Forced colors

[Quartz]

As a level designer I often like to include visually attractive designs in my maps.

I really like to use goal zones to achieve this end (especially in Zap! where there was no annoying "GOAL" text in the middle of them...), and I'm of course typically limited to four colors: The two team colors, neutral team, and hostile team. The only way for me to implement more colors is to add more teams ... which potentially ruins gameplay, fast. And we all know gameplay is more important than pretties, when it comes down to it.

It'd be real neat to be able to force the color of such objects. However, I realize that we have to consider that some of these items are important game pieces ... while Line Items have no real effect on gameplay, Goal Zones and Loadout Zones do.

So perhaps at the very least I'd love an option to be able to force the color of line items. Perhaps they shouldn't even belong to a team, but rather, belong to a color that can of course be designated.

Now, that still doesn't really solve my problem of when I would ideally use goal zones. Perhaps we should have polywall-esque colored blocks or something. That'd be real neat.

I'm sorry that this post is rather rambling. As you can see we would need to iron out the idea, I hardly have it all figured out myself, as is plain from my rambling.

TL;DR - Line items should perhaps belong to a color rather than a team.
Colored blocks that, like line items, have no effect on gameplay, and belong to a color rather than a team.

In 019, the annoying texts are less annoying

Maybe walls will have colors eventually. It wouldn't be to complicated I guess...

I am mostly behind the expansion of art-enabling tools in Bitfighter. I think people will always find a way to make something that looks cool, and why stop them? We should want more aesthetically-pleasing maps.

Proposals to consider:

- Colored poly objects.
- Enabling poly objects, line items, and text items to use color selections separate from team colors.

The latter could perhaps be accomplished by including a "visibility" setting for the respective items. Visibility set to Team A makes the item only show to Team A. Set to Team B, only shows to Team B. Set to all shows to all players, of course.

Consequences to consider:

- The appearance of loadout and goal zones would have to be modified to differentiate from poly art zones.

-- Some potential solutions:

-- Checkerboard/striped/pattern
-- Flashing/glowing
-- Thicker/thinner borders

- Would the inclusion of new art tools have a significant impact on the game's appearance, to a negative extent?

[kaen]

It'd be real neat to be able to force the color of such objects

Second.

[Quartz]

Proposals to consider:

- Colored poly objects.
- Enabling poly objects, line items, and text items to use color selections separate from team colors.

The latter could perhaps be accomplished by including a "visibility" setting for the respective items. Visibility set to Team A makes the item only show to Team A. Set to Team B, only shows to Team B. Set to all shows to all players, of course.

This is a beautiful idea. The visibility setting being separate from the color setting? Genius. It's a win-win, there is no loss to what we currently have, only expansion.

Consequences to consider:

- The appearance of loadout and goal zones would have to be modified to differentiate from poly art zones.

Yup, this is absolutely the biggest concern.

Some ideas:

- Checkerboard/striped/pattern
- Flashing/glowing
- Thicker/thinner borders

- Would the inclusion of new art tools have a significant impact on the game's appearance, to a negative extent?

- Totally unnecessary. Patterns can be achieved through your own cleverness.
- Probably obnoxious and hard to justify putting in the game.
- Interesting.

- As long as we keep ideas such as patterns and flashing/glowing out of the picture, we should be alright. Hahaha no offense.

Thanks for the post Sky, good brainstorming.

It'd be real neat to be able to force the color of such objects

Second.

It'd be real neat to be able to understand kaen's post.

In 019, the loadout zones and goals have logos instead of text yo!

[Quartz]

In 019, the loadout zones and goals have logos instead of text yo!

I've seen the Loadout Zone; a gear, yeah? What about the Goal Zones?

Uh, I think there fancy thingnies with flags on them

- Totally unnecessary. Patterns can be achieved through your own cleverness.
- Probably obnoxious and hard to justify putting in the game.
- Interesting.

