Shield Thoughts

[Bianca]

Yeah so i have some thoughts about the sheilds


Force Shield: I like that it can take 2 hits. It makes it feel more distinct than a standard shield.
I do sometimes have trouble telling how many hits i have taken though. i know it changes colour but i think it would be better if it lost the hexagon pattern instead.
I never use the momentum stop. there is a mod that makes it pause your momentum instead of stopping it, allowing you to change direction. I like that a lot more.


Attraction Shield: Perfect. magnetizing rings is helpful and the homing attack is useful and ties into the magnetic theme.


Whirlwind Shield: I think its weird that if you use it after walking of an edge you have to use the jump button instead of the spin button. it would be cool if both worked. also the double jump needs a visual effect.


Elemental Shield: Breathing underwater is cool but the stomp isnt very useful.
it feels like the fire shield and bubble shield were combined to avoid having too many shields but it just creates a shield that doesn't feel like it has coherent theme too it, you know? like all the extra abilities where thrown onto this one. plus if the idea was to remove redundant shields why does the Armageddon Shield exist.


Armageddon Shield: I have never found killing all the nearby enemies very useful or interesting and that's all this one does. and it only does it once. kinda lame.


Sonic 3 Shields: the electric shield is just the attraction shield with a less fitting ability. the fire shield copies Sonic's thok and the bubble shield copies Fangs bounce.


Ideas:
Explosion Shield: A replacement for the Armageddon shield. Works like the burst wisp from sonic colours, charging up and then exploding, damaging nearby enemies and launching the player diagonally forward. makes the player invulnerable to fire/magma. maybe to nerf it it only has limited uses (~3-6) but can be used multiple times per jump.


Divers Shield: Lets the player breath underwater and... idk.


What are your thoughts?

 

[PencilVoid]

Personally, I think that the Armageddon Shield's ability can be very useful, but it highly depends on where you are. The usage of it in GFZ1 shows that well. The Elemental Shield and Force Shield's abilities can be useful if you need to stop your momentum quickly (for example, if you were about to soar over a platform), but otherwise I don't see them being used much. Also, I wouldn't say the Fire Shield copies Sonic's thok exactly, since it's more affected by momentum than the thok (try using the Flame Dash in the opposite direction to your movement).


Your Explosion Shield sounds quite overpowered, to be perfectly honest. Maybe it could work if you gave it a much smaller range than the Armageddon Shield? The Diver Shield sounds like the scrapped Goggles from Sonic 1. I don't think it would work that well. Perhaps it could work if it just disappeared after a while, I don't know.

 

[Bianca]

GFZ1 does show a good use for the Armageddon shield but that use doesn't really show up again. there aren't many spots where there is a large group of enemies and the Armageddon shield is available.
The flame shield doesn't exactly copy the thok but it fulfills the same purpose. same with the bubble shield and fangs bounce.
I was thinking that the explosion shield would have less range than the Armaggedon shield, I should have mentioned that.
The diver shield is just meant to be an underwater shield that isn't the bubble shield. I just don't know what it should do aside from breathing underwater.

 

[Mario A. Roach]

GFZ1 does show a good use for the Armageddon shield but that use doesn't really show up again. there aren't many spots where there is a large group of enemies and the Armageddon shield is available.

That happened in Aerial Garden too.
I don't wanna say more examples cause I don't actually remember.

 

[Seaballer]

On the revised character and shield abilities lua by Katmint, the Armageddon Shield turns into an Ash Shield after the usage of the explosion. I found that to be pretty neat, and it's a cool alternative way of making it "more useful". Although I don't see the problem with how it is now.

The only problem I have with the current shields is that both the Elemental Shield and the Force Shield have abilities with an extremely similar purpose - stopping momentum. Other than that, they're fine.

 

[shny_scott]

Divers Shield: Lets the player breath underwater and... idk.

The Elemental Shield already does this (as well as the S3 Bubble Shield), I don't think we need a third one that does the exact same thing.

