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PyWeek 15 Theme - One Way Trip

Page history last edited by fixception 11 years, 6 months ago

Discuss ideas.

 

The Endless RPG Platformer

This game plays like any platformer, but maps are designed by players (and us, obviously). Each map is a separate entity designable by the player (with certain constraints, such as guaranteed openings where maps can connect, etc.). Upon first load, the game goes online and retrieves at least 20 random maps.

 

Single player mode

In single player platformer mode, a random selection of maps are stitched together, and the player clears them endlessly until he dies. Maps are allowed to repeat occasionally, though occurrences should be kept fairly low. Enemies can be taken out by conventional platformer methods with jumping and the occasional thrown item, but perhaps we can accommodate melee weapons. Killing enemies in combos, breaking blocks, and clearing the map under a short amount of time (rewards speed runs as a way to play) grants experience points that go towards leveling the character, which increases health and damage.

 

To give the player a sense of urgency and excitement, we can also have a game over time limit (in Hard Mode, perhaps). Clearing each map adds time to the limit. There should be enough time to minimally cruise by the maps if the player wishes, but not enough time to always clear entire maps of treasure or enemies.

 

If time is involved, there are a few cool things we can do:

  • Damage suffered by the player can be punished with time deduction instead of a life pool
  • Coins/treasure can purchase time along with temporary powerups such as increased speed, invulnerability, double jumps, etc.

Time is not necessarily a good thing to do because our QA will require checking that maps can be cleared in some reasonable amount of time.

 

Once you clear a map you may not return. You continue until you die. This is our One Way Trip.

We can push this point by having (randomly generated) collectable keys in some maps, and locked doors that lead to treasure (and more enemies). You can't pick up a key and go back to open a locked door. You can't save things for later. 

 

Map designer mode

Enemies can be placed (up to a number) but the map designer has no power over how strong the enemy is - we scale that ourselves based on how many maps the current player has gone through. Occasionally we can throw in a boss map (only of our design) in between maps, perhaps every 10. We may make maps be agnostic to tilesets and switch up the tileset ourselves after every boss battle.

 

 

After the game ends the player is encouraged to rate the maps that he has gone through. This rating is communicated back to the map designer. Optionally the player may choose to play the platformer with a selection of maps of his choice with the map ratings in mind.

 

Extension to other themes

"Don't Take My Stuff": Require the player to reach an item somewhere on the map that unlocks a door to proceed.

 

"Red Ledger": Money instead of XP. Require the player to reach a certain high amount of treasure to clear the game. Combos and boss kills result in lots of coins dropped everywhere. Projectile attacks cost money and keeps you away from the end goal. Resurrections possible with money. Shops after each boss as a nice-to-have. If we have a game over time limit as mentioned above, every 50 coins buys bonus time.

 

Technical crap

Ideally I'd like the maps be stitched together and essentially "streamed" seamlessly (there's no pause as we go from one map to another) but it's easy to see that this isn't likely.

 

Asset requirements

Focus on diversity of enemies over locales (resurrect old tilesets from previous SS locales for better mileage).

 

We can have a story mode by setting an end goal instead of an infinite platformer, such as 50 cleared maps, possibly with multiple endings depending on how much treasure the player acquires or enemies the player kills.

 

Story ideas for going through this hell:

  • Treasure hunting in endless dungeon.
  • Walking through nightmares.
  • (Don't Take My Stuff) Master Thief in a worldwide romp of heists.
  • Little Red Riding Hood gone very wrong.
  • Because the GPS said so and nobody's stopping me from getting to...
    • White Castle.
    • her birthday party in a literal white castle.
    • discounted girl scout cookies.

 

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= 02:28:08 <@Falun> One Way Trip -- game starts at the end; character falling off[0] of something.
                    The actualy story is delivered through flashbacks that impact where the
                    character lands (water, concrete, giant pit o spikes, etc), rpg mechanics
= 02:30:09 <@Falun> [0] the "falling off" can be replaced with anything that is irreversible --
                    getting on a train that has a bomb (or not?), having a character's love
                    interest in the hospital dying, whatever -- it's easy to make this "trip" sad
                    something more uplifting doesn't come as naturally (at this moment, to me)
= 02:32:03 <@Falun> also any game with tower defense mechanics would work for DTMS / OWT
= 02:34:20 <@Falun> we could also twist OWT to imply that each play through of the game is unique
                    -- some combination of randomly generated levels and artifacts left by previous
                    playthroughs -- running with the thought that we want to include some
                    multi-play aspects the artifacts could be things left by other players 

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