How the game should look / feel / connect: The conveyor belt design.

[sruloart]

As you know, I've been struggling with how to connect all of the game elements into a really nice visual piece. So, I think I have the perfect idea for it: The conveyor belt. Instead of making menus and states, that really don't feel like a part of the game, you place all of the game elements on the game's "ground", and then move everything to the left, while generating procedural objects/enemies. You only keep the HUD elements (pause, mute, score, timer, lives) above the game window.

Let's lay it down:

1. Preloader:
   • Big "GRAVEY" graphic in the middle of the narrow white screen, and on the black ground.
   • It moves completely to the left every 10%...
   • Only to show the current percentages loaded (with a similar sized text on the ground), moving on the conveyor belt to the left from the right until...
   • The "GRAVEY" graphics comes back from the right to the left again,
   • So this process continues until it reaches 100% and...
   • The game's title and percentages all disappears to the left. White screen. The Game is loaded.

     The preloader ends, the game begins.

1. Game:
2. The HUD reveals in phases.
3. At first, the music starts playing, so the music graphics appears, and toggles on and off automatically, so the player learns what it's for.
4. Then, the pause graphics appear, and the same thing happens, only the game pauses (everything in the game pauses in place). So you might ask, what's moving on screen that can be paused? well:
5. "START" is placed on the ground, like you see in the mock-up, but there are also animations of leafs, bugs and whatever, just to make the game feels more alive. These get paused for a sec when the pause button automatically toggles. The player learn how to pause/unpause the game.
6. When you press on the "START" graphics (or press space), the conveyor belt moves it to the left, only to reveal the credits (a game by...) and several random objects that continue to move to the left, until they disappear, and you reach the actual game window, where the player is placed in the center (so, it looks like how the game actually looks like as of now).
7. Remember we're on the same state, nothing really happened, you only moved some game elements off and on screen from the right to the left.
8. The Timer appears and starts to count down. The tutorial section begins.
9. Everything on the screen begins to move to the left (including the player, if he's not moving forward)...
10. The player starts moving forward (if he doesn't he dies when he disappear to the left, so look ahead to see what happens then), revealing some basic tutorial signs that appear next (how to move, what to do when he encounters an enemy or an obstacle). If he passes it successfully:
11. The timer resets, the next section begins (the actual game begins).
12. Every time the player dies a big "RETRY?" appears moving from the right, plus a count-down (10, 9, 8, 7, 6...) graphics that move individually to the left.
13. The user should press them (or press space) to be re-spawned to the game's beginning (right after the tutorial section). If he doesn't the game returns to the start screen.
14. The game progresses with a list of sections (waves/levels):
15. Each section have a specific time, length and a number of enemies/obstacles to be randomly generated ahead.
16. Whenever the user passes a section he re-spawns in the beginning of the latter section.

O.k, that was long. Maybe I've forgot something, but that's pretty much my entire game scenario suggestion.

[NicoM1]

That all sounds really nice and cohesive:D Couple notes:

• I dont think we really need to illustrate how the pause and mute stuff works, players will get that
• actually that was my only note, nice thinking!!:D

[NicoM1]

so what happens to this when we lose the movement?

[sruloart]

It doesn't fit so it dies. Though I may or may not use the concept for some kind of intro (but I have a different idea for the current concept so we'll see).

[NicoM1]

I'm thinking that as much as possible, stuff should be walk-aroundable, ie. credits should just be a scene with some monuments with our names....

[NicoM1]

got interactive main menu in, it uses a couple magic numbers, but I'm at the point where I don't care, and I at least think it looks good:) I'll do a death screen and health bar tomorrow, then all it needs is to finish the dog and maybe add a "tank" enemy