Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

 
Advanced search

1411196 Posts in 69314 Topics- by 58380 Members - Latest Member: feakk

March 18, 2024, 07:11:46 PM

Need hosting? Check out Digital Ocean
(more details in this thread)
TIGSource ForumsCommunityJams & EventsCompetitionsOld CompetitionsCockpit CompetitionYour Face Is A Cockpit
Pages: [1]
Print
Author Topic: Your Face Is A Cockpit  (Read 5004 times)
Plankhead
Level 0
**


My personal text is better than your personal text


View Profile WWW
« on: February 22, 2009, 02:44:07 PM »

(While I'm confident in my artistic abilities, programming is hardly my forte, so if someone's interested in this idea and wants to help me out, I'd love to know)

Your Face Is A Cockpit is exactly what it sounds like. You, the player, control the pilot who is operating your face. Yes, yours. Not your avatar's. It's your face. It may seem odd that you can control your face within the game when the face you have outside the computer monitor seems to be doing something completely different. That's because Your Face Is A Cockpit will be the first game to take advantage of alternate infinities using the world's first seven dimensional graphics engine!!!! Okay, actually, that's not true, and I don't know what I'm talking about, but play along.

The game will be the first in a new genre of zeroeth-person action games. Your pilot (as in the pilot who is controlling you (your character (the one with the face))), whom you control, has to get your face through a level filled with angry enemies wielding horrible things that cause pain. Fortunately, due to enhanced abilities given to you by a nanotech machine called the Plot Device, you (as in your face) cannot be killed by the enemies. They can, however, disorient you; disorientation is the main obstacle to overcome in the game (and this description).

Considering you're seeing the world not through your face's eyes, but rather through the display screens in the cockpit of your face, the game is already somewhat disorienting. This is exacerbated by the fact that A) the A/V cables connecting your eyes to the monitors aren't very good, and B) the outdated analog controls in the cockpit aren't very forgiving and also don't seem to work perfectly.

And now for the part that might be comprehensible:

Movement:

You are able to see where your face is on the two somewhat-kinda-not-really-reliable eye screens and a monitor showing a top-down map of the current room. In practice, the map is more likely to be used for actual position in the room, while the eyes will be used to determine your face's and body's orientation.

The mouse is used to control your pilot's dominant hand (right hand by default, but an option for left-handed mode will do just that). S/he/it uses this to operate the movement lever.

Walking is achieved by jiggling the lever up and down on its vertical axis. The horizontal axis will tilt the legs, meaning if you don't move the mouse up and down in a perfectly straight line, you'll find yourself stumbling drunkenly. A skilled player will be able to keep this restricted to a silly looking effect as opposed to an actual problem.

Pulling back on the mouse wheel will shift you into backwards mode, causing you to walk backwards instead of forwards. Pushing the wheel forward again goes back into forwards mode. This means the player can only effectively control movement in one dimension, but this isn't a problem with the targeting system (as you'll read about later).

Holding down the left mouse button will lock the player's feet in place. The vertical axis will now allow the player to lean forward or backward. This can be useful for engaging in face-to-face combat, allowing the player to dodge attacks or to face-bash enemies. Flicking the mouse wheel while holding the left mouse button will flick your face in that direction (lean back and flick down to forehead smash, for example).

Targeting:

Whenever you enter a new room, your eyes will scan it to determine what objects are in the area. They will all be assigned a letter. These letters will be completely randomized because you're not exactly working with intuitive cockpit equipment.

Pressing the corresponding letter on the keyboard will target that object. (The pilot will press the same button on the cockpit's keyboard) It could be an enemy, a door, a button, something you can grab, or anything else. This will cause your face to turn towards the target, and whenever you walk forward or backward, your body will (attempt to) move perpendicularly to the target (either approaching or retreating directly).

Context-Sensitive Flailing:

The spacebar will cause your arms to flail wildly in an attempt to interact with whatever you're facing at the moment. If there's an enemy in front of you, your fists will clench as you flail, probably causing damage of some sort somehow. If you're facing a door...well, same thing, actually. A button...yeah, that too.

Well, actually, while it's probably more effective to smash doors open as opposed to trying to actually locate the knob, combat is quite context-sensitive. If an enemy is attacking you, you can block with a well-timed flail. If you can subdue an enemy with one attack, you can grab them afterward for additional festivities (leaning forward after a grab will cause a lot of damage, but also cause a gory spray to enter the cockpit through the mouth).

Getting More Disoriented:

When an enemy successfully punches, shoots, or otherwise painfully touches you, you won't sustain any damage. However, you'll certainly stumble, and for a short period of time it will be even more difficult to walk in a straight line. These effects are cumulative, so there may be a point at which attempting to walk forward will cause you to knee yourself in the forehead. The advantage is that the more disoriented you get, the more damage you can cause enemies or objects simply by bumping into them. Get shot a bunch of times and you will quite literally be able to walk through walls; the wall won't exactly be there anymore, though.

