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[JasonPickering]

Well I definetly see being able to exit the sun is the way to go. Some really great ideas here. I like the tether idea but I know I don't have the coding skills to do it. I like the idea of psychologically binding the player to the sub. Perhaps by making them slower and giving them a small amount of light they will not wander too far from the sub, unless confronted with a reason too, such as a small crack to explore. Also making the player weaker would enforce this.

[Loren Schmidt]

I really like the idea of divers, and I agree with you that it starts to get dangerously redundant if divers are just as mobile as the submarine. I'm also trying to think of ways to make the divers have a watery feel to their movement. Divers, I think, should handle differently and have a different role than the submarine.

Here's a thought. Have you played Lunar Lander? What if divers can only disembark in certain  'safe zones.' So the submarine would land near a target at the closest safe zone, then a diver would get out. I'm imagining divers might be heavy and walk in a sort of slow motion. They would have a very limited ability to jump and climb. They would also be very fragile. If a diver falls into a hole, the diver's suit fractures and he dies, leaving a cute little corpse. Then we would start back at the submarine with a fresh diver. This removes the need to add a jet pack or tether.

In terms of making divers have a different role than the submarine, here are a few ideas:

• divers are slower than the submarine, but can fit through small spaces.
• divers are needed for carrying specimens or treasure into the submarine?
• divers are needed to set up the air resupply stations you mentioned earlier
• divers can open doors / use explosives to create openings for the submarine to travel through

[JasonPickering]

yay. more designing!

so I have sat down and made a list of all the different things I want the Player to be able to find.

I am still working on the sub design and allowing the player to exit for exploring.

1. the main player Pilots a sub, and has a set status of divers. you start with 3 divers, that will go out to explore. if they die you would need to go back to the base to reload. (basically thing of you running a ship and these are the sailors)

2. I can use the same idea above but instead of divers it can be small drones, this would make more sense as how everything fits in the sub. (the sub is about Van sized) also I can perhaps give the player different types of drones to send out.

4. the main player is the only person on the sub. he leaves just like Blaster Master but if the player dies its game over and back to the base.

sound off everyone.

[PureQuestion]

yay. more designing!

so I have sat down and made a list of all the different things I want the Player to be able to find.

I am still working on the sub design and allowing the player to exit for exploring.

1. the main player Pilots a sub, and has a set status of divers. you start with 3 divers, that will go out to explore. if they die you would need to go back to the base to reload. (basically thing of you running a ship and these are the sailors)

2. I can use the same idea above but instead of divers it can be small drones, this would make more sense as how everything fits in the sub. (the sub is about Van sized) also I can perhaps give the player different types of drones to send out.

4. the main player is the only person on the sub. he leaves just like Blaster Master but if the player dies its game over and back to the base.

sound off everyone.

What happened to 3?

[JasonPickering]

ummm. I count in powers. you have to switch from 1 to 2 in the begining but after that its all good.
1
2
4
16
256
65536

what you dont count that way?

[PureQuestion]

No. o.o

[Massena]

yay. more designing!

so I have sat down and made a list of all the different things I want the Player to be able to find.

I am still working on the sub design and allowing the player to exit for exploring.

1. the main player Pilots a sub, and has a set status of divers. you start with 3 divers, that will go out to explore. if they die you would need to go back to the base to reload. (basically thing of you running a ship and these are the sailors)

2. I can use the same idea above but instead of divers it can be small drones, this would make more sense as how everything fits in the sub. (the sub is about Van sized) also I can perhaps give the player different types of drones to send out.

4. the main player is the only person on the sub. he leaves just like Blaster Master but if the player dies its game over and back to the base.

sound off everyone.

Bah, I have to say I hate all these ideas. I think it would add a lot of atmosphere if the player was all alone in the sub, or out of it.

I like the idea of the sub being a source of light while all the player has is a small flashlight. Also if you add a finite air suply no one should wander too far out of their sub.

