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Originally Posted by That Guy  ^ Besides being difficult to implement, it would also be pointless. The lock-on feature in 3D is needed because in order to make combat not feel ridiculous is that the sword had to have multiple attack animations and motions and they of course needed to scale the hitboxes. since the 3D games are more "to scale" then 2d games (where link and a small tree take up the same amount of space) the sword has to be smaller. this plus a 3d plane then causes issues with actually hitting opponents, especially when considering ranged weapons. Then since the n64 controller does not have two joysticks you can't use a first person mode to aim and move at the same time. So they thought up the lock-on thing, and made enemies avoid fire by moving fast and having shields of some sort. With the Wii remote (or the gamecube controller really) they could have removed the lock on thing and gone with first person shooting (point/use c stick to aim, control stick to move) but since the lock on mechanic works theres no reason to do that.
Also it solves camera problems by allowing you to always face a particular enemy.
in a 2d top-down game all these issues are irrelevant because all enemies are on a single plane and there are no scale issues so an arrow hitbox can be as big as a tree hitbox.
I hope you enjoyed all these confusing words that could have been explained better by someone who isn't me |
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head there, buddy. I thought about giving the player lock-on controls, and from a gameplay standpoint, it's just unnecessary. I
want the player to have the ability to use a gamepad, but if I were going to go the route of pinpoint-accuracy aiming, I'd rig up a much more fluid system with the mouse. As it is, that kind of control takes a lot of the depth out of Zelda games, and makes the action feel surprisingly rigid compared to the lack of control present in your average 4-8 direction, overhead-adventure.
The shield issue is still apparent to me, though. I'm intending on using hand-drawn frames rather than sprite art. So naturally, if I'm going to those lengths to make it look good, I can't just draw a universal "item use" stance for the protagonist like was used in Link's Awakening. So that complicates the matter of the whole shield as a selectable item - do I draw him with the shield in every sprite, or do I make two sets of
every sprite, with and without the shield? So now I'm thinking there's no reason to play by the Gameboy's two-button limitations, and I should make the shield an "always on" item with its own exclusive button assignment.