 

[clairebun]

Amy hammers with the spin button and jumps with the jump button. But when she has the whirlwind shield, she hammers with jump and she jumps with spin. Also, she can hammer when in her jump frames, but she can't hammer in her spring/fall frames, which are the same as her jump frames. Also, when she's in her spring and fall frames, she can't use the whirlwind shield with spin, but she can jump with jump again.

 

[Lat']

Shields have interresting abilities but some of them kind of never go all the way with how useful they could potentially be, and that's a shame.

Whirlwind Shield
Still probably the best shield in the game. A double jump is always useful, and the ability to use the shield after walking off a ledge is even more so.

Attraction Shield
Another really useful shield in its passive ability of attracting rings to you. However, the homing attack can only be used once per jump and will force you forward without being able to use your abilities. The fixed bounce height after a hit also feels off. Overall I find myself never using this ability simply because it will put me in a disadvantageous position about 60% of the time. It should really allow you to chain multiple homing attacks, or bounce higher after a hit to allow more time for correcting your trajectory.

Force Shield
Taking 2 hits is definitely a plus. Force Stop is probably one of the worst abilities of them all, but the shield's utility is being able to take twice as more damage, so I think it's justified.

Armageddon Shield
Being able to hoard a bunch of enemies in 1 room and commit mass genocide to get a bunch of 1-UPs is always fun.
I think you should be able to use your ability after detonating it, seeing as you just lost your shield for it.

Elemental Shield
The ability to breathe underwater is a blessing. However, the Elemental Stomp is amongst the most useless abilities. The radius of the stomp is pretty poor and overall spinning will be a better solution in 100% of applicable cases if you want the fire to do anything. It's also redundant to nonspin characters who already have their own, way more effective, combat abilities to deal with enemies, and I might add the ability is too similar to Force Stop in the sense that all it really does is set your momentum to 0 and allows you to fall slightly faster which is only ever useful in Techno Hill's goop.
If the attack range was greater, it would probably give some use to the stomp as a combat tool, but right now it just isn't useful at all.

Electric Barrier
Essentially a better Attraction Shield. It comes with the Whirlwind Shield's utility and even lets you still use your spin state for safety. It does come at the price of being unable to use it after walking off a ledge, but that's a fair trade.

Flame Barrier
Probably the shield with the most potential, it imitates Sonic's thok but allows the momentum to stack on repeated uses. However, that much doesn't mesh well with the fact that SRB2's physics delete all speed as soon as you touch the ground, which encourage spamming it. It's a shame this shield is introduced in a level that really has no room for such speeds seeing as it's more platforming / hazard based, but I'd love to see a custom map utilize its ridiculous speed.

Bubble Shield
A much worse Elemental Shield. It does allow you to breathe underwater but has the single worst ability of all the shields. The bounce completely halts your momentum, which you cannot regain until you've touched the ground as accelerating mid-air from a standstill is near impossible, which is essentially the Elemental Stomp with more ending lag and absolutely 0 utility.
This ability could go from useless to very good if it just kept your momentum on use.
In this gif, I'm holding forwards the entire time.

 

[Boost]

I'll just add my thoughts on certain shields

Bubble Shield in S3K was your best shield since it protects you against drowning and doesn't vanish underwater unlike two other shields. This comes with a tradeoff of a near-useless ability that had seemingly no purpose other than having fun bouncing into heavens from a badnik. In SRB2 with more difficult 3D platforming you may as well completely forget about this active ability. Its passive elemental defense is not unique anymore, making even more obsolete. This is pretty much the worst shield in SRB2

Flame Shield essentially gives a thok to everyone. I wonder why it doesn't break the walls like it did in S3K... Its protection from "fire" hazards is not actually that useful since there aren't that many "fire" hazards in SRB2.

Whirlwind Shield - I'll just add that it's not that weird to activate the safety jump with a jump button actually - it's for the cases when you press the jump button a little bit too late.

