Come September, if people are still hesitant with the current route, we could consider taknig the mechanics people seemed to like and carry them back to the adventure/fantasy setting people were rallying behind originally.
Scratch out 'robot' and write 'chimera', and replace the prison concept with a home-grown fantasy setting.
Then we're addressing the concerns that were brought up about having a better realistic basis from which to judge the artwork, making a shift back to the style of game initially identified by the feeling 'we can all get behind this', and we're opening up a lot of literary potential both in terms of the traditional mythology around the chimera as well as the tropes of chimeric literature.
Just an option if people aren't feeling the robot thing.
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Chimeras FTW!
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I know I was pushing for robots towards the end of the group meeting. I'm really still open towards anything, and I don't want to take over the creative elements of this game either.
Anyways, I would put this next part as a separate blog post, but I don't seem to have Contributor priviledges yet.
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BEHOLD! (DUN DUN DUN): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAUcHRQPUzI&feature=channel
Here's a fraps video of a simple menu designed in Flash! It still has a ways to go to be fully functional, but it can already switch to a different map when you press play.
The best part about the menu system is that once it's functional, all we need to do for the final game is replace the PNG pictures in flash!
Next up: HUDs. Specifically, the Health Bar.
Thing o' beauty, mate.
ReplyDeleteNow, Cory was saying something about how the menu is essentially its own level... so is that kind of flash interface something we could utilize throughout the entire game?
If we're able to force people into a 'menu level', that'd be an option for elements of gameplay which may otherwise be hard to implement. For example, if you're collecting pieces of scrap or somesuch, flash would be a great way to include an interactive inventory.
We can DEFINITELY use flash throughout the game! For this week, I plan to place clickable buttons on the HUD:
ReplyDelete- light switch
- bot spawn
- self-heal
- pause menu
Hopefully, these buttons will all function at the end of the week. Also, I think we can get into special menu systems (like inventories) with flash, but before we do so, I want to explain how the flash buttons in the test menu work with kismet:
PART 1: LOADING MENU
1 - When level is loaded, we toggle cinematic mode, which disables everything but player input. Player 0 is the target.
2 - A GFx Movie plays, which is the flash file in our package.
PART 2: PLAYER DOING THINGS
1 - When you click a flash button, the actionscript in the button sends an 'FsCommand' (named whatever you want) to the engine.
2 - A kismet event named 'FsCommand' looks for that command, and activates when the command is recieved.
3 - The FsCommand triggers a console command 'open dm-deck.'
Now, all we should have to do to make HUD buttons is:
- add new FsCommands for new buttons.
- change their outputs in kismet to whatever we want them to do.
As for an inventory: we can absolutely do an upgradable system where you collect 1 item/feature at a time. Every time you get something new, we would just need to swap out the old GFx movie interface with the new one.
Having an item container inventory would probably be alot harder to do. I've seen flash healthbars and perctentage indicators that are updated by player HP, so as long as we can create and modify variables (I haven't done it yet), we should be able to do stacking items. As for moving items from container A to B, I have no idea how to do that.
Lastly, I think that the inventory and pause menu would be best contained in the player's current map. If we create a separate level for inventory, we may have issues when switching between levels. Can the game remember where & when you were when you left the level? I think it would be tricky to make this work, especially if we have some scripted events. If we can simply make the level pause (somehow) while we do inventory stuff, we should avoid such potential problems.
So on the to-do list for a working inventory:
1- develop an inventory layout in flash.
2 - Make buttons for each item in the inventory.
3 - Establish variables that store amounts of each item, and have the amount display in the corner of the item picture.
4 - Create FsCommands for each item.
Clickable on the hud... is there a way to toggle between mouse-look and screen-cursor, or are you thinking key binding?
ReplyDelete"3 - The FsCommand triggers a console command " -- I guess we'll have to try to find a solid listing and explanation of all the console commands, then; that may be the ticket to uncommon game mechanics.
"I think that the inventory and pause menu would be best contained in the player's current map." -- Looks like it's possible to have individual level maps embedded in each pause menu.
Okay, so if I'm getting this right, activating the cinematic mode is the doorway to the flash interface, pausing the game in the process. Then that flash interface can fire events which Kismet reacts to, allowing us to -- at least -- run console commands.
So thinking on how AA/AAA Unreal3 games have utilized that, if we're unable to enter that mode from a key-press (which Dragon Age does) then we should still be able to have areas in the game which will activate that flash menu whether we completely hijack the game's interface (ME2) or not (Singularity).
We may well be able to create console commands as well, but that may be tricky. I guess we'll see how malleable Kismet is.
"Clickable on the hud... is there a way to toggle between mouse-look and screen-cursor, or are you thinking key binding?"
ReplyDeleteThe first HUD I will make will have a screen-cursor at all times (unless I can figure out how to toggle it on/off). If I have time, I'll make a second HUD that just neatly shows hotkeys. Hotkeys are probably the best option for a fast-paced game, I just want to do the cursor-buttons HUD first because I haven't attempted hotkey functions yet.
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"Okay, so if I'm getting this right, activating the cinematic mode is the doorway to the flash interface, pausing the game in the process. Then that flash interface can fire events which Kismet reacts to, allowing us to -- at least -- run console commands."
Cinematic mode is just used before the level menu to cut out the Unreal HUD, and can disable player movement if needed. It can not pause the level. Other than that, that's exactly how the level menu works.
Well, I'm pretty excited to see how this interface stuff pans out. I'll post my test HUDs Fridayish.