Also, death should be very punishing. The player should act with caution, just like in La Mulana. It shouldn't be "Oh look, a big scary crevice, let's jump in to see what's there" and more "Hot damn, a big scary crevice, I should go in slowly, anchored to my sub... I'M TOO YOUNG TO DIE! "

The ocean floor is dark, silent and scary, you should use that awesome potential. 

I love the sprites you have so far!

[JasonPickering]

yeah I just read an article about open world gaming and it focused heavily on Metroid, one of my main inspirations for this game. and it kept bringing up the point of isolation in metroid, same as alien, or even the abyss. I definetly think that this is what I want now. I was getting away from my original idea. the ocean is big and scary. I am having trouble with designing the guy to pop out of the sub, so I think I might go back to the drawing board and create the guy first, and then build a ship based on his size. so does everyone like the idea of dying is basically a game over, you can save whenever you want by going back to your base. so you will just spawn from there.

p.s. I wish I knew enough about programming to make this in 3d, cause that would be super mind blowing.

[pgil]

Well, Metroid was pretty mind-blowing, and it's about as 2d as you can get. I agree with the isolation aspect. I think having the player go it alone could add a great deal to the atmosphere.

[Afinostux]

Well, Metroid was pretty mind-blowing, and it's about as 2d as you can get. I agree with the isolation aspect. I think having the player go it alone could add a great deal to the atmosphere.

although the abyss managed to get that same feeling of isolation despite having a crew, IIRC. I think you could really easily get away with having a crew, if you made their deaths permanent, and made them hard to replace in one way or another. That way you get the same sense of being isolated with limited resources, and without the safety line of being able to easily replenish damage to the crew. X-com for instance. You could come by cannon fodder easily, but someone with any notable skills was to be preserved at all costs.

Then again, it really depends on what the major focus of the game is. if you want to focus on exploration, a crew is pretty much a gimmick. If you want to focus on survival, a crew can be more useful to the design.

Although my only real piece of advice is to keep on truckin' 'cause what you have so far is pretty rad.

[Loren Schmidt]

I absolutely agree that making things feel dark and oppressive would be really great (if tricky). I'm a bit hesitant about the idea of the game setting us back miles and miles every time we make a mistake. In my experience tension tends to get lost very quickly when replaying the same long segment over and over. I'm not sure what the ideal solution here is.  I could potentially see permadeath working here... what if we had a limited number of divers, and the divers were an extremely limited resource. If the sub itself was destroyed, the game would be over, but a small shipment of divers would periodically arrive via supply chopper.

Just a thought...

[JasonPickering]

my main goal is exploration, its exploring the darkness, perhaps this path leads to a dead end, perhaps it leads to the lost city of the Deep ones. I dont want it to be a horror game, so I think adding a crew doesnt hurt, but im afraid that the crew is just going to be a row of red shirts.

[Lynx]

You could have one or two characters that stay on the sub.  Your character is the heroic captain, boldly going forth etc., and you have an engineer who can give you feedback on your sub's status ("The hull canna take any more, cap'n!") and a gunner/sensor officer who reports on hostiles nearby and lets you know if you're running low on torpedoes.

If you die, maybe it should automatically rewind back to before you left the sub, with the captain writing in his log, "Stared into the remorseless dark, was reminded what a hostile environment the deep ocean is.  Double-checked air supply.  Wouldn't do to run out of oxygen out there."  (for a death where the player went out too long)

[Shade Jackrabbit]

You could have one or two characters that stay on the sub.  Your character is the heroic captain, boldly going forth etc., and you have an engineer who can give you feedback on your sub's status ("The hull canna take any more, cap'n!") and a gunner/sensor officer who reports on hostiles nearby and lets you know if you're running low on torpedoes.

If you die, maybe it should automatically rewind back to before you left the sub, with the captain writing in his log, "Stared into the remorseless dark, was reminded what a hostile environment the deep ocean is.  Double-checked air supply.  Wouldn't do to run out of oxygen out there."  (for a death where the player went out too long)

I whole-heartedly love this idea. There's nothing that annoys me more in a game then getting a "game over" screen or the like, and it also helps keep narrative flow consistant. Which is a lot more important than most game designers seem to think. 