Elemental Shield is... essentially Bubble Shield and Flame Shield slapped together in one. Now, when it comes to elemental defense it's actually very well done. The fire trail is a nice little addition that mostly finds its use in match gametypes. Then we have Elemental Stomp. Again slapped together from Bubble Bounce and Flame Dash. Again, serves almost no purpose for platforming. Yes, it does help cancelling your momentum - Force Shield does the same. Yes, it does allow you to sink into THZ goop - it's not nearly as good as it seems. Again, would probably find more use if it could break the floors but those are usually reserved for Amy/Fang routes and thus might actually make things worse for everyone who isn't Tails. As for the fire trail range during the stomp - with how enemies usually move (either way too slow or in mid-air) it's always better to just use the character's innate abilities to dispose of them rather than to wait for them to touch the fire trail that will probably disappear berofe they reach it. It's more of a defense mechanism against grounded enemies that are too close to your landing spot. Another note is this shield makes Bubble Shield completely useless in SRB2 as it offers the same ability but better elemental defense.

As for the rest of the shields, there's pretty much nothing else to say.
I had a thought that maybe Force Shield could have its projectile reflection from 2.0 as an active ability (sort of like Insta-Shield/Twinspin that would reflect the projectile back at the shooter at the cost of both extra hits being taken away) but maybe it would make Force Shield way to powerful.

 

[time gear]

My thoughts on the shields is as follows:

Whirlwind Shield: The double jump it provides is quite useful, I feel like considering it's literally made of air it should probably give you infinite breath underwater, or at least prolong your breath. Other than that it's fine as it is functionally.

Armageddon Shield: I overall find it useful for clearing out tricky clusters of enemies, there's a number of times I really wished I had one of these in AGZ. I can't really think of anything about it I would change.

Elemental Shield: I generally prefer calling this one the Waterflame shield. Old habit. I actually feel like this shield is a bit too powerful. It provides all the defenses of the Flame shield and Bubble shield all in one, and also basically combines their air ability into one as well. I probably wouldn't miss this shield if it was just replaced with Bubble and Flame shields wherever necessary.

Attraction Shield: This shield made sense back when SRB2 was in it's younger phases, it was basically just the Electric Shield but with different graphics. Now it still is, except it has a homing attack as it's air ability instead of a double jump. I don't really feel like it's necessary to have both shields, but I will get into that more later.

Force Shield: It's a shield that can take an extra hit compared to other shields, and as far as I can tell it's air ability is just to cancel all your momentum instantly. I kinda hate it's air ability, I find it useful never. The extra hit point is much appreciated though. I feel like it would be more useful if it reversed your vertical momentum once per jump or something.

Bubble Shield: An old classic. Only thing I would change about it is change the bounce to conserve horizontal momentum rather than dropping you straight down every time.

Flame Shield: Second verse same as the first, this is an old classic. The weaker thok it provides has only occasional usefulness when you are Sonic, but as anyone else it's quite handy on occasion. No complaints here.

Electric Shield: Here's a suggestion: Delete it. Don't get me wrong, I love the way it looks, but in terms of practicality it's just the Whirlwind shield and Attraction shield merged into one. This makes it (at least when you don't touch water) objectively better than the Whirlwind shield since that one has no passive ability right now and more useful for platforming than the Attraction shield. I appreciate that it's an old classic and I love the way it looks, but it's just redundant. The only way I can imagine it not being redundant is if the Whirlwind Shield allows you to at least breath longer underwater/in a vacuum, since then there will be a reason to use that over this.

Pity Shield: Reserved for Multiplayer games, this is the shield that you get from Amy when she hits you with her hammer, but only if you aren't also Amy. I guess she loves everyone except herself. It's basically just a basic shield. An extra hit point with no air ability. It's nice that Amy can give these out though occasionally can be overpowered, but honestly as soon as you get to really any shield monitor you are replacing it. I give it a 6.5/10.

Graphics: The only one I don't like is the Attraction shield. I feel like a similar sort of aesthetic to the Electric shield would be cool, but do something slightly different with the electricity and keep it yellow/orange. Other than that they all look fantastic.

