Shield: A shield is like the medieval shields, not the startrek type shields. The shield willposition its self to the front of your balls movement direction. Any impact on the shield will not effect the player using the shield, but any other player hitting the shield will be effected normally.

Quote:One thing I'm not sure about is how to balance out the powerups; a player could be left in a position after losing one or two rounds that everyone else can afford many more powerups than they can, and I don't like the idea that players should be going into a game with virtually no chance of winning from the outset, or inversly going into a game knowing that bar a miracle they will destroy all opposition.

There are 2 solutions that I can see for this:
1) Have only the "Nanobots" collected in the immediately previous round available to the player. If the collected Nanobots in rounds before the previous round they are not available.

2) Have only a small amount of Nanobots able to be collected during the round and give all players a larger amount of nanobots at the end of the rounds (this won't eliminate it, but it will reduce the problem).

Quote:One thing I'm not sure about is how to balance out the powerups; a player could be left in a position after losing one or two rounds that everyone else can afford many more powerups than they can, and I don't like the idea that players should be going into a game with virtually no chance of winning from the outset, or inversly going into a game knowing that bar a miracle they will destroy all opposition.

If you were going this route of implementing a "buy-powerups-based-on-money-earned" here's a way you could potentially offset any advantage by players who have bought heaps of awesome powerups and keep in reasonably balanced:

The amount of money earned (basically the player's score) is affected by the type and amount of powerups used. So if a player went into the arena with 20 Armaggeddon Powerups (as an example), using one would lessen the amount of money earned for the round. This would force the player to think more carefully when to use a powerup, and more importantly what powerup to use. A player could use a laser powerup with less impact on his overall score/earnings than it would be using an Armageddon powerup. And the less powerups used, the more money will be earned for that round. But the more powerups used, the less cash will be earned for that player. It will keep players with tons of powerups from just using them whenever they want, at the frustration of the other players who go into the round without much in the way of powerups at all.

Note: a player could still win the round though, by damaging the opponent completely, or forcing him out of the arena with a load of powerups, but the cash earned will be minimal.

I'm not sure if this would ruin the fun-factor though, or add an additional element of strategy.

Hope this made some sense. :)

Edit: Oh, and I just had a thought, that you could probably have an arcade mode, and a campaign mode. The first one being just a mode where powerups appear in the playing field as normal, and no money is earned into the next round etc. The campaign could be the shop-front idea where you could buy powerups for each round. So this way, you could let players decide what type of game to play.

[Edited by - Sandbar on September 21, 2006 8:08:36 PM]

Quote:I'm not sure about the idea of powerups effectively costing the player points to use, as I think powerups should have in general a positive effect to promote fun, rather than having the player wary of using them.

Yeah, I am inclined to agree with you here. I imagined it would be getting away from your original intent. Perhaps the idea of having limited powerups and concentrating on the fun factor being the adrenaline rush of beating your opponent in an arena is better than having to "think too much" about what powerup to use when. Have you narrowed down the powerups yet? I'm looking forward to this game. Oh, and I like your avatar - is that what your robotic orbs will look like? :)

Quote:I'm wondering about the idea of purchasing or collecting body parts, or perhaps being able to switch body parts/utilities during a game. This has also made me wonder about perhaps including locational damage to body parts.

Would this perhaps be moving the entire concept away from the "marble madness" type idea? When you say body parts, I assume you mean arms and legs? Sorta like a Mechwarrior type idea? Would the entire level/campaign purpose be to collect body parts? And to what end?

btw, I *do* like that robot model. Kinda cute. How are you at animating such a model? Rolling a ball sounds infinitely easier to animate. :)

Okay, what can the uers do without powerups?
What do the arenas look like? Are there walls?

The power-ups tend to write themselves once you define the rules.