At 9:33 AM +0100 10/1/04, Robert Ward wrote:
> 3b. Point at something with your cursor, and press a different
button to mark it as the destination. If this is something that
moves, like an enemy ship, then your ship will automatically attempt
to follow it. If it's something like a gap in a structure, your ship
will fly through it (turning itself sideways if necessary to fit,
etc.).
In terms of gameplay, I think this would have the feel of something like
a futuristic space combat, where you've got some intelligent AI in your
ship. I don't know if that kind of gameplay, where you frequently aren't
"flying" the plane, might be a barrier to feeling like you're some kind
of WWII dogfighting ace.
Oh yes -- I guess I failed to make that clear! I'm no longer
thinking of WWII aerial combat here, but something more like Star
Wars/Battlestar Galactica. And yes, a semiautomatic flight AI would
be the perfect back-story for such a game.
It seems to me you're saying that you want exciting manuevers to be
(relatively) easy to execute.
Right!
And I think that was the original spark for this game.
Well, that's what Geoff described. But then I actually installed
Hellcats on an older computer, played it for half an hour, and
discovered that it's not really much easier than any other flight
simulator (though it is refreshing in having only a dozen controls or
so).
It seems to me that could still be accomplished in the flight
model, as it were, the world allows the plane to do things that would
normally be difficult or impossible without lots of advanced coordination
of control surfaces or hi-tech equipment. e.g. high rates of climb, tight
turning, loops, rolls, etc.
Maybe -- it's certainly worth a try. One could make a Physics module
for OpenPlane that would allow such things.
I think less drastic to the gameplay would be an automatic gunner rather
than automatic pilot. I could imagine that as I fly, a cursor indicating
the target moves about on the screen, tracking a (selected) enemy. That
might not break the suspension of disbelief that I am a hot-shot pilot.
Yes, if that's the sort of game you're going for. It's just that
personally, I enjoy the shooting more than the flying.
Of course it might be fun to have a game where you fly in two-player
teams, one pilot and one gunner. But I don't think such a game would
be very successful, because there aren't too many of us that would
have a convenient partner whenever we want to play. But perhaps you
could substitute an AI partner for whichever job you don't want to do.
Best,
- Joe
--
REAL World 2005 - The REALbasic User Conference
March 23-25, 2005, Austin, Texas
<http://www.realsoftware.com/realworld>
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