Suns

[bobdaduck]

Ladies and gentlefighters, I present you with....

Suns, the newest repairable/engineerable defense!

SUNS.jpg

The item starts as a small glowing white burning ball thing, and then as you repair it it changes to your teams color and grows. The mapmaker chooses the max size for the sun, and you can repair it up to that size. So a larger sun could take two or three energy bars to repair fully. The burning field and gravity well would affect the movements of any enemies nearby, and the damage would be greater the larger the sun. It would be possible to fly over the object, though if it were an enemy sun you would need to shield to do so without taking heavy damage. And of course, the closer you are to the sun the more damage you should be taking. As a standard base defense item, you would of course be able to engineer them. Small ones, anyway. But still.

ENGINEERING SUNS.

Bit unconventional, but I like it.

It would be possible to fly over the object, though if it were an enemy sun you would need to shield to do so without taking heavy damage.

This is smart. Does more to separate this object from that of a core. It would also ensure players aren't engineering suns just to block pathways.

[Little_Apple]

I don't like it.
It seems a bit un-needed. I mean, It could be easily sheilded so whats the point?

[bobdaduck]

I don't like it.
It seems a bit un-needed. I mean, It could be easily sheilded so whats the point?

Turrets.

Also the gravity well effect will still hamper enemy movements. Larger suns could do so to such a degree that controlling a neutral sun somewhere on the map could be a major strategic advantage. Also conceptually the area of influence would be huge for large suns.

The influence of gravity is interesting, but I wonder if that might serve better as a separate feature for a separate object. When I think about a sun, gravity is not the first thing that comes to mind. (Disclaimer: I realize that scientifically-speaking gravity is an integral part of a sun. Bear with me.) Rather, I think of heat and losing health when my ship nears it. But gravity? That's a black-hole.

Now, I don't mean to hijack your thread, but think about it. Black-holes and suns. New objects that impact gameplay but don't have a direct effect on the score. Each object contrasts each other -- light and dark -- but each object is powerful in their own ways. This could be really cool for Bitfighter.

What do you think?

[bobdaduck]

What do you think?

You could make a black hole in levelgen, actually. Its even been done previously. I could possibly get you the code. You could maybe make a sun in levelgen too. Minus the repairable / team affiliations aspect.

I'm thinking along different lines than you sky, I'm more focused on gameplay here. You're focused more on... raw awesomeness I guess? Black holes are cool and so are suns, but I think that a single game object would be a better route to go. And when I think of black hole I think along the lines of "get close to it and you're instantly dead", which seems a little large scale for a gameplay object. Levels have been created which take various angles on the black hole, and none of them play really well. I'm against separating the concepts.

We could use kaen's new shaders to have some neat sun graphics!

To be clear, I have witnessed the levelgen black hole and it is hardly what I am suggesting. The blackhole would have a cosmetic makeover to look more polished and clean, and functionally it would only damper player movements instead of sucking them in entirely (but maybe if you stayed near the black hole for several seconds it would suck you in entirely).

In any case, my concern is complexity. I'm worried about the sun having two threats (gravity and health reduction). I was suggesting the blackhole because it split the features apart. Look, I have little doubt that you and I could manage with multitasking suns. But from a design perspective, I dunno, it feels off. Maybe it's just me nitpicking, but...

An example I can give is that from a level editor's point of view, including objects that have vastly different functions is tricky. A level editor may wish to implement a sun for the gravity effect but not the heat effect, or vice versa, and there would inevitably be unintended side effects. Again, the level editor could manage, but from a design perspective it seems like we're just mucking things up.

Therefore, I think splitting the features apart would potentially allow for greater accessibility on the level editor's behalf and would limit design discomforts. Let's be honest though I mostly just dug the light/dark contrast.