[JasonPickering]

I dont know about adding the crew. cause it seems kind of uneccessary.

I had originally planned to use the journal as a framing device and on death you would start back from your base (in my head thats where your journal was because thats where you went to save). it would almost be like in Prince of Persia where he would go "wait thats not how it happened".

I guess my point of warping back to the base was I had this idea in my head.

you wake up in the morning, go out, adventure, and explore, then come back at night.

Now that I think about it the long travel time would be annoying, unless of course I created large flat areas where you could set up extra bases, which would definetly work. like you are slowly colonizing the world.

[Pishtaco]

A few ideas (taken from Silent Hunter III ):

-Put lateral fins on the sub that tilt to fly you up and down; these could be your animation, instead of the whole sprite tilting.

-This kind of clashes with the first idea, and with what you have so far, but bump the sub size up a little bit and show a cross-section through it, rather than the outside of the hull. So you can see your tiny guy sitting in his 10-pixel control room, with a workshop and bedroom behind him. The idea is to contrast the cosy world inside the sub with the scary, unknown darkness outside (sometimes).

-Have nice colours and full visibility in shallow seas, but as you dive deeper, you can only see colours in the increasingly-limited cone of your spotlight. You can turn on your sonar, which will show a rough, spooky white outline of your surroundings, rapidly fading away, with each ping. But it will also give away your location to nasty (but perhaps blind) fish, which each ping will reveal swarming closer.

-Layers in the water which reflect sonar.

-Perhaps long-distance fast travel is possible on the surface, since you need the air for the engine (and perhaps because of the general design of the submarine, like early diesel-electric subs). But maybe being on the surface exposes you to aerial attack, until you get a snorkel.

[Shade Jackrabbit]

Well, in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the crew slept on the Nautilus. If you scale the ship a bit, you could do something similar, so that the captain/protagonist can save pretty much anywhere he wants as long as he's in the ship.

Maybe add something about not allowing sleep in squid/shark-infested waters? Cause they might eat you?

[JLJac]

-This kind of clashes with the first idea, and with what you have so far, but bump the sub size up a little bit and show a cross-section through it, rather than the outside of the hull. So you can see your tiny guy sitting in his 10-pixel control room, with a workshop and bedroom behind him. The idea is to contrast the cosy world inside the sub with the scary, unknown darkness outside (sometimes).

This is actually pretty cool. What if you some times had to walk around inside the sub to fix things? Would be so awsome to see the tiny guy go into the dresser room, change to the diving suit, step into the airlock and then see the water rising around him until the outer door opens up.

Maybe the sub could have machine that turns sunlight into air(basically a synthetic plant)? At shallow seas you never have to worry about your air supplies, but the deeper you go, especially if you go into caves, the more you need to think about air.

[Shade Jackrabbit]

That's actually a really good idea. It also gives the player a sort of "practice" area where they don't have to worry about air.

Perhaps you could have a scene where a giant squid attacks your sub, and it sinks to the bottom of the sea into a ship graveyard, and you have to scavenge parts to repair it. The ability to see your ship from the inside would allow the player to move around and replace the pieces in a more interesting and immersive fashion.

[JasonPickering]

wow guys, your throwing tons of stuff at me.

so I think i'll have it so the player can save whenever they want as long as they have surfaced for air, whether it be up top, or in one of the several underwater caverns.

the ideas of being able to walk around inside the sub, and convert sun to air are great, but I think they are getting a little to complicated. I wanted to make this a very easy game where the player could focus on exploring and not worrying about lots of other stuff.

and you will start in a small little bay with an underwater tunnel so the player gets a nice little  practice area.

the sonar idea is cool but I saw that in another game that was a multiplayer game where there were two subs and you only had sonar to navigate, and although its a cool idea, I think it just further complicates things.

keep them coming guys.