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| Aeon Features Friday, June 10, 2011 6:11 pm — Posted by Livio |
ShareThis« Livio's Blog
For the past week or so, when I wasn't doing stuff like filming that 1.5-hour minecraft video
, I've been trying to design how to structure the code for the tiles and all the other features we're going to put in this game. I've always had a good idea of what we were planning to put into Aeon, but then I considered the very likely possibility that I may have forgotten about some stuff. So I went over to the topics in the Aeon board and started looking around.So to help organize my work while making sure we have a complete consensus on these things, I'm gonna make a list of all the stuff that we plan to put into Aeon at this point.
Initial Concept
The purpose of Aeon is to be our very own HATPC 2.0. It will be an AS3 Flash game that you play in the browser--as opposed to downloading it, like N. The gameplay will be roughly the same to HATPC, but with more tiles and freedom. The art style will be based on the sprites drawn by jellsprout and kitti. Music will be by Dekudude and we have some sound effects by the_grimace.
The story will be very different from HATPC. The campaign levels will be set on planet Aeon, where our heroes crash land on after their ship gets taken down by space junk. All intelligent life on the planet killed itself ages ago in a massive war. All that's left is a bunch of military bases filled with traps, through which our heroes must go through in order to collect enough energy cells (or power boxes) necessary to fuel their escape.
Campaign and Characters
The campaign will probably be one of the last things we put into the game, seeing as we care more about the level editor. However, we are thinking of putting multiple characters into the campaign, and each would play slightly different. These different characters will likely be playable in the editor much sooner than the campaign is even started. As far as I know, this is what we've come up with for characters: (in order from most likely to least likely to be in the game)
- Captain Floyd - a wolf that has better than average stats with no specials abilities.
- Janitor Hugsy - a deranged hamster who... is deranged. No special abilities and average stats. You use him in the bonus levels at the very end of the game.
- Technician Rita - an armadillo who cannot swim but can roll to increase her speed significantly to cross the surface of water and destroy spikes.
- Pilot Felix - an eagle that can control falling speed, allowing for move precision while falling as well as a longer jump distance.
- Navigator Ivan - an otter with great handling underwater and an extensive air supply, but less-than-ideal abilities on land.
- Navigator Jean - a cat (Imtimi suggested cheetah) that can run very fast during periods of time, but is awkward in water.
As for how levels will be played. I couldn't find a topic where we discussed it, but I know we were discussing it somewhere, so wherever it was, it may have been offtopic. But I remember that for a time we were planning on having an ugly list of "sets of levels", but then we decided to go with a world map that expands as you progress, citing Super Mario World as worthy inspiration.
This reminds me that we're gonna need some kind of World Map editor in the game, to let users make world maps to link series of levels together.
All Tiles
We came up with four classes of tiles:
- Fragile - like wooden tiles, but when hit provide no recoil or bouncing. Can break when falls on a spike. Also breaks when tiles fall on top of it. If an arrow or dynamite were to hit it, the crate would be destroyed, but the arrow/dynamite would keep going.
- Wooden - basically wooden crates just like in HATPC
- Steel - basically steel crates just like in HATPC
- Indestructable - Like steel crates, but cannot be destroyed. If we had something like indestructable arrows, it would be like a steel arrow in that it shoots whenever something "destroys" it, but the difference is that this never gets destroyed, allowing you to use the same tiles over and over again.
- Regular crate
- Arrow crate (up, down, left, right, and 45-degree diagonals)
- Dynamite crate
- Dynamite launcher (an arrow crate that shoots dynamite instead, dynamite's path of motion is same as if thrown from a dynamite crate)
- Ladders (no wooden ladders)
- Bubble Crate (when broken, releases a bubble that the player can grab for air)
- Floating Crate (crates that float underwater)
- Flying Crate (crates that fall up)
- Water Crate
- Anti-Water Crate
- Water Tap On/Off Crate
- Water Drain On/Off Crate
- Spikes (up, down, left, right)
- Falling Spikes
- Fire/Flames (just like spikes but can destroy wooden and fragile tiles, up, down, left, right)
- Platform (up, down?, left?, right?)
- Water level
- Boulder
- Flaming Boulder (
flamming_bolder ) - Terrain
- Secret Areas
- Door
- Gem (?? did we ever come up with what our "gem" will be, exactly?)
- Air Pocket
- Air Bubble
- Boost (up, down, left, right; maybe even at custom angles like in FR2?)
- Tutorial Arrows
- Text (like tutorial arrows, but text instead)
- Text Crate (hit the crate, the game pauses, and text comes out, like in HATPC tutorials)
- Diagonal Platforms (basically a wooden platform that's diagonal. The idea is that if a block stops moving while on this platform for any reason, the platform will break, allowing the crate to rest upright. I really don't think such a feature would be worth the effort.)
