I have
come to the concussion that I shall make a game and start a company,
but for now I’m working on the sales pitch and how to assemble the
assets and picking the right engine.
I grew
up on a game series known as Strike published by EA, before they
become a company killer and money grubber. It’s a series of games
where the player control various vehicles seen from an isometric
perspective, that was until the PlayStation ear, where they become
full 3d, with a very irritating camera. The presentation and the
story is brilliant though, even if it is hard as nails.
A very
big issue I had with the original is the way the games handle
collision detection. Seriously in the first three games the
helicopter was incapable of flying over buildings. It always ended in
a loud smack and being thrown backwards and thus taking damage. The
two on PlayStation fixed this by having the player fly at a set
height, yet you can collide with other helicopters, a surprisingly
rare enemy all things considered.
Another
thing that can clearly be improved is the terrain, which was very
bare bones and boring in the original trilogy and turned into a
google earth style satellite image on PlayStation. Personally I know
I can do better, I have the skills, I have the technology and the
will, plus a design document. Now I just need a sales pitch for
potential investors.
I’m a
great big fan of strategy games, but I really loathe the style of
terrain where the environment is a wavy and very smooth plain, with
no tunnels and cliffs at all. At the same time I also enjoy a solid
collision detection. Therefor my idea is very simple. I have to make
a grid, where one square is 1/1 in size and no cliff is taller than 2
squares. In total the terrain will ideally be 4 squares height where
the bottom is at sea level. I have already experimented with 3d
assets, but I’ve yet to find out how to deal with such a setup in
Unity.
A
matrix grid is a good thing, since I will save a lot of resources by
just adding square collision detection to the terrain. That being
said, I’m still pondering over how to most efficiency assemble the
terrain. One way is to make all the assets at once, then import the
elements into Unity, or the classic world builder approach where I
just make a tileset and import it into the software instead. Either
way works, it simply depends on how well I can snap it to the grid.
First of all I will plan out the map by assembling a square grid to
tell where cliffs, water and ground is along with some ramp.
Naturally I have planned pretty much all of this on paper and in a
text document. The brain is very good at forgetting things, I figured
out the secret though. Carry a notebook and a pencil anywhere I go,
it’s good for sketches and writing down those quirky ideas.
Anyhow
that is it for now and feel free to drop by my stream.
https://twitch.tv/zaceron
Zaceron
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