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What about characters, which have "lives" or "continues" mechanics? Basically, when character can resurrect himself if he dies, but only limited number of times (each life is used when character dies, and each continue is used when character runs out of lifes).
Are they allowed or not? How many character starts with?
And some ideas on how they can work:
My assumption is that, if character has finite lives, his Standard Equipment number of lifes is that at the start of the game, and Optional Equipment is the absolute highest number of lifes allowed in game. E.G. Mario would have 3 lifes in Standart Equipment, and either 99 (Super Mario World), 100 (Super Mario Bros. 3), 127 (NES version), 255 (Super Mario Bros. 2) or 1110 (Super Mario 3D Land, New Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario 3D World) lives as Optional Equipment.
Are they allowed or not? How many character starts with?
And some ideas on how they can work:
- One of important points is: the "resetting" and "non-resetting" lifes. "resetting" has entire level's progress reset when character dies, so level must be completed from start or checkpoint; for our purposes, it means that fight starts from start again, except the resurrected character knows everything what happened in his previous attempt (think Groundhog's Day); enemy character remembers his memories of fight only if he has "ripple-effect-proof" memory, can himself can respawn, or otherwise has special ability to do so. "non-resetting" keeps all progress on level, with character just appearing again on level unharmed; for our purposes, fight just continues uninterrupted.
- Another point is where character respawns: exactly where he was upon death, on other side of the screen, on checkpoint, or on start of the level. Latter 2 variants mean that both characters have to first find each-other to resume fight (giving time to Preparation and other downtime activities).
- Modern "Save-Load" can be seen as "resetting" variant with unlimited number of lifes. Unlimited respawn is "non-resetting" with unlimited or semi-unlimited number of lifes.
- Finally, some games have technically infinite continues, except using continue resets your score to 0.
My assumption is that, if character has finite lives, his Standard Equipment number of lifes is that at the start of the game, and Optional Equipment is the absolute highest number of lifes allowed in game. E.G. Mario would have 3 lifes in Standart Equipment, and either 99 (Super Mario World), 100 (Super Mario Bros. 3), 127 (NES version), 255 (Super Mario Bros. 2) or 1110 (Super Mario 3D Land, New Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario 3D World) lives as Optional Equipment.