| Submarine Adventure | ||
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Index: - Concept A submarine simulation, mixing both action and management of crew. Game overview: An action based submarine game, with the player hunting enemy destroyers on the top half of the screen, and a cross section of the player's submarine on the bottom half. Using this cross section, the player manages the crew in the interior of the submarine, putting out fires, sealing areas and moving supplies. A mock screenshot:
Style: Silent and deadly, the deep blue and sky blue of the top half of the screen contrast with the bright lights and colourful interior of the submarine on the bottom half. Layout of the screen: The top half of the screen displays very little GUI. It shows a view of the player's submarine, as in the picture above, and a small text list displaying the current status of several things, including alerts from the crew and which weapons are loaded. This status text is in the bottom left of the top half of the screen. The bottom half of the screen shows most of the GUI. This frees up the top screen, making it clearer for the player. Also, this allows for smaller screens to be used with maximum clarity. Also, most of these things are also shown in their proper room of the submarine. For example, the player's current speed is shown in the engine room, the loading status of the player's weapons are shown using oversized red and green lights in the torpedo room, and the player's health is shown by an overall view of the submarine, since a heavily hurt submarine has many flaming/flooded rooms. The bottom half of the screen and its gameplay: The status of the submarine's interior directly affects the player in the top half of the screen's action based game. For example, if the engine room is on fire, the player cannot move until the fire is put out and a crew member is assigned the post of engineer. Crew can be assigned a crew post, by selecting one and telling him to move to a crew post. Each crew post directly affects an ability of the submarine. A list of crew posts and what each one does is below. Each crew post will glow red if its crew member is killed. This reminds the player to assign a new crew member, without being annoying if the player wishes to leave that post empty. The bunkhouse room stores extra crew, these can be ordered off of their bunks and to a post. The number of bunks determines how many extra crew the player can carry. Crew can also be given various tasks, such as moving crates from a slowly flooding room, putting out a fire, shutting a door, repairing a leak, pumping out the water in a room, patching a leak, manning the deck gun when surfaced, etc. Crew posts: Gunner - This crew member fires the torpedoes. The player cannot fire if this crew post is empty. Loader - This crew member loads the torpedoes from a crate of ammo. The player cannot reload if this crew post is empty. Runner - This crew member brings new boxes of ammo from storage. The loader will run out of ammo to load with if this crew post is left empty. Captain - This crew member gives orders to the crew, using the intercom. The player cannot move or fire if this crew post is empty. Deck gunner - This crew member controls the deck gun while the submarine is surfaced. The deck gun will not fire if this crew post is empty. Radar - This crew member is seated at the radar machine. The player cannot detect ships and aircraft if this crew post is empty. Radio - This crew member is seated at the radio. The player cannot send or receive radio transmissions if this crew post is empty. