Stay focused on Design Goals
Champlo0
Join Date: 2012-04-17 Member: 150617Members
Join Date: 2012-04-17 Member: 150617Members
<div class="IPBDescription">a plea to the dev team</div><blockquote>Dynamic Environments: Spreading alien infestation deforms hallways and causes space station power failure, turning off lights and shutting down marine powered structures. Use a flamethrower to clear infestation or weld a bulkhead shut for a last defense. Every game is different. </blockquote>
<blockquote>Depth first, accessibility later </blockquote>
With all this buzz about how imbalanced the game is I'd really like to remind everyone, mainly the dev team, to remember the design goals that were set out before the project started. These are the two I feel like have been ignored the most. While game optimization is important, optimization for something that isn't complete is inadequate; there's very little dynamic environment in the game. I have a few things that come to mind, primarily:
Weldable doors
Weldable vents
Weldable doors and vents are important as a design aspect to the game. Currently, the only thing marines can do is make an armory wall, which isn't always very effective. Weldable doors and vents will change the way the game is played; it's going to block off routes and open up a plethora of map design choices.
While the idea of weldable doors and vents is somewhat minute in terms of how it sounds, there are other things that could be interesting to implement such as varying strength of infestation; how long it takes for an area to become infested and possible effects for marines and marine structures. It would also be interesting to see power affect more things, perhaps some rooms could have multiple power nodes, the lighting could change much more than it does now (15 seconds of darkness or so isn't very enticing to attack the power node). While these are just some suggestions I'm sure you can enhance the dynamic environment aspect much more than it is currently.
The second is an actual design mantra (the first was a design pillar technically, I'm such a liar) which I take to mean as implementing design and then fixing them. I feel like this focus on performance and all is stifling the development of the actual game itself. While it may be somewhat laggy or glitchy, I'd still prefer to play the full game rather than just 60% of the game that is currently perfected.
I just feel like the game has much more potential than it currently is utilizing, and needs to keep focused on design rather than performance.
<blockquote>Depth first, accessibility later </blockquote>
With all this buzz about how imbalanced the game is I'd really like to remind everyone, mainly the dev team, to remember the design goals that were set out before the project started. These are the two I feel like have been ignored the most. While game optimization is important, optimization for something that isn't complete is inadequate; there's very little dynamic environment in the game. I have a few things that come to mind, primarily:
Weldable doors
Weldable vents
Weldable doors and vents are important as a design aspect to the game. Currently, the only thing marines can do is make an armory wall, which isn't always very effective. Weldable doors and vents will change the way the game is played; it's going to block off routes and open up a plethora of map design choices.
While the idea of weldable doors and vents is somewhat minute in terms of how it sounds, there are other things that could be interesting to implement such as varying strength of infestation; how long it takes for an area to become infested and possible effects for marines and marine structures. It would also be interesting to see power affect more things, perhaps some rooms could have multiple power nodes, the lighting could change much more than it does now (15 seconds of darkness or so isn't very enticing to attack the power node). While these are just some suggestions I'm sure you can enhance the dynamic environment aspect much more than it is currently.
The second is an actual design mantra (the first was a design pillar technically, I'm such a liar) which I take to mean as implementing design and then fixing them. I feel like this focus on performance and all is stifling the development of the actual game itself. While it may be somewhat laggy or glitchy, I'd still prefer to play the full game rather than just 60% of the game that is currently perfected.
I just feel like the game has much more potential than it currently is utilizing, and needs to keep focused on design rather than performance.
Comments
Webs as well.
What if lights were tied to powernode health? Flickering lights at various health levels? gradually dimming lights at certain levels?
<a href="http://imgh.us/pazazz.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://imgh.us/pazazz.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>
Visa versa being able to close things with infestation and open things with welding/flamethrowers is another interesting idea.
The key is just how it is done and where it's put in the maps.
To be honest I'm looking forward to more of this sort of thing much more than a lot of other stuff. I think only a new marine gun or lifeform would be more exciting to me (and by gun I mean direct-fire rather than a new support weapon :D ).
Really? I think it's fairly reasonable, if not a bit overzealous...
Webs as well.
What if lights were tied to powernode health? Flickering lights at various health levels? gradually dimming lights at certain levels?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Webs: worse than stomp.
They fall under a general design direction/goal. Parts of the environment, in my opinion, that are dynamic.
+1