IPhone WhereToDrop
From M-Gate Labs Wiki
Contents |
Description
This game is based upon a simple concept, what goes up, must come down. You will be tasked with guiding a balloon through a series of obstacles. On your journey you will be shown checkpoints, some easy, some hard and as you play you can choose which path to follow. Your journey isn't a simple affair, attached to you is a guided bomb, which has a ground target. As your fly higher and higher to gain altitude you have to safeguard the cargo. If your balloon is popped to early to the game isn't over, but you may not achieve enough falling speed to deploy the device. Also scattered throughout missions will be bonus objectives, like travel through certain bonus checkpoints, which will increase your overall score. Also on the dropping portion, hitting an obstacle will slow down your fall and damage the bomb, which may explode too early. But as you fall its possible to reach a high enough speed where you can instead destroy obstacles for points and not take a speed penalty.
Also the information displayed here is Copyrighted by M-Gate Labs, 2009.
Controls
I've grown tired of dragging my finger across a screen to play, so instead you tilt the iPhone left and right, but the balloon will not move, instead the world tilts to still point upwards. An inverse tilt option will be available. To better think of this imaging an iPhone will a red arrow pointing up on the screen. As you turn the iPhone the line still points in the true up position, like an upside down pendulum that points up instead of down.
Objects
The levels will be made up of many different objects put together, but they will all share the same earth background. Some of the obstacles, such as "panels" will be block like and could form crude buildings and chambers.
Player Objects
- Balloon
- Fly's up
- Bomb
- Falls down
- 2 Speed Categories
- 1-3 Too Slow
- Take Damage
- 4-5 Fast
- Smash Things
NPC Objects
- Target
- What you are trying to hit
- Simple Target
- Vehicle
- Moving Vehicle
- Building
- Spinner
- Spins & Explodes of Contact
- Cherry
- Smaller then Spinner, Explodes of Contact
- Rocket
- Fly's Left to Right, Explodes of Contact
- Pusher
- Fly's Left to Right, Pushes Balloon
- Panel
- Obstacle, Breaks on Contact
- Spiked Panel
- Obstacle, Pops Balloon on Contact
- Reinforced Spiked Panel
- Obstacle, Pops Balloon on Contact
- Slows down speed when falling "Fast"
World Design
Layers
The game, like little big planet will be made up of multiple layers. In general there will be three layers, Front, Game, Back. The only layer to handle game logic is the "Game" layer. The other layers will only consist of decorations. Like imaging if you were traveling through the guts of an airship, it would look boring if the background was just the sky, so with the introduction of "Layers" comes the ability to add a ship like background, like steam pipes, computers, metal walls or a window. The foreground is there to allow designers to place things on top, like metal grating to add to the environment, but to the user it will just look like a 2D drawing, the layers will not add depth, but are there instead to enhance the overall presentation. Another example of layers is the introduction of building interiors, where you will have to travel through a building. To add more life to this situation crumbling walls and other decorations will be present to trick the player into thinking they are flying through an abandoned office building.
Altitude
When the balloon rises the background will change to reflect the current altitude. When very low the sky will be very bight, but at higher altitudes it will start to fade to black. Clouds and other background artifacts will be randomly added during game play to enhance the visuals.
As the bomb drops it will slowly gain speed. I know it should use the gravity constant with acceleration, but trying to control an object falling too fast is not fun. But as the object gains speed it will slice through the air and visual effects will be shown, like air trails, and finally a fireball coming from the bomb as it screams towards earth.
Level Design
All levels will start off with the balloon and cargo on the ground, after a quick count down the game will start. After the launch its really up to the designer to plan out everything. They can place way points to make navigation simpler, or ignore them all together. Here are a few ideas we have had about levels.
Level Ideas
Training 1
Dead simple, fly up, reach the right altitude and finally hit the target.
Training 2
Not so simple, fly up, avoid the single spinner, reach the right altitude, drop and finally hit the target without hitting the spinner.
