Entry Number: 6 - [Creation: 07/05/2019 || Last update: 07/05/2019]Up & Down
- (Tibia inspired)
Expanding on:
GG's Starlog 1's - Over & Under building
&
GG's Starlog 3's - Idle Insectoids Behavior, Liquid Spills & Leisure
+Small visual reference and applicability.
Building the map as layers, one layer for each floor level, should keep the game with the exact same appearance and graphics, while giving one new axis to build upon, the Z axis, without the need of any major changes to the game, keeping all current sprites, movement and physics programming.
This is similar to how walking around and the camera works in Tibia.
But with an added keyboard buttons to toggle showing only the current floor(Home), go up/down one floor(Pg Up/Pg Down) limited on 1 floor when outside of the M key map besides the auto-show/hide layers function.
So, the game would show all visible layers (hides and doesn't render's underground when there is no holes within or close to camera) hiding the layers which would block the camera from seeing the player.
Big rocks that can be mined in order to break down could be added to the underground as both a resource source and a slight bothersome that must be cleared in order to build stuff.
One layer level height ≈ 3 to 4 squares away.
Particularly big objects can take more than one level of height and allows for the procedural generation of mountains with several different sized rocks attached or HUGE trees that take way longer to bring down and fall to the ground with an animation before allowing the player to break its pieces into wood.
- Stairs and elevators.
- 2 different kinds of stairs.
- Step on top to go up/down 1 level with a small animation of the character walking up/down.
- Press enter to climb up/down X levels with a small animation of the character climbing up/down the first and last floor.
- Step on top to go up/down 1 level with a small animation of the character walking up/down.
- Elevators work by pressing Enter to choose a floor with a pop-up window.
- Built by three pieces: Elevator, Elevator Shaft and Elevator Door.
- Elevator Shaft must be placed first, showing on the above and below floor its location while the player holds the "Elevator Shaft" in order to place them connected.
- The Elevator Door is placeable on the walls of the Elevator Shaft, like placing a gate on a wall, but not receiving any wall piece in return.
- Unbuilding the shaft returns the door, but the door can be unbuilt by itself without removing the shaft.
Doors are treated similar to Train Stops.
- Elevators can only be placed inside an Elevator Shaft and when you "board it" by pressing enter, it will show on the list only the assigned door's names/numbers connected to that shaft.
- Elevator Shaft must be placed first, showing on the above and below floor its location while the player holds the "Elevator Shaft" in order to place them connected.
- Built by three pieces: Elevator, Elevator Shaft and Elevator Door.
- 2 different kinds of stairs.
- New Fall Mechanic + Fall Damage(Calculated by planet gravity) + Fall Damage Nullifier Tech.
- Walking over an edge or a hole should cause the character or vehicle to fall down every layer it can fall down and receive damage calculated by the number of layers fallen unless it is able to fly, which would allow the player/vehicle to walk on empty space and manually go up/down layers freely.
- Flying Vehicles and Power Armor Jetpack + Flying Combat + Flying Insectoids
- Simply speaking vehicles, insectoids and equipment that allows the player to walk in empty space and go up/down empty layers at will.
In case of vehicles and jetpacks, falling to the ground and taking fall damage if fuel/energy levels reach 0 while still in the air.
- Simply speaking vehicles, insectoids and equipment that allows the player to walk in empty space and go up/down empty layers at will.
- New underground belting and pipes system + New Underground wiring.
- Whenever you build an underground belt or underground pipe, camera view would go up/down one level in layers, automatically creating the exit point on that layer aligned with the entry point you just built.
So you could build a indefinitely long tier 1 underground belt system with curves or have 3 different belts in the same straight line one in each layer.
Also new underground wiring connections and electricity that affects up to 1 layer above and below and connectors that send wires up/down 1 layer.
- Whenever you build an underground belt or underground pipe, camera view would go up/down one level in layers, automatically creating the exit point on that layer aligned with the entry point you just built.
- Digging empty space & holes.
- In order to build underground, the player should have to dig out the terrain first. By placing objects, this process is automated, giving the player equivalent amount of dirt/sand/landfill as the size of the object placed, so it swaps the dirt with the object.