Suggestion: An idea for a unique shield could be one that doesn't stop you from losing rings when hit, but that does allow you to keep half of them at the cost of not scattering rings at all. For the air ability, it could home in on nearby rings once per jump. It could be called the "Ring Shield", and look like a transparent ring spinning around the player.

Final thoughts: Overall, I feel like there should be a little bit less redundancy among the shields, a lot of them feel really samey to each other now that the S3K shields are in. I'm a really big fan of the idea of shields that do things other than protect you from a hit when you come into contact with an enemy, so optionally I would love to see a new shield or two fleshing that concept out a little. Aside from the problems with variety however, I'm pretty happy with what we have now. Just make the Attraction shield less ugly.

 

[Bianca]

The Elemental Shield already does this (as well as the S3 Bubble Shield), I don't think we need a third one that does the exact same thing.

I for this to be a replacement for the elemental sheild

 

[Goldenhog]

@time_gear: I must say though, I don't mind there being some redundancy between shields, I think it opens some possibilities in terms of level design. Like in AGZ, you have the Electric Shield to give you an extra safety in the really tough platforming challenges, but it can't be abused because there are segments where the player is forced to come in contact with water.

 

[Zanda_Sama]

The Sonic 3 shields are how they are because thats how they were in Sonic 3. They can't change it, I don't think it's a good idea to change it either.
Except Bubble Shield, Bubble Shield should like allow you to keep most if not all of your current momentum, and let you act or move immediately after bouncing. That and maybe increase the bounce height.

I'd love more shields for more variety, but we are sorta running out of ideas idk. I'd love to have Sonic 3 shields in the game, not as a replacement, but an addition. Have them there when they make sense to be there I suppose. Redundancy of Whirlwind Shield and Electricity Shield can't be fixed, same with Flame Shield and Thok. As the Sonic 3 shields have to stay true to their source material. I don't see anything wrong with that.

 

[Mystic]

As a general note: the Sonic 3K shields aren't used with the shields they overlap with in the stages designed for them. Aerial Garden does not use attraction or whirlwind. Azure Temple does not use elemental, and the whole idea with the water shield's usage there is to make the fire's pain clear. Haunted Heights is currently using the flame shield, but it was not designed around it and it was thrown into the map to help with pattern completion for 2.2. The map the flame shield is intended for is not yet made.

Essentially, the S3K shields are in the game as a fun extra for some unlockable content. The main game does not and will not use them. The reason we can get away with having new mechanics like that is that most players will recognize the mechanic from S3K and therefore it won't be a big problem for the player to suddenly encounter it and be expected to know what's going on. They're also single level gimmicks so even if the player isn't familiar with the mechanics from S3K, it's contained into a single area so the player's first encounter with them is in a much more controlled situation where we can treat it as a level gimmick and not a game-wide mechanic.

Otherwise, it's not a good idea to add shields to the game. We already have five, which is a lot for new players to learn. I know it's not something most players think about, but with a long-running project like this, complexity creep is something we need to worry about. There's always the temptation to add more and more stuff, which is great for long-time players that already know all the mechanics that we had already, but can be overwhelmingly complicated to new players who are presented with a giant wall of powerups that they don't know any of. Shields and other things that are used throughout the game need to be simple enough that players can quickly understand what's going on and learn as they go along.

Whirlwind Shield: I think its weird that if you use it after walking of an edge you have to use the jump button instead of the spin button. it would be cool if both worked.

The reason it does not do this is because if you walk off a ledge and press jump too late, trying to jump, jump is the key that the player would expect to use. If the player walks off a ledge and hits spin too late, they probably were trying to roll into something and don't want to jump unintentionally.

GFZ1 does show a good use for the Armageddon shield but that use doesn't really show up again. there aren't many spots where there is a large group of enemies and the Armageddon shield is available.