Training 3
Even less simple, fly up, avoid the spike ceiling, reach the right altitude, drop and finally hit the target by smashing through a few ceilings.
Operation Silent Pop
First Mission, fly up, avoid the multiple spinner formations, reach the right altitude, drop and hit the target by missing the spinners you just flew through.
Operation Tail Pipe
fly up, travel through the inner workings of an airship, collecting intelligence(checkpoints), escape from airship, avoid the spinners, reach altitude, avoid spinners, travel through ship, hitting key points or avoid all together, hit the ground target.
Back End
To make life easier for developers we are going to use an abstract object system. Each object in the game will be defined inside of the code, such as the spinner, but the graphical aspects will be handled by shape definition files. Each file will specify a key texture, object dimensions, and the coordinates. After the object has been loaded into memory a pointer will be set for each "part", linking to the correct memory locations for later use. Doing this will enable developers to not mess with trying to statically link to texture & vertex buffers. For example when a "spinner" is needed for rendering, the object in question will point back to the original "spinner" definition, where it knows to use this "texture" and render these "parts". The logic for objects will also be handled in the same manner. The game engine will at its heart be a drawing engine, but when a collision is detected it will delegated the instance back to the original class for closure, for example, a spinner may explode, or a panel may crumble.
In the back end I believe there will be two big arrays, texture & vertex coordinates. The arrays will in theory have a 1 to 1 relationship. To make the game faster a statically allocated array for both structures will exist, and should have enough room for 150 objects. But when thinking of objects, just remember that a few are made up of multiple parts, like the player's avatar is a Balloon, Strap, Indicator, Bomb, Strength Indicator Normal & Broken.
- 150 Objects
- 150 Shapes (9,750 Bytes)
- 1 Shape
- 4 Vertexes (32 Bytes)
- 4 Coordinates (32 Bytes)
- 1 Vertex
- 2 Points (8 Bytes)
- 1 Coordinate
- 2 Points (8 Bytes)
Online Integration
To make the game more open, a website will be available, where people can join and make their own custom levels. Like Little Big Planet, people can rate the levels and good ones will rise to the top of the list. Each member will be allowed to craft a limited amount of levels. To create more maps a premium membership will exist that will open the total available map slots up a bit more. Members of the site can also friend other members and see/play their levels. Levels can also be copied/modified, if the author allowed for it.
Like NetFlix, the iPhone game will be kept simple, and surfing for levels on it will be limited to the top ranked maps, and those you selected before. To add maps to your available queue, you need to log in to the website and search for them. You queue will have a limited size, but you can favorite, but not add to queue, so you can still keep old favorites around to play later.
To join, you must first purchase the game, which will then give you an access code, based upon your devices identity.
Tools
A game of this size will require a few custom tools in order to get the engine up and running. The first planed tool is the Abstract Object Editor, or AOB Edit. AOB Edit is currently still in early alpha stages, but its able to, create, load and save .def files, our shape definition file format. In the next image you can see AOB Edit defining the basic shapes for the player's avatar.
The second tool to come to existence is the level editor. The level editor is a mini version of the game written in Java SE 6.0. The editor is still in alpha stages, but it can load the AOB definition file format. The only real issue holding up the game at the moment is a lack of content. Currently the games actual development is on hold until the required artwork has been produced.
The level editor is almost ready for content creation, the only features missing are the ability to load, save and export levels for the iPhone/iPod Touch.
Concept Art
The three balloons on the lower left are "Lives". The three red dots between the balloon and bomb is the stress indicator, when all dots disappear, the bomb is dropped. The three lines on the bomb are hull strength, when all three lines are gone, game over. In this situation the craft is traveling towards the green checkpoint. A green checkpoint is a safe checkpoint, blue is a save point, red is dangerous, orange is bonus. For a better feeling, please checkout this concept video.
