Complete Golden Axe Remake 1.5

[SuperFlyBoy]

I had a playthrough last night of ver.1.5 and ohh boy, even at this stage of development it's still very impressive and enjoyable overall.

Ohh, one more thing, i noticed that small dragons (purple and red ones) when you ride them they can grab and hold the enemies and bite them, so i was thinking, maybe, how about at some point, after certain amount of bites, they (the dragons) actually bites off the enemies heads, then either swallow it or just let it roll down the ground, you know, just like the decap move done by the heroes, but instead the head flighing closer towards the screen in this case the heads can just roll down the ground, just an idea, if it can be done of course. Keep it coming guys.

 

[shirakani]

Ooooooooooooo now THERE's a good idea! Yes, if we can make the dragons just have a normal attacking combo at close range...

@kimono Do we have the sprites to do this??

 

[SuperFlyBoy]

Also, now don't get me wrong, i don't want to sound pushy or neatpicky, but how about the flames from those dragons, same could be considered with their flames, with finishing flame could lead to, let's say, maybe to Sector's and/or Scorpion's MK3 fatalities where Sector burns the opponent with his flame gun, so the opponent is burnt to a crisp and his burning skeleton just dispers to the ground, same design is with Scorpion's toasty fatality if i remember correctly, or maybe that's in UMK3, can't remember exactly. So there you go fellas, another idea maybe . Also chicken legs beast, after some tail swings, the final swing could lead to split enemy bodies in half, just like Kintaro's (Shang Tsung transformation to Kintaro actually) fatality in MK2.

 

[shirakani]

The fatalities idea will require custom sprites, again. Just the decapitation feature we have in this game required the creation of a custom chopped head for every single enemy in the game (not counting bosses). If you want more death animations, they'll need to be created.

At this point in time, unless you or someone else steps up to create said sprites, it can't be done. But the head chomping into decap idea..... that definitely should be doable!

 

[kimono]

The problem isn't the ideas, but finding the people to bring them to life.
Here are the available sprites for the red dragon, for example:

Everything is achievable by putting a little heart into the work.

I'd like to remind of the roadmap I've set for myself to reach version 1.6:
1) Integrate the remaining GA2 and GA3 characters, namely Dark Guld, Damned Hellstrike and clubman (from GA3 and yes, we almost forgot this little guy).
2) Many characters from RODA will also be present, such as Reaper (the armored skeleton boss), Bandit Chief, Dora, and some enemies to encounter on the battlefield.
3) Bonus characters like Centurion (Altered Beast), Alisia Dragoon and other surprises that I will reveal to you as we go along, will strengthen the ranks of the enemies.
4) Complete route GA2 (of which you have already seen the first 3 levels) and GA3, which will be recoloured and extended in places if necessary.
5) A Duel mode of 20 fights (interspersed with a return to the cell to regain 10% of life) where the player will be evaluated on their performance.
6) Many enemies (and heroes, for those who lack a walkup for example) present in 1.5 will also gradually receive new moves to diversify their range of attacks.

For the moment, I would like to focus on this so as not to lose sight of the path to the next update.
@danno : Can I create a new Golden Axe 1.5 topic and put the roadmap in the header?
I'll then modify it with each new version and keep track of what's been done.

In short, yes, the idea of a dragon-based finisher is good; however, it's not a priority here (if someone wants to take it on, no problem).
I first need to fix all the minor issues in the game and move forward with the content proposal.

Thanks for submitting this concept anyway; I'll keep the idea in mind.

 

[shirakani]

In short, yes, the idea of a dragon-based finisher is good; however, it's not a priority here (if someone wants to take it on, no problem).

I'll take a look at it once I'm back home from my work trip. I really like this idea as to me, the dragons feel quite dull with how we've improved the overall gameplay.

 

[danno]

@kimono how different is everything going to be? I worry that having a new topic for only small differences is going to create a mess and confusion, A new game title and direction from this one would work. Legend Of The Golden Axe for example, Last thing we want is multiple threads for different version of the same game.

 

[kimono]

@kimono how different is everything going to be? I worry that having a new topic for only small differences is going to create a mess and confusion, A new game title and direction from this one would work. Legend Of The Golden Axe for example, Last thing we want is multiple threads for different version of the same game.

The difference is that I am not the author of the topic but Sindor, so I have no control over it.

 

[danno]

@kimono I've made you resource owner so you can now have control over the resource, uploads, discussions etc

 

[kimono]

@kimono I've made you resource owner so you can now have control over the resource, uploads, discussions etc

Thanks Danno; since I'm not the author of the first post, I can change the title to Golden Axe Remake 1.5.

(By the way, Haggar looks fantastic in his Irish version, it suits him perfectly )

 

[danno]

Thanks Danno; since I'm not the author of the first post, I can change the title to Golden Axe Remake 1.5.

When you upload the update v1.5 if you type 1.5 in the version section of the upload update section the topic title will change to Golden Axe Remake 1.5,

 

[kimono]

kimono updated Golden Axe Remake with a new update entry:

Golden Axe Remake 1.5

Public version 1.5 is finally here!

- 32 playable characters (instead of 3 in 1.4)
- New Skeleton select (with blood + stage 0 WIP) Eagle Stage, a bonus stage between the Castle and the Extended Level (a remastered Genesis Showdown level)
- An in-game NPC menu
- Plenty of new attacks like a stab (mid-range attack), special down, forward, attack, and up/down attack attacks
- Defensive moves: a dodge (double tap up or down), holding the back button on Pain for a small backward jump, holding...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[kimono]

@danno : Thanks, you'll just need to delete the duplicate resource in the download section if that's alright with you

 

[Nevinchik]

Characters' special moves bypass blocking, or their range is huge.
What do you think - would it be a good idea to limit special moves, for example: restrict special move usage to once every 5 seconds?