But that does not dig a hole in the above layer, just makes it hollow on the below layer, but the player can manually dig a hole above or below with the proper tools, which would make the below layer visible inside the hole.
- In order to build underground, the player should have to dig out the terrain first. By placing objects, this process is automated, giving the player equivalent amount of dirt/sand/landfill as the size of the object placed, so it swaps the dirt with the object.
- Advanced blueprinting and a better blueprint editing.
- As the current blueprint would find limitations to save something that stretches across multiple layers, the player should right click the empty blue blueprint item in his inventory and toggle "multi-layer blueprint" and select if starting from the top or starting from the bottom.
After selecting what to save in each layer, the camera would automatically go up/down one level according to the starting point until the player presses a HUD element button or the escape key to stop, saving every layer in a single blueprint keeping the correct alignment.
- The blueprint editing tool would also need enhancements to sustain that, which would also fix one of the most bothersome things in the current blueprint editing in my humble opinion which is when you try to edit a blueprint of something which is massive.
By adding the ability to zoom in/out and move the camera around with buttons to go up/down a layer within the blueprint editing tool would allow players to save and edit massive blueprints stretching across miles in a single layer and across a limitless amount of layers.
- As the current blueprint would find limitations to save something that stretches across multiple layers, the player should right click the empty blue blueprint item in his inventory and toggle "multi-layer blueprint" and select if starting from the top or starting from the bottom.
- Access points for robots to be able to move up/down layers
OR the possibility of robots flying up to 1 or 2 layers above the floor right below it.- And the possibility of a roboport influencing the layers above and below it with reduced areas, so a single roboport would be able to allow robots to work up to X layers above and below it or the need to have new roboports in each layer/floor
- Underground Insectoids and new deep-underground GIANT insectoid types that can surface when in extreme levels of pollution.
- Just like the player, the Insectoids on base planet should also evolve vertically, with underground hive expansions and connections between hives via underground tunnels, making several hives behave as one gigantic hive
This would also add the need for building buried walls and concrete floors to stop Insectoids from entering your factory from below by digging the floor and maybe underground defenses or new types of landmines and/or underground combat robots.
- Just like the player, the Insectoids on base planet should also evolve vertically, with underground hive expansions and connections between hives via underground tunnels, making several hives behave as one gigantic hive
- Pollution in enclosed spaces and air filtration system.
- A small alteration to the pollution cloud and dissipation to consider walls and ceilings, with an added that can damage the player's health by suffocation if the pollution concentration is too high and the ability to exhaust the pollution to other floors or filter the air being exhausted/sucked before releasing it back, dealing with the pollution and allowing for players to filter out how much they are polluting to avoid Insectoid attacks.
- Fluid simulation + spills + swimming & vehicles
- Destroying a water/oil tank without emptying it first should drop all the liquid inside it on the floor, which should also be "pickable" by the player/robots and placeable, in order to make player-built lakes, swimming pools, rivers or even a beach.
With that, the ability to swim, build underwater and vehicles and/or robots that can move above the water and/or underwater becomes a thing of interest, which makes water current and water flow an important factor to consider and opens the way to natural and man-made waterfalls.
All that would make several new techs required, such as robots and the player being able to handle liquids, and would also turn water into an amount-limited resource, which would make drying a lake by pumping too much water a possibility if there is no source of water filling the lake.
Normal, Underground and Flying Insectoids hate water.
New water Insectoid and Hive mutation.
- Destroying a water/oil tank without emptying it first should drop all the liquid inside it on the floor, which should also be "pickable" by the player/robots and placeable, in order to make player-built lakes, swimming pools, rivers or even a beach.
- Keyboard command to spin the camera 90 degrees left/right.
- Kind of superfluous, but considering the fixed camera angle and point of view, it could be interesting to be able to press a button and spin the camera left or right.
It can even be more or less than 90º if the floor grid is considered independent from the camera angle and object placement is 100% relative to the grid and not to the camera.
Somewhat similar to how Don't Starve's camera works but still with no need to change object's sprites as the point of view would still be top-down.
- Kind of superfluous, but considering the fixed camera angle and point of view, it could be interesting to be able to press a button and spin the camera left or right.