- As long as we keep ideas such as patterns and flashing/glowing out of the picture, we should be alright. Hahaha no offense.

I'm not offended, but to be clear, the "some ideas" I offered were intended as potential solutions for differentiating loadout/goal zones from art zones. The "Some ideas" was a section contained within the "Consequences to consider" portion of my post. I wasn't trying to suggest these ideas be added into the game on their own, for no reason.

Updated my post to be clearer.

[Quartz]

- Totally unnecessary. Patterns can be achieved through your own cleverness.
- Probably obnoxious and hard to justify putting in the game.
- Interesting.

- As long as we keep ideas such as patterns and flashing/glowing out of the picture, we should be alright. Hahaha no offense.

I'm not offended, but to be clear, the "some ideas" I offered were intended as potential solutions for differentiating loadout/goal zones from art zones. The "Some ideas" was a section contained within the "Consequences to consider" portion of my post. I wasn't trying to suggest these ideas be added into the game on their own, for no reason.

Updated my post to be clearer.

Ahh, sorry about that.

Hmmm, I feel that the best solution for our so-called "art zones" would be for them to be as plain and basic as possible frankly. I'm not suggesting no border or anything (anyone who's played a neon map knows how painful to the eyes that is), but yeah.

[watusimoto]

019 (and maybe 018?) already have "zones" which have no purpose in the game, except as something you can attach lua events to (i.e. onShipEntered() etc.). The are currently invisible, but it wouldn't be a huge technical stretch to make them visible to players, and colorable.

My main concern with this (the idea has been proposed in the past) has always been wanting to discourage designers from creating fake walls, fake items, and other applications that I think would make levels annoying.

I'm not sure how to address this. One possible counterargument would be to just trust the levelmakers. However, this has not always worked in the past

I have often thought that constraints encourage greater creativity. Would we really end up with better levels if you can add colored areas to them?

[Quartz]

019 (and maybe 018?) already have "zones" which have no purpose in the game, except as something you can attach lua events to (i.e. onShipEntered() etc.). The are currently invisible, but it wouldn't be a huge technical stretch to make them visible to players, and colorable.

Huh, nice idea. Less excess items this way. I like it.

My main concern with this (the idea has been proposed in the past) has always been wanting to discourage designers from creating fake walls, fake items, and other applications that I think would make levels annoying.

I'm not sure how to address this. One possible counterargument would be to just trust the levelmakers. However, this has not always worked in the past

Umm... Honestly you can already do this with line items. I have yet to see a single fake health pack, energy pack, turret, etc.

You all worry FAR too much about what level makers will do. If they make an obnoxious map, you know what people do?

They ... get this ... don't play them.

[bobdaduck]

Just make sure that the levelgen trigger zones can still be invisible

[watusimoto]

You all worry FAR too much about what level makers will do. If they make an obnoxious map, you know what people do?

Get stuck playing on a level that has invisible walls?

[Quartz]

You all worry FAR too much about what level makers will do. If they make an obnoxious map, you know what people do?

Get stuck playing on a level that has invisible walls?

Whenever a terrible level pops up, I see this:
*mass amounts of complaining*
Host, do you?: A - Change the level
B - Keep the flow
PICK A
*okay cool*
or
PICK B
*everyone complains a little more before jumping servers*

I've been playing for about 8 years or something, I've honestly lost count. This has been my observation time and time again.

I have not seen a single host who enjoys seeing everyone complain and/or quit. Not one. And even if we were to acquire a "troll host," everyone would very quickly learn to avoid the server. Word kind of spreads fast around here.

I appreciate that you think hard about all the possibilities and potential problems with each and every addition instead of jumping to add everything everyone suggests (seen that kind of game work, it's ugly). It is good to think about hypothetical situations. But when your hypothesis is put into a proven, tested situation that goes against the grain of your hypothetical situation, I believe it's time to give it a rest.

[bobdaduck]

I can think of three different ways currently to make invisible walls.