Level Design Principles Discussion

[Gauddlike]

What would you want the water tiles to do?

Impassable terrain to block off certain paths to direct the player down certain paths maybe?

They get very complicated if you allow movement on or through them though.

[xcorps]

Because that would require an animation which I think is limited by the engine (i'm not 100% sure thats the reason though!)

I'd be happy without animations.

What would you want the water tiles to do?

Impassable terrain to block off certain paths to direct the player down certain paths maybe?

They get very complicated if you allow movement on or through them though.

I see no need to have any interaction with water tiles. Impassible is fine. My primary reason for bringing it up is aesthetic. But the tactical gameplay could be improved in submaps/levels that create movement issues without "rocket" in the solution.

[thothkins]

Mission 130: The Xenonauts visit Venice.

Mission Debriefing: Get those &!$* lab rats to get some %*!$ waterproofing on our *$!" laser weapons man! We were fending them off with gondola oars there!

..and movement issues, yes please.

[Max_Caine]

Ooh, xcorps. I fully understand why you'd consider water to be impassable, but you can bet your bottom dollar if water was offically included, there'd be calls of "this is [CENSORED]" if a Xenonaut couldn't cross a 1-tile wide "river", or if they wouldn't wade across a 2x2 pond or even a "so my soldiers can't swim/ford a river?". It would look unreasonable - just as fire accuracy looks unreasonable. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for making water impassable myself, but I don't think you've considered how other people would understand water on a map. I believe that a lot more people would get pissy about not being able to cross water than people would understand that you can't.

[thothkins]

If it were possible to change the state of the water tile, to a water tile with a drowning Xenonaut in it or to change the state of the water tile 5 tiles down to simulate a fast flowing, yet narrow water feature, that would possibly act as a deterrent to such comments.

[erutan]

UFO: AI has basic discriptors of a charsh site.

Would be nice to have information like:

UFO Size: Small

Terrian type: Grassland/field

Structure type: Small farm

This should be pretty straightforward to do. I like the overall idea of each mission type having their own flow, but as crash sites are a major part of the game it'd be good to have some variation in them regarding LOS/terrain. I am totally against viewing a map or recon of the area beforehand, but a vague description sounds good.

[TrashMan]

I don't see why the military wouldn't recon the area.

Hell, your own fightercraft should make a pass over the crash area.

So yeah, I think the player should have a pretty good idea of what to expect terrain-wise.

If it's open terrain you pack more longer-ranged weapons.

If there's lots of buildings you pack more shotties.

etc..

[flyingdisc]

I like the design philosophy. These are the questions that really influence how we experience the game.

Terror Mission:

Much more like open warfare in feel, with the aliens being highly aggressive and destructive. There should be more buildings than on the Crash Sites, with relatively flimsy waist-high cover filling the space between them and inside them. Line of sight is only really blocked by buildings.

One idea I like, and we've mentioned it on another thread, is distinguishing between soviet and western town tilesets in Terror missions. Soviet townscapes often featured wide boulevards (open spaces, good for sniping, armoured vehicals, easy movement) and dense housing (house to house street fighting, alleyways, assault), which contrasts well with the western town layout of clearly separated buildings more evenly interspersing otherwise open vistas (which may promote island hoping, from house to house to move up the map). I wonder if these potential differences in character could be worked on to bring out play differences between the two? I think this would be fun, as well helping get the character of the period.