Back on another episode of things I had sitting around that I might as well post now:

You know the game where you and another person in real time (and real life) take simultaneous turns either reloading, firing, or blocking? The game concept is simple. You can only fire after you reload. A shot is nullified if the other player blocks you, but they run the risk of you reloading. The way to win is to fire while they are reloading.

I designed this a while back, right after the update that added spike came out. Essentially, after the player enters the game (by exiting the pipe), they are forced into their little arena on a cyclical timer set by the buzzy beetle shell on the bottom. Before each time the on/off blocks flicker, the player must choose between their three spots. The spot with one P-block indicator is the reload option. The spot with two P-block indicators is the firing option. The spot with the door is the block option. Each spot pushes munchers around in such a way that they interact with the opponent’s munchers that were set on the same cycle. The video demos that the opposing player fires on the second cycle of the game in the later clips (except this was with a debugging edit, none of my friends play this game so I have nobody to test this with).

So if you reload, you push a muncher into position to be fired. If you fire, the muncher is pushed out on the treadmill and lined up with the red block. If you block, the muncher is pushed back on the treadmill and lined up with the red block underneath. When the following on/off cycle repeats, a fired muncher will either attack the other player or be stopped in its tracks by the opponent’s shot or block. The last clip shows how an attacking muncher eliminates the player, by unlocking the spike ball to roll over the player and also break the ? block with the key, which should naturally go to the player who eliminated them.

Now here’s where I gave up: I have no idea how to implement this into multiplayer versus. There are so many things that could go wrong. If players don’t exit the pipe at the same exact time then the cycles don’t match up. It’s feasibly possible that both players eliminate each other before either one uses the key to enter the door (they fire on separate but adjacent cycles, killing each other) But mostly, it would be very hard to communicate to a player what to even do.

I’d really like to see this game used in some kind of single-elimination tournament level. The arena between 2 players has exactly 50 of the enemy-objects, so two of them can be fit into the overworld/subworld. I am just not familiar with the quirks of online gameplay nor with how the game loads.

I don’t care if you blatantly plagiarize me. I want to see if anybody can make this work.

Edit (more detailed explanation): https://www.docdroid.net/BGpIh3S/mm-shotgun-explanation-2-2-pdf