Gameification: The single player game for quads

[CurryKitten]

This is very early in the conception, but the single-player game for quads will look a bit like Super Monkey Ball, but instead of having a monkey in a ball (ok, this is going to sound weird for anyone unfamiliar with the game - search a video on it or something) the ball will just be a ball and the quad will need to knock it towards the goal.

I sketched out 5 quick level ideas (where B is the ball (starting position) and G is the goal you need to get it to) I haven't decided where the quad will start yet.

As we have significant amounts of separation between the ball moving and how much that's under control, the courses can't be made too hard. So these initial levels mostly skew towards simply pushing the ball to a goal, albeit with some corners to navigate around. In the initial levels, the plan is to shield the edges of the map so that the ball can't drop off into the void, but level 5 where the ball will move down a slope and have to be stopped introduces the concept of the ball falling away.

The difficulty might be set towards the size and inertia of the ball - don't know yet. I will have a timer for each level, so the objective here is to be the fastest. I'll look at how these scores can be saves and potentially published to an online leaderboard.

[CurryKitten]

I think I've worked out the mechanics for this - so marking as working on. I'll attempt to put 5-10 levels together so I can push them out on a Steam beta and see how playable it is for people

[CurryKitten]

I've completed a 10 level ready for a beta to let people lose on and get some feedback. I hit some interesting issues with game mechanics on the way, but I feel pretty happy I solved them all. Specifically, I added -

• Blue edge indication for a "forcefield" wall which will repel the ball but allow the quad to fly through freely
• A ball that becomes transparent as you get close to it so it doesn't block your view
• Moving platforms

I'm going to keep this issue open until I at least take this 10 level beta out of beta - which will involve some more UI stuff and menus and things, so I'll work on something else in the meantime.

[CurryKitten]

Having gone through a few iterations of tuning the game via feedback, I'm going to close this feature off. Quad ball is now available from the main screen and has it's own menu UI with instructions, a way to view your records, and the ability to pause the game. I've also integrated this new flight assist page into it and separated the rates/camera from the main sim.

This still only consists of 10 levels, but I need to get this into a wider audience to decide how to expand this further.