There are actually lots of places where the armageddon shield is useful, but we intentionally don't just put the shield next to those places except in GFZ1. It's designed to make you, the player, need to figure out where the best places to use the ability are and get the maximum benefit from it.

However, the homing attack can only be used once per jump and will force you forward without being able to use your abilities. The fixed bounce height after a hit also feels off. Overall I find myself never using this ability simply because it will put me in a disadvantageous position about 60% of the time. It should really allow you to chain multiple homing attacks, or bounce higher after a hit to allow more time for correcting your trajectory.

This is completely intentional. Using the attraction shield's homing ability is designed to actually commit to something and not just be something you do any time you can, as in modern Sonic. You need to actually plan your angles out such that you will go in a beneficial direction before pressing the button here, and that's a very intentional part of the design. It is in fact more powerful than the homing attack if you plan ahead, but just mashing it without thinking will lead to going off in random unhelpful directions. This in combination with the fact that many of our enemies have actual defensive hazards like spikes make using this shield much more engaging than just homing attack spam.

However, the Elemental Stomp is amongst the most useless abilities. The radius of the stomp is pretty poor and overall spinning will be a better solution in 100% of applicable cases if you want the fire to do anything. It's also redundant to nonspin characters who already have their own, way more effective, combat abilities to deal with enemies, and I might add the ability is too similar to Force Stop in the sense that all it really does is set your momentum to 0 and allows you to fall slightly faster which is only ever useful in Techno Hill's goop.

Then we have Elemental Stomp. Again slapped together from Bubble Bounce and Flame Dash. Again, serves almost no purpose for platforming. Yes, it does help cancelling your momentum - Force Shield does the same. Yes, it does allow you to sink into THZ goop - it's not nearly as good as it seems. Again, would probably find more use if it could break the floors but those are usually reserved for Amy/Fang routes and thus might actually make things worse for everyone who isn't Tails. As for the fire trail range during the stomp - with how enemies usually move (either way too slow or in mid-air) it's always better to just use the character's innate abilities to dispose of them rather than to wait for them to touch the fire trail that will probably disappear berofe they reach it. It's more of a defense mechanism against grounded enemies that are too close to your landing spot.

You're quite wrong in the power level of this ability, although some of the utility isn't needed at higher skill play. The ability to just quickly stop and land on a platform is a huge deal for a lot of players, and is a lot more powerful than the admittedly overly weak force active because not only does it stop you it places you immediately on the platform you're above. For instance, this is incredibly useful for sticking landings on moving platforms and other things that may be moving around. It's also quite strong at quickly changing direction in the situation where you want to go down, like shafts and other places where the route goes straight down for a bit.

It's a lot less powerful as an attack, but the fire is indeed there to help in the situation where you miss using it to target an enemy by a small amount. The reason it's useful as an attack has more to do with sticking landings than power level, though, as it pierces through the enemy and lands you directly on the ground instead of bouncing off the enemy, which can again be hugely useful if the accuracy gained by not bouncing is relevant.

Basically, the elemental shield's ground pound activation is indeed a super useful tool, but a lot of the uses aren't immediately apparent. It's just not a very powerful tool for going fast as its primary job is stopping, not speedrunning.

I had a thought that maybe Force Shield could have its projectile reflection from 2.0 as an active ability (sort of like Insta-Shield/Twinspin that would reflect the projectile back at the shooter at the cost of both extra hits being taken away) but maybe it would make Force Shield way to powerful.

This was actually originally what the force shield was going to do back when it was implemented in 2.0, and at no cost (you could spam it every jump if you'd like). We tested it extensively, and it just isn't fun for a variety of reasons. The primary one is that most of the time you would want to use the ability, you're standing on the ground. In order to activate a shield ability, you need to jump, which generally is enough to dodge whatever attack was heading for you to begin with. Even in match, where projectiles are the mode's bread and butter, the ability was pretty close to useless.

 

[Eliwood]

The reason it does not do this is because if you walk off a ledge and press jump too late, trying to jump, jump is the key that the player would expect to use. If the player walks off a ledge and hits spin too late, they probably were trying to roll into something and don't want to jump unintentionally.

