CyberCrisis needs your input!

Hey all!

So, I've made a new topic for this because I wanted to bounce around a few ideas/ask for some input, and the old thread wasn't getting much attention. I did check with Mikey in advance :P

It's struck me that due to DIV/Bennus small community, chances are you wonderful folks and myself are likely to be the only people actually playing the game at all (which suits me just fine). The gameplay currently consists of shooting enemies, collecting the scrap they leave behind, and upgrading your tank in the ingame shop afterwards (or calling in an aerial strike if you can afford it!) before going off to shoot some more - but there are also ingame objectives, where you'll be told to go to a certain point on the map and perform a task (this is what actually progresses the game difficulty, increases the pace, brings in new enemies, etc). Currently, there are two kinds of objective:


A) Blow up a certain building:



B) Destabilise a nuclear power plant and then drive at least 2.5km away (which you get 20 seconds for), to avoid the nuclear blast which will bring you down to very low health:



Clearly, as this is a perpetual game (i.e. keep going until your ass is handed to you), 2 kinds of objective is not enough.

I've got a few ideas for some other objectives, but I'd be curious to ask what kind of ideas you guys have! What would you like to see in this game? (within reason - I'm not about to bring in a cooking mama style minigame) Do you have any thoughts?

Quote: Originally posted by dom cook

Would you consider putting in some kind of ultimate objective? IE abandon the perpetual game feature. After all a game, like any other activity someone is going to engage in, should have a point. Think about Left for Dead for example. The main game objective was to escape, fine. Sure they had survival mode but people only played it to get the gold medal by surviving for 10 mins. So even Survival mode had an ultimate objective. Admittedly there were those who went for serious survival times, but these were self imposed goals so they still had a purpose in mind. Not many people are going to say to themselves, I really want to survive for 2 hours on that game. Any game! at least if it's single player. There's also the principle of leave them wanting more. If you make your game last say 30 mins but fill it with decent gameplay and chuck in a bit of procedural generation, people will play it through again and again. Anyway.

Quote: Originally posted by dom cook

Fair enough. Good luck with it.

Like I said, a campaign mode for the completionists out there would be incredibly easy to add and I can do that no problem

I was for a while considering making a mode where the game only gives you 15 minutes, half an hour, an hour etc, tied to a game timer where you just play and see how many points you can accrue in that time - more for others or if I only had a certain amount of time to play in an afternoon, as a self imposed restriction

Quote: Originally posted by dom cook

Would you consider putting in some kind of ultimate objective? IE abandon the perpetual game feature. After all a game, like any other activity someone is going to engage in, should have a point.

YOUR WISHES ARE GRANTED



Campaign mode - The game cycles through all the objectives in their possible variations - for instance, the field cannon objective comes up twice, once with one cannon and once with two - with a short FMV at both the start of the campaign, and the finish when you successfully complete the campaign.

Completing the campaign unlocks the other play modes - and no, you won't be able to just delete the savedata file to cheat your way into them

Survival mode - Simple as, the game just continues to spawn enemies and place objectives on the map and you play 'til you're dead.

Time to Kill mode - Survival mode but with additions: you can set how long you want to play for in 5 minute increments, up to an hour - once the time limit is up, your position is bombed with Missile Command style nukes and your play time is up. The game then gives you a summary of your game: how many minutes you played for, how much money you made from collecting scrap and completing objectives, how many cyborgs you killed, how many vehicles you blew up, etc... This mode is great if you've only got a 10 or 15 minute period to play in and want to keep yourself from procrastinating forever haha

[Edited on 21-6-2016 by BreadCaster]

I'm not sure if it was a wish as such but I approve all the same . Looks like it's coming on nicely.

Thank you! It's nearly done actually! just a few bugs to be ironed out, the FMVs have yet to be shot though I have some of the stuff prepared, some sound clips/voice stabs are likely being done as I type this and I think that's it then... a few last minute tweaks as regards pacing etc most likely but it's pretty much finished. I'll be making a video trailer in the next few days

It looks very promising ! The scanlines look a bit weird though on this screen, but that could be caused by my screen's resolution.

Not at present, no. I could add that feature - if I could work out how - though it would skew the gameplay as having more room to see the vehicles coming towards you dramatically changes the pace of the game, as you have to react quicker (unless I compensated by reducing the players health?). I mean I guess that'd be better for a less frantic pace but that's sort of what this game was all about really

Quote: Originally posted by iWizard

Good stuff. Is it possible to zoom the camera?

Update! There is now ZOOM in Cybercrisis.

You press keys 1 to 3 to zoom in to different levels. It's just some code that I've put in to basically change the relative size of all c_scroll processes and the scale of the background scroll, but the annoying part is getting it so the positioning of processes relative to other processes (like for instance, a minigun process mounted on a tank process) is correct. Whole buildings can swallow up jeeps, tanks, the player etc if you zoom in near a building, but I don't really know how to fix this - although it's not really my top priority as you can just zoom out again to fix it.

There is also a wonderful little control scheme animation and diagram that I took far too long making, which you can view from the OPTIONS menu at any time during game play (just in case you forget how to fire your flamethrower or change the music or something).

The game does have quite a few controls, it is steeped in that old PC gaming tradition of having to memorise a lot of commands, a la System shock 2, and if I were to remove any of these then the gameplay has to become much more simplistic and shallow, so I think I'll be leaving it in. However, you only need to know the primary controls to play the game properly. Secondary controls are things like zoom, quick heal, change music track etc. These are separated on the diagram Props are nearly finished being made for the FMV section, I just need to set a date with my actors and acquire the lighting rig and it'll be good to shoot, the last finishing touch on the game.

Old DIV-ARENA veterans may be delighted to hear the music of THE ADVANCED Aka Alibu on the soundtrack as well as a bit of voice acting from the grand master himself, playing the chopper pilot who comments on your performance mid game and drops in air strikes at your request. Look forward to that in the final release :D


[Edited on 25-7-2016 by BreadCaster]