Things have cooled down in terms of my studies (just awaiting presentation day), so my mind has drifted back towards Tectonic, the falling pieces Tetris-esque game. Until Spore, that is…
Anyway, since I’m learning XNA and doing graphics in Java is a bitch compared to XNA, I’ll use that. Hell, C# is practically Java anyway.
Some changes in my mind and possible further updates about the game:
- Pieces are still created with the mouse, but they stem from a creation point (nucleus). The mouse click must originate there and is followed by other mouse clicks, with a right mouse click to auto-complete the piece. The user is shown the shape outline as they create it.
- A nucleus can be one of several types of nucleus. The standard one, which creates the basic shape. Maybe a pulsating one that constantly changes size. One that degrades over time, letting it gradually settle into tricky crevasses.
- Bonuses are still viable and could be captured, but perhaps they could be captured in a different manner. When the user is defining a shape, if they use the drifting bonus as a point of the shape, they get that bonus (either immediately, when the piece lands, or when the bonus is removed as a line).
- As the user gains score, the game must get more difficult to play. This can be done by requiring a shape is a certain size (takes up a certain area) or that it has a certain number of points to the shape (point: triangle = 3, quadrilateral = 4, …).
- This was previously mentioned, but asteroids are another challenge the user has to deal with. When creating a shape, they could either be a complete piece destroyer or be integrated as part of the piece. For instance the user has nearly completed their meta-shape when an asteroid enters the boundaries of the shape. If the user completes it, the asteroid is included as part of the shape. This would likely be undesirable as a shape made of 2 circular-ish shapes is unlikely to create lines.
If the asteroid is completely within the shape, then the shape becomes the asteroid. - The asteroid’s shape structure is generally undesirable and not what the user would want for a decent score. If the user fails to create a shape within a particular time frame, an asteroid on screen becomes the falling piece. The user is alerted to which by the asteroid slowly changing colour until it becomes opaque or something.
That should do it for a basic game-play thing. I’ll get started on it and see what happens. If I manage to get a prototype running, I might upload it.
One more thing. In a more developmental sense, I would like to maybe get this on PS3. Maybe get a little cash. So, to take advantage of the PS3′s power (and dual-core in general), the program should be designed multi-threaded. One could be on the gameplay, another on line-removal (so lines will constantly be being removed).
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Game Idea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.