OK! So I think we should begin/continue documenting all of our weird and wonderful ideas!
As usual, everyone is entitled to their own ideas and you should post them regardless of how obscure or how repeated the idea may be.
Use the "Comment" section below.
Erm... Well okay I will post :)
ReplyDeleteAmy, Nick and I watched inception today. And I wouldn't mind working on something like the reflected sky environment it contained. It also opens up possibilities of just having upside down civilisations on the inner side of cliffs etc.
From there my mind kind of wandered towards a modern/steampunk/futuristic (either of any of them) civilisation (present time in the game) built over the relitively intact remains of a more archaic civilisation...
I kind of thought (I'm still in this train of thought, so it might sound silly) that maybe if the ancient civilisation built the city one way (e.g upside down under a cliff) the new civilisation might build ontop of it the right way up, which could create some interesting scenery...
Just a thought though, I think the more ideas we put out no matter how silly they seem, we can narrow them down going through the list later or combine them.
Cheers!
One idea I have (for the game mechanic) is very similar to the game-play style of "Savage" and several other games I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteThe idea is that on one team, a random person is elected to be a "Tank". This Tank can only move very slowly, and can only be effected by a particular round of ammunition/gun which is in very short supply and spawns sporadically in random and/or difficult to-get-to locations. The aim (for the team w/ the Tank) is to get to a shielded point, whilst protecting the Tank as only his/her weapons can break the shield and allow their team to win.
The opposing team have to protect the shield for a predetermined amount of time, this can be done by bringing down the Tank with the special weaponry causing it to respawn, delaying the Tank's advance.
Running with the whole "Inception" theme, it may be cool (and most likely near impossible to achieve) to set the game in a large building (hospital, hotel, office, school, maybe even RMIT) and have random gravity shifts, flipping the orientation of the character/map, changing the physics completely. This could be just two ways (floor and ceiling) changing at random intervals, this would make weapon/armor grabbing a lot harder having to time jumps or wait for the gravity to flip again before getting a chance at it.
ReplyDeleteI'd also like to make the note that because it's deathmatch style, with just invidual levels (no transition or storyline) we would be also allowed to make each level individual in setting (which could also allow us to showcase any part of the game's universe).
ReplyDeletee.g. halo - which has space, city, natural and structural levels.
All you have to do is say it's in a different place (whoo!)
Posts? At 4am? It's more likely than you think! :D
ReplyDeleteIn regards to gravity, I've played enough Super Mario Galaxy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqKKpZsoQug) and Prey (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdG-VuAR9nU) to consider it as well! Hopefully it's not too hard to program. Prey runs on the Unreal Engine anyway so im sure there's info on how to do it. :D
As with Inception, yeah i think the awesome scene where city folds on itself would be an awesome stage to play around in. Players would either seek an item to 'switch sides' or merely 'walk between sides'. I don't think it would be too daunting as long as the stage it self is of medium to small size.
I was thinking along the lines of gaining special items (through kill streaks maybe?) where you could perhaps knock players off their feet and onto your side of the stage, which would temporarily disorientate them and give you a short term advantage. Sounds like it would make you feel woozy? You're probably right!
Diggin' the tank game mode too, Nick! Shall we throw it into the nauseating gravity city idea of ours? :P (gets shouted down)
Ok judging by my timestamp, i guess you guys aren't really THAT nocturnal. My mistake!
ReplyDeleteOh right my other idea as a possible alternative to the shifting/rotating level would be just unstable gravity where it varies in intensity, with some sort of marker to warn the players suited to the setting. Just as a backup.
ReplyDeleteI love where this is going! As for another alternative if the actual gravity part is hard/impossible to program, we could simply twist the world in the editor, rather than altering the actual gravity. For example you're walking down a hallway and suddenly it twists around so that you're now walking on the ceiling, you could also put small placeables with no walk mesh floating in mid-air, to obscure the player's view and aim. The only negative is that it isn't as trippy as the area becomes known, where as actual gravity shifts would keep the players guessing.
ReplyDeleteI really like the possible strategy of "switching & walking between sides" too, it would be a wicked mechanic if set in the right area.
Another couple examples of similar things (kind of).
ReplyDeleteAnother Prey example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgqq7YdE5w4&feature=PlayList&p=DB16A64955B0C296&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1
A small flash game:
http://armorgames.com/play/751/shift
oh man i loved Shift, i played it on my iPod Touch. That would be an absolute trip on a 3D Plane though.
ReplyDeleteJust reading through these posts I think we have some really good ideas, perhaps (along the lines of the inception thing) we could make the level fold around completely, like a ring. This would be interesting from a shooter perspective because you could get shot not only from normal angles but from above too and it is a continuous level as it just keeps going around and around.
