#130601 - OrR - Tue Jun 05, 2007 7:49 pm
We need some DS Motion ideas. Especially for the motion & touchscreen combination. So here are some:
A top down marble labyrinth (like Motion Maze) with gameplay enhancements. Possible enhancements:
-Hills and valleys. Shouldn't require complex 3D graphics or physics, simple top down 2D should be enough.
-Moving objects. These could be manipulated with the stylus. Some things could be stopped with the stylus, moved elsewhere, or held in place until your marble has passed. Some of them would be moved by the movements of the DS, others would be independent from them.
-Drawable walls. These could be used for several purposes. One example is stopping moving objects or physics effects like wind. Another is making it easier to pass certain obstacles. For example this one:
_o
(_)
_o
The "o"s are holes. The (_) is a hill. How to get past from left to right? Draw a wall above the hill and below the hole and slide alongside that.
Of course walls would have to disappear after a certain time.
-Blowing into the microphone could make wind appear from special fans in the level which can then blow sand away, move objects or even your own ball.
Lots more can probably be thought of. Breakable floor and walls (by physics as well as touch), platforms that don't react to motion because they are freely hanging on an imaginary ceiling (would probably require some 3D), different kinds of floors with properties that can be changed (sandy floor with high friction, sand can be blown away; water channels, water can be drained; slippery floor, can be cleaned with touchscreen rubbing).
A shooting gallery with a 360 degree view.
It's your typical touchscreen chicken (or whatever) shooting game but with a few twists. First of all, tapping things directly is boring, so aiming is done with the touchscreen but gameplay (landscape, chickens, crosshair) is displayed on the top screen. Shooting is done with the shoulder button (L and R, depending on handedness).
There isn't just one screen but a 360 degree panorama. Movement is done by rotating the DS around the bottom screen. So for ultimate realism the top screen would have to be at a 90? angle and it would almost feel like you were really there! ;)
For some added candy, there could also be some tilting forward and backward to see further down or up.
This control scheme is probably not a good idea for a more complex game like an ego shooter because it gets too tedious in that and you don't need the double aiming.
The sphere labyrinth.
This is an idea I had already written down in another thread.
Imagine you are in a labyrinth on the surface of a huge sphere. You are not allowed to touch the walls. You have to get through the labyrinth by moving your character around it with the stylus. How do you scroll around the labyrinth surface? By rolling the huge sphere around with tilt, of course! On the top screen, a zoomed out view of the whole sphere is displayed so you know where to go next. On the touchscreen there is a zoomed in view on the part where you are moving around. Depending on the difficulty, you are not allowed to touch the walls at all, loose energy when you touch the walls or simply loose time when touching the walls. You race against the clock through different levels.
Other modes could feature you moving on a cylinder that can only roll left/right or up/down.
This would probably be pretty difficult to program because of the relatively complex graphics and touch detection but it could be an addicting little game.
Three friends.
Three friends want to travel around a world, through dungeons and fight enemies. The problem is that they are very different friends. One of them is a simple sprite character that moves around by pressing directions on the d-pad. The second one moves into the direction of the touch position on the touchscreen as if he is pulled by an invisible force towards it. The third one is a ball that moves when the world is tilted around.
All three continue to move for a little while even if they are not moved anymore until friction slows them to a halt (which does not take long, though).
They can attack monsters, too, each in their own way:
-D-Pad attacks with his sword in front of him when the player presses a shoulder button.
-Touch attacks through smashing into enemies and the damage depends on the speed.
-The same is true for Tilt.
Since we have three independently moving friends in a pretty big world, we have got a problem with the camera. There is an easy solution, though, since we have two screens:
-The touch screen follows Touch if he moves close to the edge of it.
-The top screen follows Tilt in the same way.
Of course this means that D-Pad can be out of view but we simply have to accept that and call it a gameplay element. :P
The combination of these three very different guys makes for some interesting gameplay. Let's take a fight against a monster, for example: Here we have got the problem that Tilt moves around a little uncontrolably if we are interacting with the DS a lot. How do we avoid that he moves to another part of the level? We catch him in a corner with D-Pad! Then we can attack with Touch without worrying about Tilt much.
Imagine a floor puzzle where every one of the three has to stand on another floorplate in completely different places of the level. In the ending situation, D-Pad would not be in view, so we have to escort him to his place with one of the other two friends, first, before placing them!
A slide in the level would affect all three guys but at different times and it would feel very different for each of them to get up the slide.
I think this would be a very fresh interesting game and it would be quite expandable with an epic story and a huge world. (Even though that would not be necessary at the beginning.)
These ideas are free to use (can't protect ideas anyway... :P ) but it would be nice if you buy me a few cars if you make a successful commercial game with them. ;)
Feel free to add your own ideas to this thread!
If you want to develop these ideas, you should probably keep portability in mind because you could maybe make a professional commercial iPhone game with it later, port it to OpenMoko Linux running on the Neo1973 or whatever other device will combine touch & tilt in the future.
