PlanetsInGameplay

Ghoulsblade 15:18, 16 October 2007 (CEST) : some notes of a chat with kaelis :

intro

in uqm (cool 2d game) there were minerals on planets that you could harvest with a little lander, trying to avoid dangers

dangers on planets

• firestorms on planets near the sun
• earthquakes
• storms (lightning,acid rain...)
• lava/acid lakes.

uqm

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php
in uqm these minerals just had different worth
it was more an agility game driving around with the little lander trying to avoid getting destroyed
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/screenshots/mercury.php  : the white circle is an earthquake , the bright red things are firewalls
the game is in the debian and ubuntu packet repos, just apt-get install uqm should do it ;)
this kind of gameplay is rather easy to implement once vehicle physics are working, and is quite funny
e.g. no need to put lot's of buildings, aliens etc on the planets manually
so planets are not boring, and you can get minerals on them
might be difficult to avoid the grind though
but maybe that's possible by using lots of different materials, and that's where the combo system comes into play
it also requires a better mission system i think

usecase

a : simple

the player wants a lander upgrade, he looks up what materials he needs, and visits a few planets until he has them

b : more complex

when the player docks to a station for repairs, a crazy professors talks to him about his new invention, but he needs materials, he tells the player where to find them, and as a reward the player gets the building plans for them
this could be expanded further

c : really complex

a shady guy sells the player some construction plans for a good weapon, but the player has to find out himself where he can get the materials, he asks at a sience station but they want him to do them a favour before they tell him where he can find the materiels, e.g. kill a few pirates that have been bugging their transports lately, or even go to some asteroid/nebulae/singularity etc and scan it for them

conclusions

a) is probably easiest to realise technicallly at first
e.g. we just register things with the combo system, and put random materials on every planet
with c we avoid grinding, there have to be lots of different material types, and the tricky part is finding out where you can find the ones you need
e.g. it wouldn't make sense to just collect all you can find, but it encourages exploration, you have a reason to go to a specific place
this could also be used to drive a story

rough plan

at least this is the general direction i have in mind, i'm still open for alternatives though =)
anyway so far it's just dreams, the question is how to make them real
hagish has been making some process with vehicle phys, but it's more complex than we though, e.g. we found a chapter starting with "there is a reason for installing damping in vehicles and using soft wheels" or so in the ODE manual after our first vehicle experiements showed very strange behaviour
kinda logical when you think about it, but not obvious at first sight =)
effects like firestorms and lightning can be done by particle effects and beam code that already exists, so that shouldn't be too difficult for a first ugly prototype
next point would be materials, shading the asteroid model with different colors should provide enough variety to get started
e.g. placing it on the planet ground so you can pick it up
you could drive around a little and then blast off back to your ship in orbit
at least that's how it worked in uqm
then you'd have the materials in your cargo hold
adding a menu for combining them using info from the combo system should give you new equipment
we can probably make the landers similar to the ships, in that they have cargo and things that can be equipped to increase the stats (speed, turnrate, acceleration)
(hitpoints...)
hmm, gotta watch out for grinding here....

art : models needed

if you have a bit of time to spare and want to do some modelling, we could spice up the planet apperance by adding various things, mostly stuff that would fit in a lifeless desert
but that can be a huge variety depending on the environment conditions
e.g. huge ice crystals on the outer planets
rocks looking like stalagmites etc
broken rocks, natural rock columns
rocks molten on one side on the hot planets
what you can imagine finding on a lifeless planet with harsh environment =)