto aim.

Well, maybe not like Mario Kart shells, but more like that Metropolis Zone boss:

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Maybe if you are hit, you lose all the grabbed badniks (they fall down with no collisions, until they go off-screen).

(A couple of? can't remember) years ago I thought of something similar for Infinite, using blocks of illusions instead of badniks... the implementations was kinda different but still similar enough.

Aside of those two unique moves, he could simply be just Sonic, spin dash/spin jump, roll and all.

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Telekinesis is a power that can be put to a variety of uses and Silver's playable appearances have mostly used it in simple and nondescript ways that leave plenty of room to explore different applications. So not only can "Silver gameplay" work, there's probably dozens of viable directions you could take it in, it's just a matter of them deciding how they want him to play.

To throw one of my own ideas out there, he could passively collect scrap/debris from destroyed enemies, item monitors, breakable walls, etc, and use it to create platforms, a bit like Cloud Mario. More than just simple platforms, though, he could create entire paths, forming underfoot as he runs, and (depending on if anyone could come up with sensible controls for it) curving it to create your own slopes and halfpipes, basically moving like Rundas from Metroid Prime 3 or Frozone from The Incredibles. Admittedly that might be a bit too complex and hard to balance/control, but I think it shows that there's a lot more options for a character like Silver than just floating and throwing things like he's usually done.

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7 hours ago, SBR2 said:

I mean the Gravity Rush games are basically Silver's gameplay so yeah I'd say so.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Gravity Rush about using yourself as a missile, rather than throwing objects? Because gravity manipulation is a bit different from full telekinesis.

Could Silver just learn to use his body as a weapon? Sure, he just has to turn into a ball and spin, a sorta Spin Attack. And maybe he would auto-target enemies, like IDK, Homing Attacks of sorts. I think some game uses similar moves, but I can't remember then name right now. Apologies for massive snark, couldn't help myself.

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1 hour ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Gravity Rush about using yourself as a missile, rather than throwing objects? Because gravity manipulation is a bit different from full telekinesis.

Could Silver just learn to use his body as a weapon? Sure, he just has to turn into a ball and spin, a sorta Spin Attack. And maybe he would auto-target enemies, like IDK, Homing Attacks of sorts. I think some game uses similar moves, but I can't remember then name right now. Apologies for massive snark, couldn't help myself.

You can lift objects and throw them too.

The other attack isn't just another case jump and attack its more lifing yourself, aiming at an enemy and throwing yourself at them.

I don't know if any game will be fully ideal for inserting Silver into but Gravity Rush does feel like a solid starting point to build Silver gameplay from.

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I've been over this before, but the tl;dr version is that a good Sonic moveset prioritizes mobility above all else. Preferably you want to be able to both move and attack with the same move, but under no circumstances do you ever sacrifice mobility for it because it makes gameplay feel incredibly janky from a Sonic standpoint. Even if it ever manages to be good of its own merits, it will always beg the question of why the fuck you would ever choose a Sonic game to do it in, because Sega has plenty of other beat-em-up franchises that could stand to benefit from the inspiration. Silver in 06 is a failing in every one of these fields, and yet it's difficult to abandon it completely because it's a big part of his identity and frankly, still what most people remember him for.

The best compromise that comes to mind is just to make him a Klonoa expy - have him telekinetically grab and pull enemies to him with one button press, and then either jump to use them as a platform or surf them to gain lateral distance depending on the needs of the level design. Maybe let him keep his 06 hover if there's nothing nearby to grab, although I wouldn't make it bring you to a sudden stop every time you use it. That shit's annoying.

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22 hours ago, Blacklightning said:

I wouldn't make it bring you to a sudden stop every time you use it. That shit's annoying.

I disagree with that...

I mean, maybe I didn't write my concept well enough, but I wanted to be as short as possible so I left out many details.

First of all, sometimes being able to stop would actually come handy... there are a lot of uses for a move like that, for example it would make you able to put yourself in a situation where you can spin-dash much faster than you having to slow down manually. That's just one example, there are many more different situations.

Then, I didn't say it would be sudden... I said it would stop you completely but there should be a time frame of deceleration, when you are still moving... else capturing enemies would be very annoying. I took inspiration from the burst wisp, it does exactly the same thing, the more you hold the wisp button, the more you slow down until you stop completely, except that a little bit of gravity is still applied. Aside of that, I've never said that you would need to stop even for launching the captured badniks, that move was only for capturing, launching would be mapped on a different button or combination, to let you do it in movement.

Lastly, nothing excludes that you can start more mobility options out of that status... I didn't write a complete moveset, I just suggested a couple of moves at most, trying to be as simple as possible, with classic gameplay in mind... if you want you can make him be able to spindash in air out of the floating status, and use Silver as a living bullet.

IMO Silver, in order to feel "Silver", needs to be able to twist the physics... heck you can even give him abilities like revertng the gravity for a limited time or something (I dunno how it will turn out in actual gameplay), but I think that just grabbing and launching is not enough to give a feeling of telekinesis. Being able to slow down/stop in air also gives you more control over the character's movements in an innatural way, making it feel more like you are doing it through a "superpower" (not to mention they did a similar thing with Ness' up+b in Smash Bros, still under the theme of telekinesis). On the other hand about the ability of creating platforms; the idea is good on its own, but I think that Silver is not the best character for this... I don't think a character who can float in air through a superpower should need to create a platform in order to reach higher heights... I mean, concept-wise it just feels wrong.

In this post I even suggested the creating platforms thing, but for an IMO more fitting character, Infinite. Being able to create ground where it does not really exsists fits the concept of tangible illusions more than it does for telekinesis.