I don't have a lot to add to this other than "this feels inconsistent". It's fine if you want the jump button to be the button to be used after walking off or using a spring because "some people" do that, but anyone who plays even remotely competently will be more confused that their shield activation button isn't working. The person who posted this was in the right, both should work.

You're quite wrong in the power level of this ability, although some of the utility isn't needed at higher skill play. The ability to just quickly stop and land on a platform is a huge deal for a lot of players, and is a lot more powerful than the admittedly overly weak force active because not only does it stop you it places you immediately on the platform you're above. For instance, this is incredibly useful for sticking landings on moving platforms and other things that may be moving around. It's also quite strong at quickly changing direction in the situation where you want to go down, like shafts and other places where the route goes straight down for a bit.

It's a lot less powerful as an attack, but the fire is indeed there to help in the situation where you miss using it to target an enemy by a small amount. The reason it's useful as an attack has more to do with sticking landings than power level, though, as it pierces through the enemy and lands you directly on the ground instead of bouncing off the enemy, which can again be hugely useful if the accuracy gained by not bouncing is relevant.

Basically, the elemental shield's ground pound activation is indeed a super useful tool, but a lot of the uses aren't immediately apparent. It's just not a very powerful tool for going fast as its primary job is stopping, not speedrunning.

No they're very much right in regards to it being relatively useless or not very powerful. I don't think a shield ability should only be useful for the lowest level of play. It's fine if you want a shield with the ability to stop but now you have two, and both are honestly really terrible. With the elemental shield specifically not only is the radius for this shield stomp move pitifully small, but the delay for the stomp is honestly too much. Really if I could change two things about this move it would probably be to greatly increase it's radius for its attack to make it more useful as an offensive tool, but also completely remove the delay from hitting the ground so you can more quickly get back into the action. As it stands right now this shield only feels useful for someone who never played srb2, and then the more I play it the less I need to use this shield.


I would consider myself rather competent at the game and I consider this shield worthless. Might as well just be the basic one hit shield with no ability from Sonic 1 and 2. Technically its a shield, yes, and it protects me from a hit, but what it offers from a gameplay standpoint of shield ability, its skill ceiling is comically low. Giving it the Sonic and Knuckles Bounce or making its current ability more powerful would be the better option. As of right now it is incredibly weak. I don't consider stopping to be a "powerful" ability especially when your player skill gets high enough. I believe all shields should be designed in a way so they help both players of high and low skill, not just exclusively low skilled players.

 

[Mystic]

I am not a low-skill player. I use the elemental stomp pretty regularly. However, I have been playing with it as an option for several years already and am used to it existing and have had time to figure out when I find it helpful. I also have had time to adjust my jump arc strategy for when I have it because it rewards overshooting, which is something that's normally a bad thing.

Another thing of note is that different players prioritize different things. If your priority is going fast, then elemental's ability isn't likely going to augment your play style much. It's very much not going to light up the time attack WR scene on fire. That doesn't mean that it's a bad ability, though. It just means that different players have different perspectives on what goes well with their play style. You can actually see that type of thing just in this thread, with way more than just you and me disagreeing on what the strong and weak shields are. I view this as a good thing, because it means that there's enough variety of effects for different players to latch onto different shields as preferred.

I don't have a lot to add to this other than "this feels inconsistent". It's fine if you want the jump button to be the button to be used after walking off or using a spring because "some people" do that, but anyone who plays even remotely competently will be more confused that their shield activation button isn't working. The person who posted this was in the right, both should work.

It has been tested with both buttons in the past. We found that it was a lot more common to accidentally try to hit spin to spin and trigger it than you'd think. The key point here is that nobody is hitting the jump button with the intent to do anything but jump, while people are hitting spin to do other things, so it creates a conflict on the same button that can be really frustrating.