ReplyDeleteFor ideas of interesting level mechanics concerning geometry (being a Maths and Science nerd myself) I think you should check out a Mobeus Ring or Strip, very cool piece of geometry.
Btw, when I say ring I mean a sphere, but everything happens on the inside. Imagine fighting in a ball wearing suction cap boots.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dreamstime.com/escher-stairs-largethumb6306396.jpg
ReplyDeletei know exactly what you mean Morfinn. With a ring, it could be like a mini-'Halo' type map. I used to have the idea of an inverted sphere myself as a fictional world after playing Halo actually; the sun would be the 'centre' and the walkable land would be the inside surface of the sphere. Reminds me of something like these abstract wallpapers i found, on a larger spherical scale of course :) :
ReplyDeletehttp://picasaweb.google.com/shepesh85/90AmazingHDAbstractWallpapers#5352989607632137714
http://picasaweb.google.com/shepesh85/90AmazingHDAbstractWallpapers#5352993543300415442
Setting wise, I was thinking that it might be cool to "twist" the world in more than a physical way. Following on from Belinda's original idea about having the two cities or the mountains, if we implemented surreal, out-of-place scenery into the Unreal this could present an interesting way of forming obstacles and jumps, as well as keep things interesting. This could work with or without the gravity.
ReplyDeleteThe idea I had last night was to have at least one "world" where it was setup like an rusted industrial boiler room, with plants/trees growing out of the ceiling and walls (I'll have to sketch out the idea for you as that sounds weird without visuals) but mixing natural/surreal/impossible features and different biomes into the Unreal's world could be an interesting prospect
I'll agree I'd probably have to see a sketch, right now it sounds like overgrown/abandoned industrial which has been done. Unless you were thinking of making it more 'intentional' gardens with a steampunk twist, which usually do not go together at all to avoid the stereotype.
ReplyDeleteJoe, I was wondering whether you could investigate the gravity mechanics/functions of Unreal for us, mainly the rotation/ceiling walking? Whether or not we choose to use it, we need to know if it's possible, before we jump head-long into an idea.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the short notice, should have posted this after we first discussed the notion.
Thanks :D
@Nick
ReplyDeleteTechnically with the Unreal Engine it is possible and i have found some info based on gravity manipulation but no so much with adjacent planes with a good guide. But yeah we'll definitely need something to put in the document code-wise just so they know what we're thinking, so yeah i'm on it. :)
Awesome! Thanks
ReplyDeleteSorry i've been silent for the last two weeks on here.. poor of me.
ReplyDeleteBut my thoughts were coming that if one of our maps is less gravity mind-screwing and merely 'twisted' (like those hallways in the forest temple in Zelda:OOT) We could mix it up/make it more complicated by having the actual map objects/platforms/walls shifting and changing - y'know, on certain timers so the players have to remember when certain passages are going to be blocked off and whatnot.
Or, like in the Labyrinth the trippy scene with the multiple staircases and walls, paradoxes to end up upside down and so on.
I agree with Nick, that idea or combining natural and surreal would be a nice touch. I kind of like the fact that we're not tied down wit a story.
ReplyDeleteAs for Belinda's suggestions of a steampunk twist, wouldn't that make it more stereotypical? That’s not a bad thing though, I like the idea of a steamunk city with “intentionally” grown gardens and such, has a nice ring to it, sort of bioshocky though.
As for Amy's suggestion of a timed moving environment, I had a similar idea which I think I shared with Bel and Nick and they didn't seem to keen on the idea. But maybe that was my idea specifically, a level where the rooms move around in a predictable puzzle, it’ll require a bit of for thought to devise a puzzle that would work as a level, just give me time to flesh it out.
And Joe, I'm so grateful that you've joined the group, it's wonderful to have a programmer that actually does great work and shows enthusiasm :D
Hey guys, I've been reading up on trying to allow a player to "walk on walls" basically and it might be a little harder than i initially thought. Some folks have attempted to make it happen through nifty things called PHYS_Spider (http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=708442) and another concept mod called Escher Player Physics for UT2004 (http://pospi.spadgos.com/index.php?pg=gamesSmall) but these aren't quite finished and still very buggy. Which theoretically means if i were to actually program it to work, i would be a local hero on the UT3 boards :P. I had a lot of faith in it because i believed games like Prey were indeed made off the Unreal 3.0 but it was created under ID Tech's engine for Doom 3 which surprised me. There should still be hope for twisty levels but im not 100% sure we'll be walking on ceilings in 12 weeks. It's better that we realise now that its hard to hard to do and not halfway through the project. I'll keep reading up on it cos i'd love for it to work honestly.
ReplyDelete@Morfinn
aww shucks cheers :)
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