On 5/21/2018 at 10:43 AM, Iko said:

*A + Down in air: Creates a temporary illusory platform that lasts 5 seconds, then disappears. When he creates it, he also does a small double jump and caps the horizontal momentum to a maximum speed that allows the player to eventually land on the platform, regardless of the previous speed; though, it's not mandatory to land on the platform, and keep in mind that the gravity is affected when you push the down direction (the platform is not solid, it means that you can jump through it from below). You can only have one platform at time, and you will be unable to make a new platform until you land on actual ground (the new platform will eventually make the previous one disappear).

Spoiler
On 5/21/2018 at 10:43 AM, Iko said:

*Down in air: Increased gravity. You make Infinite fall at regular gravity instead of the default floaty one; once you release the button it returns floaty, so you can manouver him in complex stage sections by switching the gravity mode at will.

this was because I was thinking that Infinite should be a very floaty character, Sonic 4 ep-1 like, but I gave the option to drop at regular speed by holding down mid-air. Yeah you can ignore that part.

You can apply that part of the moveset to Silver as well if you want, but IMO it would be more suited for someone like Infinite indeed.

There's plenty of characters who can float and do air dash-esque moves, if you just do this, yeah he would move more smoothly, but it would feel samey to a lot of other existing characters, to the point that maybe it's not even worth to give him an additional playable spot aside of for story reasons.

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12 hours ago, Iko said:

I disagree with that...

I'm not really sure why you wrote all of that up as if that tiny throwaway sentence at the end of my post was in response to you. I even specifically singled out 06's handling of it, not yours, so I'm really confused as to how you took anything I said that personally. But fine, if we're comparing notes anyway:

12 hours ago, Iko said:

I think that just grabbing and launching is not enough to give a feeling of telekinesis

That is quite literally what telekinesis is. If throwing oneself and others around with the power of the mind somehow doesn't fulfill that definition, I'm honestly not sure else you could be looking for. In fact it almost sounds to me like you're trying to describe an entirely different power, because a lot of what you're describing is centred more around the simple defiance of gravity than what telekinesis is as a concept.

I guess fair point if you'd rather Silver played like that? I'm not saying it doesn't sound like fun - I just think it's kind of silly to blow smoke about what the "feeling" of telekinesis is supposed to be, already an incredibly subjective thing in the first place, and then somehow manage to be factually wrong about it too. It would have been so much simpler just to agree to disagree.

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1 hour ago, Blacklightning said:

I'm not really sure why you wrote all of that up as if that tiny throwaway sentence at the end of my post was in response to you. I even specifically singled out 06's handling of it, not yours, so I'm really confused as to how you took anything I said that personally. But fine, if we're comparing notes anyway:

That is quite literally what telekinesis is. If throwing oneself and others around with the power of the mind somehow doesn't fulfill that definition, I'm honestly not sure else you could be looking for. In fact it almost sounds to me like you're trying to describe an entirely different power, because a lot of what you're describing is centred more around the simple defiance of gravity than what telekinesis is as a concept.

I guess fair point if you'd rather Silver played like that? I'm not saying it doesn't sound like fun - I just think it's kind of silly to blow smoke about what the "feeling" of telekinesis is supposed to be, already an incredibly subjective thing in the first place, and then somehow manage to be factually wrong about it too. It would have been so much simpler just to agree to disagree.

I'm one of those lucky people who have never played Sonic 06, and I have no idea of how Silver does play in that game, so when you talked about stop in place I thought you was refering to my previous post where I suggested to give him the ability to cancel momentum and stop in place for a while. It was not refered to me, my bad, sorry.

About the second part, wathever, I don't know, but grabbing and launching in videogames is too much common; as you said yourself, Klonoa does the same thing and he's not known to have psychokinetic powers. It may be the factual definition of what telekinesis is, but I think that in order to feel more like telekinesis there must be something more; being able to freely move an object in air would do it fine if not that it's not compatible with Sonic's gameplay, because it would require Silver to not move at all during the process. Maybe if the launched objects are homing the enemies with curvy trajectories it would be enough, but I'm not sure.

About me being factually wrong, I don't think so:

Quote

Psychokinesis (from Greek ψυχή "soul" and κίνησις "movement"[1][2]), or telekinesis[3] (from τηλε- "far off" and κίνησις "movement"[4]), is an alleged psychic ability allowing a person to influence a physical system without physical interaction.

from the very link you put in the post. It does not say it's all about throwing objects, it says it's about influencing physics, which includes altering the gravity and the momentum, in fact:

Quote

The ideas of psychokinesis and telekinesis violate several well-established laws of physics, including the inverse square law, the second law of thermodynamics, and the conservation of momentum.

According to the article, a lot of stuff, including the ability to materialize objects and to teleport, are also considered part of psychokinesis... even pyrokinesis.

So I don't think I'm wrong at saying that it's more than just throwing objects.

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Force Unleashed was the first thing that came to mind, notably with Force Grip and the Jedi Mind Trick, the telekinesis is there of course but why stop there? Rivals 2 had something called Psychic Control, which wasn't telekinesis based, it left the opponent in a confused state, the word "psychic" has something to do with the mind right? Well I think Rivals 2 was telling us that Silver's powers aren't limited to telekinesis, Psychic Control in terms of gameplay reversed controls, this seems to imply that Silver can affect the minds of other people, not just objects. Sega does list his ability as Psychokinesis rather than just Telekinesis. So how would I implement Silver's Jedi Mind Trick into the game? I guess something similar to the 9S hacking in Nier Automata where you can control or turn an enemy. I would guess that Silver primarily focuses on telekinesis because it's more visually appealing

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