Image via Wikipedia
True to Abuse-esque gameplay, I now have fluid running animations, an arm that moves independently of the body, and general platforming left-and-right motion up and running. Not a lot, but I’m taking this one in short steps.
Of course, development of anything Abuse drew me into playing the game, which is a true masterpiece. For those who don’t know, Abuse is a run and gun platformer from the early days, as in from the DOS days. Here, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuse_%28video_game%29
What’s amazing is that the game is still more fun than many contemporary titles, foggy DOS graphics and all. Never mind the paper-thin plot. The graphics, small as they are, are incredibly detailed – the animations a superb – and the game inspires a genuine sense of action and horror. The game has weight, in a way that even Metal Slug does not. Those early developers had one thing right. They knew their graphics weren’t much, so they focused on making the gameplay as tight as possible – something modern developers could learn from. We tend to lose ourselves in terms like “HD graphics” and “Co-op play” and entirely forget that the game is about GAMEPLAY, not marketable design hooks.
Warning: my game will NOT be as good as Abuse – because the only things I’m gonna take from this game is the fluency of the animations. Doing anything else would turn my small project into a lame Abuse-clone, which I don’t want to do. I’ve decided on a direction – one-room-per-level gameplay, possibly with a Karoshi twist to it: the goal is to kill yourself.
Or perhaps the goal is to destroy things explosively and make it through the level as fast as possible. In which case I can integrate online highscores for a) fastest time through a level and b) Most amount of damage caused per unit time.
The second option sounds good.
Yudhanjaya 
For the scoring would the damage be to the players character or would it be to the environment?