A top down marble labyrinth (like Motion Maze) with gameplay enhancements. Possible enhancements:
-Hills and valleys. Shouldn't require complex 3D graphics or physics, simple top down 2D should be enough.
-Moving objects. These could be manipulated with the stylus. Some things could be stopped with the stylus, moved elsewhere, or held in place until your marble has passed. Some of them would be moved by the movements of the DS, others would be independent from them.
-Drawable walls. These could be used for several purposes. One example is stopping moving objects or physics effects like wind. Another is making it easier to pass certain obstacles. For example this one:
_o
(_)
_o
The "o"s are holes. The (_) is a hill. How to get past from left to right? Draw a wall above the hill and below the hole and slide alongside that.
Of course walls would have to disappear after a certain time.
-Blowing into the microphone could make wind appear from special fans in the level which can then blow sand away, move objects or even your own ball.
Lots more can probably be thought of. Breakable floor and walls (by physics as well as touch), platforms that don't react to motion because they are freely hanging on an imaginary ceiling (would probably require some 3D), different kinds of floors with properties that can be changed (sandy floor with high friction, sand can be blown away; water channels, water can be drained; slippery floor, can be cleaned with touchscreen rubbing).
A shooting gallery with a 360 degree view.
It's your typical touchscreen chicken (or whatever) shooting game but with a few twists. First of all, tapping things directly is boring, so aiming is done with the touchscreen but gameplay (landscape, chickens, crosshair) is displayed on the top screen. Shooting is done with the shoulder button (L and R, depending on handedness).
There isn't just one screen but a 360 degree panorama. Movement is done by rotating the DS around the bottom screen. So for ultimate realism the top screen would have to be at a 90? angle and it would almost feel like you were really there! ;)
For some added candy, there could also be some tilting forward and backward to see further down or up.
This control scheme is probably not a good idea for a more complex game like an ego shooter because it gets too tedious in that and you don't need the double aiming.
The sphere labyrinth.
This is an idea I had already written down in another thread.
Imagine you are in a labyrinth on the surface of a huge sphere. You are not allowed to touch the walls. You have to get through the labyrinth by moving your character around it with the stylus. How do you scroll around the labyrinth surface? By rolling the huge sphere around with tilt, of course! On the top screen, a zoomed out view of the whole sphere is displayed so you know where to go next. On the touchscreen there is a zoomed in view on the part where you are moving around. Depending on the difficulty, you are not allowed to touch the walls at all, loose energy when you touch the walls or simply loose time when touching the walls. You race against the clock through different levels.
Other modes could feature you moving on a cylinder that can only roll left/right or up/down.
This would probably be pretty difficult to program because of the relatively complex graphics and touch detection but it could be an addicting little game.
Three friends.
Three friends want to travel around a world, through dungeons and fight enemies. The problem is that they are very different friends. One of them is a simple sprite character that moves around by pressing directions on the d-pad. The second one moves into the direction of the touch position on the touchscreen as if he is pulled by an invisible force towards it. The third one is a ball that moves when the world is tilted around.
All three continue to move for a little while even if they are not moved anymore until friction slows them to a halt (which does not take long, though).
They can attack monsters, too, each in their own way:
-D-Pad attacks with his sword in front of him when the player presses a shoulder button.
-Touch attacks through smashing into enemies and the damage depends on the speed.
-The same is true for Tilt.
Since we have three independently moving friends in a pretty big world, we have got a problem with the camera. There is an easy solution, though, since we have two screens:
-The touch screen follows Touch if he moves close to the edge of it.
-The top screen follows Tilt in the same way.
Of course this means that D-Pad can be out of view but we simply have to accept that and call it a gameplay element. :P
The combination of these three very different guys makes for some interesting gameplay. Let's take a fight against a monster, for example: Here we have got the problem that Tilt moves around a little uncontrolably if we are interacting with the DS a lot. How do we avoid that he moves to another part of the level? We catch him in a corner with D-Pad! Then we can attack with Touch without worrying about Tilt much.
Imagine a floor puzzle where every one of the three has to stand on another floorplate in completely different places of the level. In the ending situation, D-Pad would not be in view, so we have to escort him to his place with one of the other two friends, first, before placing them!
A slide in the level would affect all three guys but at different times and it would feel very different for each of them to get up the slide.
I think this would be a very fresh interesting game and it would be quite expandable with an epic story and a huge world. (Even though that would not be necessary at the beginning.)
These ideas are free to use (can't protect ideas anyway... :P ) but it would be nice if you buy me a few cars if you make a successful commercial game with them. ;)
Feel free to add your own ideas to this thread!
If you want to develop these ideas, you should probably keep portability in mind because you could maybe make a professional commercial iPhone game with it later, port it to OpenMoko Linux running on the Neo1973 or whatever other device will combine touch & tilt in the future.