09/09/09 it's the date. :P
We needed something demonstrate a portion of the over all game. That was what we decided before the semester even started. If we tried to get a little bit of everything and present it... we simply wouldn't have anything to present. The amount of art, programming and design is monstrous (especially with the ambitious planning).
For this reason, we are making an instance where we can demonstrate something we would have in the final product. It too would not be complete, but a quick round up of what will be. This demonstration is the battlefield. I will go into detail on it:
This will be much like capture the flag, king of the hill etc; for other games. Idealy, each battlefield would have an objective (which results in a win), and sub-objectives (these will be things like collection, repair). Almost always they would be between factions (The player factions or the NPC factions). In each battlefield there would be a side in control.
Control over a battlefield is given after a winner is declared; after a faction or team wins a battle a standstill is called for a brief period of time, and all NPCs, objects etc will be reset; any damage to player's ships and ammunition lost may also be replenished (to avoid having players save their powerful attacks due to cost).
In a full version; with players, jobs etc. things would be more involved. Allowing players to use their professions and skills in battlefields as well. However currently that is far from implementation so we will only have ship-combat.
The battlefield we will create will be a simple 'kill the captain' or 'deplete their resources' kind of scenario. Each team will be given an amount of resources which will be consumed by player deaths and various other things; if these resources reach 0, that side will lose.
Resourcs can be obtained through destroying other ships, or by capturing objective points in the battlefield (this involves being the more dominant force in an area around a mark for a period of time - once it is captured you must be that dominant force continuously).
Other resource types such as energy can be obtained through the same methods as above. Energy will allow you to use strategic options within the battle (higher ranking players will be able to use these - until we have a ranking system everyone will have the option).
It may be that players will get to control larger ships, based on the same rank system. These will not yet be obtainable for players to keep; only to control within a battlefield.
I have started to create a ship (as the idea above) that players would be able to control (given they posses adequate rank).If anyone would like to suggest ideas or change the ideas I have put forth please comment in this post.
Destroying the other faction's main base/ship/captain will result in a win. It was discussed that if we did have player combat etc; we would be able to board the opposing team's base/ship and fight inside it. This would make things a lot more interesting ;)
I'll continue to work on the actual area, and ugh.. script. A lot of datablocks and general set up needs to be created; and when we get to it, I suppose i'll be working on AI (I LIKE working with AI though).
Note: Record all references (sites, books, names), start/end dates, and time spent on all work you do.
mabye players wont be able to contol a capital ship entirely but instead they could maby call down a missle strike or a heavy weapon to discharge and the player tells the computer where it goes something like that
ReplyDelete^ The forementioned player option for a massive attack is exactly what I suggested a few days ago to Will; it was why I made this. As you can see there is a charge visual on the front cannon.
ReplyDeletePlayers would be able to access battle-tactics and use it to fire at their main ship :)
Of course this would cost a lot of energy resources gathered by the team.