Well, you just love opening big cans of worms, now, don't you? :)
On Sep 30, 2004, at 2:54 PM, Joseph J. Strout wrote:
[snip]
And this made me think of the now-common third-person games which make
up probably 70% of video games these days. In these, you control a
character on the screen -- but your control is more suggestive than
direct. I point my guy in the general direction of the other guy and
press the "punch" button, and my guy does some sort of hand technique.
Exactly what depends on a lot of factors I probably don't understand
fully, including what other buttons I pushed previously (i.e. combos),
the distance to the opponent, etc. Good players learn the rules &
combos and have better control over what their character is doing, but
even novice players can mash the buttons and make him do something
exciting. You don't have to worry about every step, nor control every
joint, as you would if it were written like a flight simulator.
Not to mention, CPRGs like Diablo II, Neverwinter Nights, and Dungeon
Siege (although DII:LOD still is - in many ways - my all-time
favorite.) In these, you generally point to the target and click. If
your target is a location on the ground, you move to that location. If
it's a character you can talk to, you initiate a dialog (or perhaps,
the 'shopkeeper' mode where you can buy sh*t). And if it's an enemy,
you fight it using whatever weapon(s) you have readied.
So, can we apply the same principles to a fly-and-shoot game? Here
are some ideas:
1. Like the original Star Wars game (or Armageddon or House of the
Dead etc.), you should be able to just point at something with the
mouse, and click the button to shoot at it.
Definitely workable as long as the screen isn't too cluttered with
enemies...
2. When your attention is elsewhere, your ship should continue to fly
in more or less the direction it's pointed, but automatically avoid
crashing into things. This includes careening around all those weird
protrusions that large spaceships seem to have, or safely navigating a
narrow chasm, or whatever.
Yeah, I like that little bit about weird protrusions. What is it with
ship designers these days, anyway? The only (captial) ships that don't
have much surface detail are the MonCal (Mon Calamari MC80) cruisers
(Star Wars), and many of the ships in Star Trek with the obvious
exception of the StarFleet runabouts, the Reliant-class vessels, the
original Enterprise (NX 01), and most of the Klingon designs.
3. You should be able to indicate where you want the ship to go. How
exactly you do this, I'm not sure. Some ideas:
3a. Use a different set of inputs to pitch, yaw, and roll. This
could be the keyboard, or on a game pad, maybe use the D-pad.
I've actually thought about this in real terms. What if you had a
control device something like a big mouse ball (about the size of a
tennis ball, or a bit smaller) that - instead of having the positional
sensors external to it, as in today's mice or trackballs - have the
positional sensors inside the ball, using a gyroscopic stabilization
system similar to the human ear, and powered by EM induction, with
feedback modulated by the control electronics inside the 'ball' that
are then sensed by the drive coils of the EM induction system, and fed
back to the flight computer.
When you weren't using it, you would just put it down. A weight
inside would bring the 'ball' to a neutral - fly-level- orientation.
When you need it, you just pick it up.
Rolling your wrists forward and back would initiate pitch control;
side-to-side for yaw, and around the long axis of your arm for roll.
Moving the ball towards or away from the body would control thrust.
Another option with the same control system would be based on
positional control via 3D triangulation from sensors on-board the ship.
You just move the ball around in 3D space, and the positional sensors,
combined with the gyroscopic feedback from the ball, would cause the
flight computer to cause your ship to react as if the ball was the
ship. i.e. you move the ball slowly to the left and up, and the ship
will bank to port and nose up. If you move the ball rapidly down, the
ship will nose down, and execute a full thrust, and if you pull the
ball rapidly back towards your body, the flight computer will interpret
this as the 'take evasive action' command! Holding the ball steady
would simply cause the ship to continue flying at the current heading
with the current thrust level.
You could even squeeze the ball to fire (primary) weapons! A
double-squeeze (sort of the equivalent of a mouse double-click) would
fire secondary weapons systems (if any were armed, and had ammo.)
This is certainly theoretically possible with today's technology, but
would be quite expensive.
1) Positional sensors/triangulation - definitely doable. Triangulation
is well understood, and positional sensors could be ultrasonic
transducers mounted in the ship's hull.
2) Gyroscopic systems - also doable, but probably the most expensive
part of the system. Also, they would have to be shock-protected against
the G-forces exerted by the user in whipping the ball around.
3) EM induction - certainly. Some rechargeable shavers from Norelco use
this. Also, the "storm-scope"s in some aircraft use positional
induction coils to sense lightning strikes and display them on a
radar-like screen (I believe B.F. Goodrich manufactures/sells such a
device, and I know my Dad's plane has one.)
So certainly, it would be possible for the 'ball' to modulate such a
signal, and for receiving coils to detect the modulation. The big
questions about this are:
a) how much power would it require, and
b) could the power modulation electronics fit inside the ball, and
c) how heavy would the ball be after we stuff all this B.S. inside?
The alternative is to use the EM induction only for
powering/recharging the on-board batteries, and use RF to provide the
signal feedback (much like today's wireless keyboards and mice).
And you wouldn't dare use regular non-rechargeable batteries in this
application; that last thing you need is for your ball to die in the
middle of a 10-ship firefight! (Can you say, "Game Over"? Or how about,
"laser-riddled corpse floating through space"? :) )
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.).
See the above discussion about Diablo II, et al. Although I do have a
concern. What if the passage is too narrow for the ship to fit? At what
distance should the ship realize it has to execute an evasive maneuver
to avoid going splat?
3c. Copy the original Star Wars, where the ship mostly follows a
predetermined path but also follows your cursor somewhat.
Of these, I think I rather like 3b, but perhaps you have a better idea?
4. There should be an "Evade" button which, when pressed, causes your
ship to throw itself through some crazy aerobatics in order to avoid
getting hit by whatever's coming at it.
Or just do what all great star ship captains have done since time
immemorial (or at least since the original Star Trek), and just tell
the helmsman, "evasive maneuver delta gamma!" or some such.) This might
even work under OS X with voice recognition turned on... Although I
don't think the Enterprise main computer is running OS X though...
Which probably accounts for why they mysteriously fail near dangerous
phenomena... like - oh, say - black holes, spacetime distortions, angry
Klingons, etc...
5. You should also have a throttle -- handy when you're following
another ship, so you can either attempt to overtake it, or (if it's
your squadron leader) match speeds with it.
Or if it's your refueling tanker... Don't wanna crash into that now, do
we? >>Boom!<<
What do y'all think? Sound practical? Sound like fun?
Cheers,
- Joe
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REAL World 2005 - The REALbasic User Conference
March 23-25, 2005, Austin, Texas
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