What’s the solution to running out of ammo on a boss?

[Slippery Williams]

I’m working on a survival horror game myself and am wondering how I should deal with boss fights, as a big thing with survival horror is saving ammo for bosses but should they be unbeatable if you run out?

- always have enough ammo in the arena to kill the boss, but when I know that I know I don’t have to worry about ammo cause a boss fountain is coming up

- melee weapons? I ran out of anno fighting U3 in RE4 during a pro no merchant run but figured out a tactic to finish him off with my knife. Should survival horror games always have a weak risky to use fallback weapon you could technically kill a boss with?

- environmental hazards? Re2 actually does this well, like how much you damage Birkin during the crane fight determines how many hits of the crane kills him. It took me 3 crane hits to down him on hardcore, just using flash grenades but I’ve seen someone pump ammo into him and down him in one. Another good one is trapping the uroburos boss in the furnace or re arming the flamethrower or orbital cannons in the bosses in 5

- Ammo and weapons should help but the boss is more of a puzzle? Like having Wesker catch the rockets and blowing them up in his hands so you can inject him in 5?

- ammo dropping enemies you can farm, like the plagas on the ground floor of the Salazar fight in 4, or the flying bugs in the U8 fight in 5?

- escaping/avoiding the boss bit losing out on rewards, like running from the bat in the underground city in 5?

- a timer like avoiding wesker in 5, or doing damage to super tyrant in remake 2 to shorten the amount of time it takes for Ada to throw Leon the rocket launcher?

[Dollmaker]

I think giving the player a last resort type of weapon is decent enough, most of the time the knife does pretty little dmg, making it a poor choice to use as a main weapon (unless the opponent is Krauser), but its an option to use if ammo isnt available anymore.

Nothing feels worse than essentially soft locking yourself cause you simply dont have the resources to continue, so even if its considerably harder, there should be an option to fall back on.

[GoobleMoWizard]

Knife is weak? Strange, a lot of hard-core speed runners use a knife for bosses.

[GoobleMoWizard]

Originally posted by HATORAA:

Originally posted by Reisalin Stout:

Knife is weak? Strange, a lot of hard-core speed runners use a knife for bosses.

Knife is weak in this game. The only reason speedrunners do it on PC is because of framerate bug where it makes one cut count several times. In turn, it makes knife broken on PC

Did not know that, thanks for the info.

[vukotlak]

I think ammo managment is unnecessary tedious. I much more prefer a system like the one in mass effect where you basicly have unlimited ammo but you still need to reload your guns.

I don't want to constantly have to think about killing enemy or spare him. Use weapon x or rather weapon y to spare ammo for x. So many mathematical questions distracting from the actual scene.

A bossfight should be determined by how unpredictable the boss acts. How scary he is designed . How he moves. Soundeffects. Scenery.

The question wether you have ammo or not an important factor for a good horro encounter. Also the question wether you have ammo in the bossfight or not is not even part of the bossfight it is basicly predetermined by how you managed items before the actual encounter,.

[Slippery Williams]

Originally posted by vukotlak:

I think ammo managment is unnecessary tedious. I much more prefer a system like the one in mass effect where you basicly have unlimited ammo but you still need to reload your guns.

I don't want to constantly have to think about killing enemy or spare him. Use weapon x or rather weapon y to spare ammo for x. So many mathematical questions distracting from the actual scene.

A bossfight should be determined by how unpredictable the boss acts. How scary he is designed . How he moves. Soundeffects. Scenery.

The question wether you have ammo or not an important factor for a good horro encounter. Also the question wether you have ammo in the bossfight or not is not even part of the bossfight it is basicly predetermined by how you managed items before the actual encounter,.

Valid points, I just really like having barely any ammo and making every shot count. Running from regular enemies is the solution in that regard but it’s a bit trickier with bosses.

I’ve always liked the idea of you run out of ammo/time, the fight still ends but the boss throws you through a wall, it opens a new path and you can escape but probably won’t get the best ending

[ryu600RR]

i think for some crappier games there's a hidden mechanic where if u run around enough times the same type of ammo just respawn off screen
but i think the completely erases the purpose of a survival element of the game, if you're out, you're out game over too bad

maybe if ur' out of ammo u can give a melee buff instead to give the player a fighting chance to finish off
that could even produce some elite no-gun run strat for the game

[vukotlak]

Originally posted by Dragonkick:

Valid points, I just really like having barely any ammo and making every shot count. Running from regular enemies is the solution in that regard but it’s a bit trickier with bosses.

I’ve always liked the idea of you run out of ammo/time, the fight still ends but the boss throws you through a wall, it opens a new path and you can escape but probably won’t get the best ending

The problem is what do you want to achieve.

Ask yourself these 2 questions.

1.Will the horror intensify when you run out of ammo?

You might think the answer is yes. In reality it would be cause you would be in bigger trouble.

But in a videogame it would just become a limitation of your enjoyment. Oh i run out of ammo and now i cannot get the good ending. The player does not feel horror but dissapoinment.

2. Will it make the game harder?

Again you might think the answer is yes.

What actualy happens is that if you have a game where you are dependent on your ammo the very moment you run out of it will break the game for you. It did not become harder but pointless.

If you actual program it in a way that you can stil win even without ammo it would just significantly lower the importance of ammo. Which is basicly the opposite of what you wanted to achieve.

A good solution is unlimited ammo but with the limitation of it having to recharge.
Every shot will count as missing one means you will have to survive longer.
There is also no other way out. You have to defeat the boss there is no cheap way out of it.
It also will help that the player cannot softlock himself or miss out of content.

[Indiana Jones + Great Circ]

Knife
But for real tho, you gotta conserve ammo and only use bullets when you have no other way out

[Slippery Williams]

How do people feel about this idea I’ve been toying with

As an example scenario

You enter the arena with 10 bullets and 3 health items. In the arena there are 5 stacks of 10 bullets each in different spots. The boss requires you to hit him with 50 bullets to kill, therefore there is the bare minimum of ammo in his arena to kill him if you came in with zero

The problem is that 3 out of the 5 available ammo stacks are in very dangerous spots, like you are going to take a high risk of or guaranteed damage if you want to grab them

For example, there’s a box of ammo behind a burst steam pipe that you will scald your character’s arm and injure them if you grab. There’s a little room with an ammo box but there’s an enemy in there too who has a very high chance of grabbing and hurting you. There’s an ammo box down a long small hallway that has a high chance of the boss cornering you and getting free damage.

Basically it’s a cast from hit points deal. You can get any extra ammo you need but some of it will injure you and will have to be treated by spending one of your health items and some ammo will be in a place where ‘if I go grab that, there’s a high chance I’ll be cornered by the boss or hurt by that enemy so I’ll grab it as a last resort’’ deal

The player can do very low damage melee attacks too, but will always be so close they are gonna get hurt by the boss which is always going to be a ‘trade damage done for health’ deal

What do you think of my solution of giving the player all the ammo they need to win, but the less ammo you start the fight with the more likely you will get hurt getting more ammo, basically trading health for ammo?

That way caters to both play styles. If they conserved ammo but used up all their health items when entering the arena, they won’t have to sacrifice more health by grabbing dangerous ammo.

If they enter with enter with no ammo but lots of health, they can ‘trade’ that health for enough ammo to kill the boss