The Player's Objective:

Each room has an entrance and an exit. You have to get to the exit. If you don't kill every enemy in the room, they'll follow you to the next room (unless they're crippled and lying on the floor). If you manage to get two rooms ahead of an enemy, though, they'll stop chasing you and be removed from the game world.

The rooms are procedurally generated. They can be of different sizes, shapes (perhaps the same as Tetris blocks), and have different objects in them. There is a 25% chance that the next room will change its theme: for example, you can stumble through offices with cubicles, factories with machines, stores with shelves and counters, nightclubs with nightclubby things, etc. In these rooms will be people dressed accordingly, and every one of them will attack you on sight because they're mean like that.

The game will continue as long as you can keep playing, with rooms progressively getting more difficult. Making it to a new room will add 30 seconds to the time limit; if this time limit expires, then your face is, sadly, no longer a cockpit.

Visual Style:

Ridiculous.

Technical Stuff:

I was planning to make this with Adobe AIR, displaying a 3D ray-traced Papervision world (with anti-aliasing and post-processing) populated by high-resolution sprites for enemies[. The reason I'd go for that is because A) Working with Flash allows me to design an interface with graphics, not typing code, and B) I have a Mac, so anything not cross-platform is out of the question.

That said, if someone would like to work with me on the programming, and you know a better cross-platform method (i.e. Python, Ruby, Java, or some magical multi-platform C++ technique), that would be awesome too.

If you want to get in touch with me about that, email me at [email protected]

Good luck to everyone else working on this competition.

(Edited because I can't find a decent AS3 raytracer, and how the hell did I forget Papervision existed)
« Last Edit: February 23, 2009, 12:56:30 AM by Plankhead » Logged

Zacqary Adam Green
Chief Executive Only Person, Plankhead
http://plankhead.com
professor dead
Level 2
**



View Profile
« Reply #1 on: February 22, 2009, 02:46:30 PM »

it should be called your fucking face is a fucking cockpit.

cheerio  Gentleman
Logged
Plankhead
Level 0
**


My personal text is better than your personal text


View Profile WWW
« Reply #2 on: February 22, 2009, 02:50:46 PM »

That's pretty much the gist of the title, but I'm hoping a use of capital letters, exclamation points, and perhaps a subtitle of "Holy Crap!" would imply the same thing.
Logged

Zacqary Adam Green
Chief Executive Only Person, Plankhead
http://plankhead.com
professor dead
Level 2
**



View Profile
« Reply #3 on: February 22, 2009, 02:59:29 PM »

That's pretty much the gist of the title, but I'm hoping a use of capital letters, exclamation points, and perhaps a subtitle of "Holy Crap!" would imply the same thing.

 Corny Laugh hehe

btw, welcome to tigsource!
you should introduce yourself in the introductions thread Wink
Logged
Inanimate
Level 10
*****

☆HERO OF JUSTICE!☆


View Profile
« Reply #4 on: February 22, 2009, 03:05:04 PM »

Your face is a fantastic idea!

Also...

"When an enemy successfully punches, shoots, or otherwise painfully touches you..."





And wow, this is your FIRST POST? I salute you, fantastic man of mystery and amazingness!



Logged
jeb
Level 5
*****


Bling bling


View Profile WWW
« Reply #5 on: February 22, 2009, 03:12:49 PM »

Haha, I'm curious to see if the game lives up to the description  Grin
Logged

Plankhead
Level 0
**


My personal text is better than your personal text


View Profile WWW
« Reply #6 on: February 22, 2009, 03:40:57 PM »

And wow, this is your FIRST POST? I salute you, fantastic man of mystery and amazingness!

I figure it's best to make a dramatic appearance. Thank you.

Also that video made my head explode with giggles, thanks for that as well.

Haha, I'm curious to see if the game lives up to the description  Grin

I'm curious to see if the game gets made...I promise it will deliver if I actually force myself to not procrastinate and do it.
Logged

Zacqary Adam Green
Chief Executive Only Person, Plankhead
http://plankhead.com
Acid
Level 1
*


A ninja is you!


View Profile
« Reply #7 on: February 22, 2009, 04:39:06 PM »

Do you understand the awesomesauce you have poured upon your post, man!?   Crazy

If you pull this off nicely, this will definitely destroy the competition. Have sex with this concept and make a baby full of win!
Logged
smn
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #8 on: February 24, 2009, 04:08:27 AM »

Quote
[12:57:36] <smn> hoooly ass
[12:57:40] <smn> *wipes tears of laughter*
[12:57:50] <smn> i just read through the "Your Face Is A Cockpit" thread
[12:57:54] <smn> had to laugh so hard
[12:57:59] <smn> my head is close to exploding
[12:58:07] <smn> and everyone in the office wants to know what's so funny
[12:58:09] <smn> :D

So much awesome in post #1, I wonder why the board software didn't implode!  GentlemanHand Thumbs Up Right
Logged
fiber optic asparagus
Level 0
***


View Profile
« Reply #9 on: March 15, 2009, 08:07:59 AM »

can there be a computer at some point where you can play "your face is a cockpit"? WTF
Logged

I have mooselike reflexes
Pages: [1]
Print
Jump to:  

Theme orange-lt created by panic