For instance, Amy has a similar issue right now because of the shield abilities conflicting with her double jump. In development we actually had her jump attack only trigger on double jump, but this led to button issues where players would rightfully try to hit spin to do it since that's what does it on the ground. However, by allowing jump-spin to swing the hammer without a shield, this leads to players accidentally triggering their shield ability instead. This was left in because we don't currently have a good solution in the design, but it's a problem we'd like to solve because overloading buttons can be infuriating. I certainly died a ton of times in SA2 to trying to use the light speed dash, being slightly off, and instead ground pounding directly into a bottomless pit.

This is why we only allow the jump button. We would rather avoid button conflicts when possible, and allowing spin to trigger it was creating those conflicts.

 

[Crappy Blue]

It has been tested with both buttons in the past. We found that it was a lot more common to accidentally try to hit spin to spin and trigger it than you'd think. The key point here is that nobody is hitting the jump button with the intent to do anything but jump, while people are hitting spin to do other things, so it creates a conflict on the same button that can be really frustrating.

For instance, Amy has a similar issue right now because of the shield abilities conflicting with her double jump. In development we actually had her jump attack only trigger on double jump, but this led to button issues where players would rightfully try to hit spin to do it since that's what does it on the ground. However, by allowing jump-spin to swing the hammer without a shield, this leads to players accidentally triggering their shield ability instead. This was left in because we don't currently have a good solution in the design, but it's a problem we'd like to solve because overloading buttons can be infuriating. I certainly died a ton of times in SA2 to trying to use the light speed dash, being slightly off, and instead ground pounding directly into a bottomless pit.

This is why we only allow the jump button. We would rather avoid button conflicts when possible, and allowing spin to trigger it was creating those conflicts.

All of this would be fixed by putting shield actions on their own button. This is the source of these button conflicts.

 

[time gear]

Amy has a similar issue right now because of the shield abilities conflicting with her double jump. In development we actually had her jump attack only trigger on double jump, but this led to button issues where players would rightfully try to hit spin to do it since that's what does it on the ground. However, by allowing jump-spin to swing the hammer without a shield, this leads to players accidentally triggering their shield ability instead. This was left in because we don't currently have a good solution in the design, but it's a problem we'd like to solve because overloading buttons can be infuriating

I realize this is kinda the wrong topic for this, but since you brought up this issue here I figure I will make my suggestion here real quick. Why not just map Amy's hammer to custom 1? As far as I am aware none of the custom buttons are mapped to anything for the vanilla characters, even though they could potentially be used to fix issues like this.

The way this would play in game is Amy wouldn't do anything when you press spin, and wouldn't have a double jump action, but when you press custom 1 she swings her hammer either on the ground or in the air. This gives her a dedicated button that is always for her hammer and never for anything else that could confuse things.

 

[Bianca]

The reason it does not do this is because if you walk off a ledge and press jump too late, trying to jump, jump is the key that the player would expect to use. If the player walks off a ledge and hits spin too late, they probably were trying to roll into something and don't want to jump unintentionally.

Fair. i didnt think about it activating when rolling off a ledge but if youve playtested it and found that thats an issue im ok with it.

There are actually lots of places where the armageddon shield is useful, but we intentionally don't just put the shield next to those places except in GFZ1. It's designed to make you, the player, need to figure out where the best places to use the ability are and get the maximum benefit from it.

Thinking about it more i can see how it would be useful for getting extra lives and in score attack.

 

[Unknownlight]

I realize this is kinda the wrong topic for this, but since you brought up this issue here I figure I will make my suggestion here real quick. Why not just map Amy's hammer to custom 1? As far as I am aware none of the custom buttons are mapped to anything for the vanilla characters, even though they could potentially be used to fix issues like this.

The way this would play in game is Amy wouldn't do anything when you press spin, and wouldn't have a double jump action, but when you press custom 1 she swings her hammer either on the ground or in the air. This gives her a dedicated button that is always for her hammer and never for anything else that could confuse things.

This is a good optional setting, but I think the default needs to still be spin so that everyone's moves are as discoverable as possible.