Taival Mechanics #8: Mounting System
Hey adventurers! Ever since we were little kids playing video games, we've felt like mounts are one of the key features that make open world games fun and enjoyable. Whether you're speeding across vibrant landscapes or sharing a ride with your friends, mounts add a whole new layer of fun and functionality to your adventures.
In Taival, your shapeshifting companion, the Henki, can unlock various mount forms by shapeshifting into different creatures throughout the world. Taking the form of a mount is just one of your Henki’s potential forms, alongside combat and exploration forms. We’ll go more into detail about that and "taming" in a future post!
Each mount in Taival comes with distinct characteristics like speed, jump height or acceleration. However, we want this system to be fun and approachable, so instead of showing numbers in the UI for their corresponding stats, we’ll show, for example, two out of three "speed icons"! This way the player can just choose their favorite creature as their mount and not stare at the stats for the best numbers. We also aimed for a bit more realistic, weighty feel to the riding mechanics: mounts don’t instantly turn 180 degrees or reach the top speed but instead take time to turn and build up momentum.
As expected, riding a mount will boost your movement speed. As not expected, you can share a mount with your friends! Certain mounts allow multiple players to hop aboard, with up to four players sharing a single mount. You always control your own mount, but if you hop onto a friend’s mount, your friend is in charge. If the mount’s owner is not on board, their mount will follow the owner while you stay comfortably seated. (Don’t) love the direction your friend’s taking you? You can show your (displeasure or) excitement with an emote while riding!
While the current implementation handles exploration on the ground, we’re looking into the possibilities for water and flying mounts. They would make traversing even more interesting but also require the world to be designed so that all locations are reachable by flying.
That concludes our mounting system! Are there specific mount features we've missed, or do you have ideas for even more ways to bring cooperative fun to the companion mounting system? What kind of mounts would you like to see in Taival? Bouncy mushrooms? An unmovable boulder? Let us know in the comments!
As always, thank you for supporting us on this journey. Together, we’re building something truly special. See you next month for more Taival Mechanics updates!
- The Taival Team
A bonus blooper, as things never go as they should when developing:
Comments (2)
I absolutely love the uniqueness of the mounts. Currently most games with mounts have them all at the same movement speed with no unique features and with them just being different skins. And that’s just not interesting after a while. Having multiple friends on the same mount would be pretty fun too. It also brings more of a “party adventure” kinda feel to traveling as well. I would be interested to see flying mounts but I’m not sure they would even be required in the Taival world as it seems like everything is intended to be accessible via the ground, plus you would be skipping over any cool ground areas/events with the flying mounts. My only recommendation is that if you guys do add flying mounts, don’t give them to the player easily or too early as it could possibly make traveling from point A to point B too dull. Having multiple friends on the same flying mounts would be pretty funny though.
Heya, love to hear you like the unique mounts! It's a bit tough to approach the idea as we want to avoid players feeling like they have to use a "better" or faster mount instead of a one they'd prefer aesthetically or for role playing purposes. Balancing is tough! Agree on the flying mounts part! Especially as our team is small and the scope of the world is smaller, having flying mounts may not work as well. If they'd be added, they'd definitely be a end game thing and harder to acquire. The idea of friends sharing a flying mount does make us want to make flying mounts though, it would create so many fun(ny) moments!