 

[shirakani]

Characters' special moves bypass blocking, or their range is huge.
What do you think - would it be a good idea to limit special moves, for example: restrict special move usage to once every 5 seconds?

This is balanced by the fact that special moves don't actually do much damage. As I've mentioned, they are largely to add variance and some uniqueness to the game. The extremely spammable ones have the same damage as a normal run attack or normal jump attack. Jump attacks aren't blockable either, so yah, no big deal.

When designing these moves, rather than gate them behind cost... I figured to just let people have fun and use them however they want. Fun allowed. So the trade off is they generally do as much as a jump attack, maybe slightly more in some cases but usually not. The most powerful is the same damage as the running jump diving attack.

That being said, I'm actually glad you think they're a bit much coz my overall design philosophy was to make them LOOK strong without actually breaking balance.

I should also mention that the real purpose of the special moves (at least the d f+a one) is they trigger decapitation. They are basically the decapitation move redesigned to give each character some uniqueness, especially GA1 vs GA2 characters. But ultimately, you could play the entire game spamming them and it'd be equal to using only the divebomb attack the whole game.

 

[kimono]

Characters' special moves bypass blocking, or their range is huge.
What do you think - would it be a good idea to limit special moves, for example: restrict special move usage to once every 5 seconds?

The block is configured to absorb up to 32 damage, after which it becomes extremely vulnerable.
This configuration can be changed to allow for unlimited blocking if that becomes a problem.

 

[Nevinchik]

This is balanced by the fact that special moves don't actually do much damage. As I've mentioned, they are largely to add variance and some uniqueness to the game. The extremely spammable ones have the same damage as a normal run attack or normal jump attack. Jump attacks aren't blockable either, so yah, no big deal.

When designing these moves, rather than gate them behind cost... I figured to just let people have fun and use them however they want. Fun allowed. So the trade off is they generally do as much as a jump attack, maybe slightly more in some cases but usually not. The most powerful is the same damage as the running jump diving attack.

That being said, I'm actually glad you think they're a bit much coz my overall design philosophy was to make them LOOK strong without actually breaking balance.

I should also mention that the real purpose of the special moves (at least the d f+a one) is they trigger decapitation. They are basically the decapitation move redesigned to give each character some uniqueness, especially GA1 vs GA2 characters. But ultimately, you could play the entire game spamming them and it'd be equal to using only the divebomb attack the whole game.

But Sara's special move (↑↓) can be spammed without moving from the spot, wiping out the entire line of enemies from a distance.
Death machine))

 

[shirakani]

But Sara's special move (↑↓) can be spammed without moving from the spot, wiping out the entire line of enemies from a distance.
Death machine))

That's largely offset by the fact she is literally the weakest core cast member out of the lot. She has the lowest range on her attacks, lowest overall damage and the smallest hitboxes.

That blade throw isn't invincible either. She can be hit during it. If things are feeling too easy... It's more down to the AI again not avoiding the player's Z plane positioning. What needs to be improved/fixed is the mob AI overall as despite some improvement, it's still too easy to bunch mobs up.

 

[Nevinchik]

That's largely offset by the fact she is literally the weakest core cast member out of the lot. She has the lowest range on her attacks, lowest overall damage and the smallest hitboxes.

That blade throw isn't invincible either. She can be hit during it. If things are feeling too easy... It's more down to the AI again not avoiding the player's Z plane positioning. What needs to be improved/fixed is the mob AI overall as despite some improvement, it's still too easy to bunch mobs up.

I agree, improved AI would really solve this issue and make the game more interesting.
But honestly, the biggest balance issue is being able to heal anytime, anywhere. No classic beat 'em up does this - it's why food matters in those games. Here, you can just brute force through everything with zero risk. The green gnomes with food become meaningless because of this.
What if you could only use that free heal once per stage? Then you'd actually have to think about when to use it, and food would matter again. Just an idea!

 

[shirakani]

I agree, improved AI would really solve this issue and make the game more interesting.
But honestly, the biggest balance issue is being able to heal anytime, anywhere. No classic beat 'em up does this - it's why food matters in those games. Here, you can just brute force through everything with zero risk. The green gnomes with food become meaningless because of this.
What if you could only use that free heal once per stage? Then you'd actually have to think about when to use it, and food would matter again. Just an idea!

I think that the healing is ok. It kind of reminds me of how TMNT Shredders Revenge is done with its ability to restore special stock at any time.

The thing is, a lot of effort was put in leading up to 1.5 release with the focus of improving the player experience. We put in a lot of time in improving the player side of things which meant we didn't really get around to doing the same on the enemy side.

Now, we could have delayed 1.5 further, but then think of when kimono initially started his efforts on 1.5 and how long it took to get to today with an actual release. It was already pretty much vaporware tier... I brought this point up in a discussion with him at some stage and we ultimately agreed that with how long it had been since work commenced, that it was better to release something so that the project didn't actually become vaporware.

So, here we are!

1.5 is really a midpoint where the player aspect of the game ie playable characters, at least the core Golden Axe, 1, 2 and 3 cast, should feel much better compared to 1.4. Movement is clean and consistent, animation frames and timing are polished with no disjointedness ie all throws are synced correctly etc... Characters have distinct identity, like the GA2 versions of the cast play and feel completely different to GA1, GA3 characters are unique... so on and so forth.

Now that the core player experience, the main core cast, is polished and complete... The focus from now will be to improve the enemy side of the game so that it matches the player side. The original base AI for the mobs really was never designed to deal with players being able to simply alter running trajectory or roll on the Z plane... Nevermind having unique special moves and breakout features so no surprise the AI is completely overmatched right now. It needs to be completely retooled to deal with the new tools the player has.