[Kinda Spam OFF] Dome (WIP)

[Raditzu]

There's a lot in my mind about the game that I haven't quite gotten on paper the way I want it yet, but I definitely need to add a couple of things.

As Kami said, range of motion and movement are intended to be major parts of the game play. In general, I want a game feels cool. If the movements aren't organic and the controls aren't fluid, the player won't get the proper sense of immersion necessary for the feeling of "cool." To add to the cool effect are player animations. No matter how pretty something is, you do it 100 times and it stops being interesting. Without a doubt, your 74th fireball is less impressive than your first simply because you've seen. But what if you had four different ways of throwing that fireball? Its a couple of extra animations sequences and an extra line or two of code, but it makes it feel that much more cool. For the game to really feel the way I want it to feel, the animation is going to have to be done just right.

Something to emphasize with the armbands. One armband isn't supposed to be "better" than another, its supposed to be different. Upgrading your stats and making your raw player better is what the upgrades are for. Armbands are to provide a variety of different abilities or options or enhancements that augment a particular play-style. I'll get into a specific example after the next paragraph.

An idea that my brother proposed, and that I worked around with, is to allow more specific customization of arena floors (and yes, Kami, AC4 is a good example how that's supposed to work). So you win the proverbial coin toss and get to choose an arena. You decide to take the "tropical jungle" arena. After picking the style of arena, you are presented with a few different sliders that control various aspects of the terrain generation. For example, the Tropical Jungle arena might provide you with the "water," "vegetation," "cloud cover," and "light" sliders. The Tropical Jungle has default generation values for all of these, but you can adjust them to better suit your needs. So, lets say that by default the Tropical Jungle will be created with 100 square yards of water mass (I just made up that number). By maxing out the "water" slider you can increase the water mass to 150 sqyrds. Conversly, you can minimize, but not completely erase, the water values if you so wish. Not onyl can you pick the basic arena, but you can make a few quick tweaks to give you more cover versus a sniper, or to flatten the terrain to give you a better shot from the air.

So what did that have to do with armbands? Here's a little scenario. Your playing a character that is centered around sniping. Amongst your skills are a couple of very long-range shots, a temporary accuracy buff, and something that lets you lock-on to your opponent. Obviously you'd prefer an wider, larger, more open arena to expose your target as much as possible. Unless (and I'm making up the name right now) you're equipped with the Apollo armband. The Apollo doesn't give you any bonus stats or abilities, but it gives you a greater degree of control over the "light" slider of an arena. Now, when you're setting up the arena you can drop the light values down to, say, 20% of what they're supposed to be. Throw in a little bit of rocky terrain so you have a higher vantage point, a bit of fog, and you're ready to snipe the shit out of the poor soul you're locked on to.

That's a good example of some of the things armbands will be able to do without just being more things to boost your stats as well as how a few simple environmental sliders can help customize arenas.