- Secret Door (while this is cool, the problem is that it led to having two levels inside one. I think if we do this, we should have them link to another level entirely, which is another reason why the game should support having multiple levels opened at once.)
- Fuel Cells (we came up with an elaborate replacement for power boxes, but I'm not sure if we're gonna end up using that. Sure the next few Aeon builds will probably just have the regular power boxes, but maybe one day?)
Level Editor
So what kind of features HAVE to be in the level editor? (aside from the necessities, such as grid, tile list, etc.)
- For secret doors to work, having multiple levels open at once. Plus, this is kind of a very nice feature to have, so it's best if the editor has this feature from the beginning, since it really affects the way it will be coded.
- A fast way to test levels
- Something that lets you switch between the simple and advanced editors. The simple editor will be as user friendly as possible, while the advanced editor gives you many more options, such as the ability to import images and music (from a URL), for example.
- A way to view and edit your own level code, but hopefully the advanced editor will be flexible enough to let you do anything without having to make you go straight into the code.
Level Options
- Terrain - People want a way to have more than one terrain type in a level. The advanced options could definitely allow for this.
- Level Border - In the advanced editor, we can let players decide what the four borders at the edge of the level do. Namely, they can be set to:
- Do Nothing - basically, the border will be how it is in the current demo. You can walk off the world, and if you manage to find your way back, you can come back in.
- Instant Kill - Anything that walks off the world will be destroyed, with no hope to come back. It's good for when you have a lot of items falling off the level and you don't want them lagging the game.
- Solid Wall - Title says all. An extension of this idea would be to have the edge of the level look like terrain, which is really helpful for the preview views of the level in the jump-to-start screen.
- Wrap Around - Now this is awesome. Walk off the edge of the level and you'll show up on the other side of the level.
- Load Images from URL - I consider this to be a very necessary feature. Hopefully it's self explanatory.
- Load Music from URLs and YouTube videos - I honestly still have to start experimenting with how sound works in Flash, but I'll get there! Although I have already tested and confirmed that it is possible to load music in from YouTube videos and use them as background music for your levels.
Anything else? I guess my biggest concern is whether I got the tiles list right, and I would really like some of my questions about them answered.
User Comments (5)
| Isa | ||
| No. I'm an octopus. Age: 31 Karma: 686 Posts: 7833 Gender: Male Location: Uppsala, Sweden - GMT +1 pm | email |
What's an anti-water crate? A drain? Anyway this seems good, but I'd like to make the change from Power box to Fuel cell official. | |
| jellsprout | ||
| Lord of Sprout Tower Karma: -2147482799 Posts: 6445 Gender: Male pm | email |
A Water Crate adds a set amount of water, an Anti-Water Crate drains a set amount of water. A Water Tap Crate activates the water tap while the Water Drain crate actives a water drain. Though I have my own thoughts on a water rewrite. I'll see if I can write something about it tomorrow. Spoiler: | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
If we're making the fuel cell thing official, then I guess we can start replacing Power Boxes with a Fragile Fuel Cell Crate. And yeah, we need better names for these water tiles. | |
| canadianstickdeath | ||
Age: 35 Karma: 350 Posts: 2990 Gender: Male pm | email |
I like having the ability to do all the things that those water crates will combine to do, but I just don't think crates is the right way to do it. Let's face it, those things aren't canon in HATPC for a reason -- they don't make any sense, lol. There needs to be a way to do those things without crates. We could just implement some sort of switch and/or lever system to do the same types of things. A switch that can turn taps/drains on and off? And then change the water crate to something that, when broken, temporarily spawns a water tap at that location? Of those ideas on the not sure of list, the main one that I'd like to keep is the fuel cell. It's a bit of a complicated idea, but I think it should stay -- at least code for the possibility crates absorbing the cells. The only small concern I have is, what happens when at crate absorbs multiple cells? It'd be no problem if you had to always collect all the cells, but it could be when you add in our minimum power-box requirement (er... fuel cell requirement) that would allow you to have more cells in a level than necessary to complete it. I'm not sure if I like this idea, but one way to fix that problem would to have each object only absorb one cell at most, and additional cells that are absorbed are lost. Spikes already destroy fragile tiles, so you can just say that fire destroyed wooden tiles as well. There are other things I thought maybe to comment on, but I've got things I have to do before I go to sleep. | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
'canadianstickdeath' said: one way to fix that problem would to have each object only absorb one cell at most, and additional cells that are absorbed are lost. | |
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