[airstrike] Single player gameplay: any ideas?

[Ulf Ekström]

Hi all.

On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 10:23:35PM +0200, Eero Tamminen wrote:
 
> I really liked the idea about 'goal' oriented / non-violent and
> not so serious game play, flying through hoops etc!

I am thinking something like Peter Eismanns original proposal:

A race between several planes over large levels. Each level has a
number of checkpoints that each player must fly though in order. These
checkpoints might be placed on the ground or hanging in balloons.

Fuel is limited, and the player must pick up barrels of fuel located
at various places. The planes have no weapons at the beginning (or
maybe you can buy them if you have enough money), but can find them in
crates at various places. Along the level there are friendly and
non-friendly sprites that the player must cope with. Winner is first
to the goal. 

If the plane of a player is destroyed he must restart from the last
passed checkpoint, thus losing time and any weapons he had
collected. The level might be such that the first player who reaches a
certain spot might do something to make it harder for other players
who come there, ie. turn on the missile defense systems, release floating
mines or smoke.

There is an old movie on a related topic ("Those Magnificent Men in
Their Flying Machines.."), but it was many many years since I saw it.. 

> Here are some other ideas for post-v1 development.
>
> Maybe Airstrike could check at startup what time of the
> day it is and load either "day" or "night" level according
> to that?

This would be very cool! 
 
> (Or even better, change the level automatically at certain time of day)

Too bad we cannot do dynamic lighting..

> Some possible graphical differencies for a "night" level:
> - sky is almost black, there's a moon on the sky and
>   clouds are dark gray
> - planes have (twinkling) flightlights
> - cannon shoots fireworks
> - there's a campfire on the ground

I am all for this! 

> - air is full of shooting stars, meteors, fireflies, flying bats
>   and witches on brooms...

This makes me think of the Rembrandt painting ('Starry Night' or
something?). Would be very nice.
 
> A "winter" level could have these elements:
> - Northern lights on the sky
> - A flying snowman[1]
> - cannon shoots snowballs which do only little damage but
>   some bonus could turn them for a while into ice which would
>   do a lot more damage
> - large snowflakes and icicles dropping from the sky
> - ice lantern on the ground
> - jumping & bouncing polar bear
> - winterbirds flying drunkenly around (because
>   they've eaten too many frost-bitten rowanberries)

I will assign the modelling work to you, because of your finnish
expertise in these matters (polar bears and such) :) 
'Icicles dropping from the sky'.. You cannot have it easy up there
in Finland. Strange that we don't get any of these in Sweden..

Both ideas are doable as long as there is someone to do the modelling.

By the way there is now a web-based todo list for Airstrike at

http://www.ifm.liu.se/~ulfek/todo/

[Also linked from airstrike home page].

It is like a wiki in that anyone can add new items and move the
present ones about (but not delete or modify them). If you are working
on anything for the game you are free to add yourself to the list. 

I crated this because my attention span is about 5 minutes long, and
I never remeber what I promised to do..

Ulf