04-19-2021, 12:02 AM
I've actually been making - gasp - progress on this title, so I figure I might as well make a topic, so that I stop flooding the Discord servers I'm in, as well as have a more centralized location for big-scale development updates and the like.
Paper Mario: Showtime!! is a fangame taking inspiration from everybody's "favourite" Paper Mario games - Sticker Star and Colour Splash. The goal of Showtime is to basically "fix" the issues with the combat of those two games in an arcade-style score attack game. How did I "fix" these games? Well...
While moves work much the same as they did in Sticker Star - only one button is used for all Action Commands, and animations/effects are very similar - the biggest difference is that you don't have to maintain an inventory of Stickers or Cards. Instead, you have infinite Cards - you just spend Coins to buy and use them right out! As long as you have enough Coins for a Card, you can use it again and again.
Cards are split into four categories - Jump Cards, Hammer Cards, Item Cards, and Partner Cards. It's up to you to use them strategically to clear each round. Some of them have been changed up from their original versions to make things a little more balanced - for example, in Sticker Star, the Iron Jump was just the Jump, but it could hit spiked enemies. It was a strictly better Sticker in every possible way, with no downside to using it. In this game, it works a bit differently - it now does bonus damage to spiked enemies, but less to non-spiked enemies. Other Cards have had their effects tweaked in similar ways in order to provide variety and balance.
You may notice you have people watching you battle - the audience! Much like in The Thousand-Year Door, you'll have an audience watching your fights, and impressing them is important.
Different audience members like different things - Yoshis love Jumps, while Goombas despise them. It's important to keep them happy, because they affect how many points you get at the end of each round, and you need points to purchase upgrades between rounds! Upgrade your Cards, your health, or even just buy extra time or Coins to keep you going - the goal is to see how far you can get, how long you can last. Think of it like the Pit of 100 Trials, sort of. You can earn points by performing well on your Action Commands, not getting hit, and adding a bit of... flair to your moves whenever possible.
While the game is still a long way from finished, right now it's already got a decent suite of features, such as a fully functional My Music, just like in Super Smash Bros.! There's even a Badge system in the works, where you can select up to three Badges before you start a game in order to switch up the way you play - make Action Commands more difficult but more rewarding, or have Mario recover a bit of health between rounds, it's up to you. Alongside some planned alternative game modes, I'm hoping to provide plenty of replay value.
So far I've gotten almost half of Mario's moves finished, and sprites for three out of the four Partners you can call upon for help - Goombella, Bobbery, Watt, and Sushie. I've even properly programmed the Timing Tutor Badge, along with the Badge selection menu, and every track for My Music is in the game. I'm hoping to keep this momentum going, but don't be surprised if I go quite a while without updates again because that's what I do
Paper Mario: Showtime!! is a fangame taking inspiration from everybody's "favourite" Paper Mario games - Sticker Star and Colour Splash. The goal of Showtime is to basically "fix" the issues with the combat of those two games in an arcade-style score attack game. How did I "fix" these games? Well...
While moves work much the same as they did in Sticker Star - only one button is used for all Action Commands, and animations/effects are very similar - the biggest difference is that you don't have to maintain an inventory of Stickers or Cards. Instead, you have infinite Cards - you just spend Coins to buy and use them right out! As long as you have enough Coins for a Card, you can use it again and again.
Cards are split into four categories - Jump Cards, Hammer Cards, Item Cards, and Partner Cards. It's up to you to use them strategically to clear each round. Some of them have been changed up from their original versions to make things a little more balanced - for example, in Sticker Star, the Iron Jump was just the Jump, but it could hit spiked enemies. It was a strictly better Sticker in every possible way, with no downside to using it. In this game, it works a bit differently - it now does bonus damage to spiked enemies, but less to non-spiked enemies. Other Cards have had their effects tweaked in similar ways in order to provide variety and balance.
You may notice you have people watching you battle - the audience! Much like in The Thousand-Year Door, you'll have an audience watching your fights, and impressing them is important.
Different audience members like different things - Yoshis love Jumps, while Goombas despise them. It's important to keep them happy, because they affect how many points you get at the end of each round, and you need points to purchase upgrades between rounds! Upgrade your Cards, your health, or even just buy extra time or Coins to keep you going - the goal is to see how far you can get, how long you can last. Think of it like the Pit of 100 Trials, sort of. You can earn points by performing well on your Action Commands, not getting hit, and adding a bit of... flair to your moves whenever possible.
While the game is still a long way from finished, right now it's already got a decent suite of features, such as a fully functional My Music, just like in Super Smash Bros.! There's even a Badge system in the works, where you can select up to three Badges before you start a game in order to switch up the way you play - make Action Commands more difficult but more rewarding, or have Mario recover a bit of health between rounds, it's up to you. Alongside some planned alternative game modes, I'm hoping to provide plenty of replay value.
So far I've gotten almost half of Mario's moves finished, and sprites for three out of the four Partners you can call upon for help - Goombella, Bobbery, Watt, and Sushie. I've even properly programmed the Timing Tutor Badge, along with the Badge selection menu, and every track for My Music is in the game. I'm hoping to keep this momentum going, but don't be surprised if I go quite a while without updates again because that's what I do