The canabalt man could run across buildings in the background. Don't know what to do about speed, though. The stage could pick up speed slowly, but that would have complications, about when it should stop.

slow it down every time someone falls off?

Is it really fair to count framerate as a barrier to immersion?

Yes
'I just looked at five cars and the world went into bullet time'

Also, I think camera perspective is less about immersion and more about overall design:

First person pros:
greater accuracy at long ranges, doesn't need a powerful animation engine to point the gun in the right direction, handles indoor and outdoor environments equally well.

First person cons:
Platforming is very hard, melee is extremely complex to pull off correctly, it's hard to tell when you're surrounded, distances are hard to judge.

Third person pros:
melee is much easier for the player, distances are easy to judge, you can see your feet for platforming, you can see hazards near you (grenades, being surrounded, projectiles, etc.)

Third person cons:
Expensive animations or complex procedural blending needed, aiming ranged weapons can be a huge pain unless the camera moves very close to the character (GOW), transitions between indoor and outdoor environments are awkward, unless the ceilings are unnaturally tall (the thing's four foot tall air ducts, GTASA's 15 foot ceilings)

Not an exhaustive list.

Usually (for any complicated project) I have the editor be within the engine (or sitting on top of it).  No point in writing a bunch of stuff twice.  I wouldn't worry too much about a bit of redundant editor-only data/code sitting about in the final game myself.

Oh god. age of mythology did this. you could edit the map while battles were happening and everything. It was kind of annoying if you were trying to make a scripted battle that would only happen when the player came within viewing range, and forgot to disable their AI

Basically, if you do this, make a way to make the dudes not fight :|

The background in Canabalt might make a good stage.

Hell yes! make it a sort of forced scrolling level along the lines of that f-zero one in smash bros that nobody seems to like. The Canabalt man can run across the screen occasionally and crash into people. Or, those robot bomb things. I've always been moving too fast to see what they are.

That bear totally stole Bruce Campbell's lower jaw :D

I'm liking how this is looking. My one complaint is that there's not enough screen area below borris to do the laser jump accurately, since very small mouse movements can make the jump unstable.

Actually, after playing it again, that problem is only inside the starting tent. Shooping da Woop in there seems to have different physics. Clicking really close to borris' head makes the laser scatter all over the place, for instance.

My brother and I used to play so much clonk rage, we actually had shorthand sort of made up verbs for certain strategies. For example, to 'derf up a map' was to lay down so many pipes and pumps in a bid to suck up all the oil and sell it that your base started to look like a spiderweb. Yeah. Derf. It makes total sense. That game is awesome.

There's a bandwagon for that?

Seriously. That Handsome Devil. Look them up. They are nonlame rap/jazz/godforbid.

I miss soul coughing (before they came back and sucked )

music that doesn't suck

http://www.myspace.com/thathandsomedevil ?

Pass Go?

Collect 200 dollars?

assuming pixels are okay too




gun silhouette get

Gah! your art style kicks ASS

Flesh field.

Not sure if I like them yet. They sound a lot like the hl2 soundtrack with vocals by marilyn manson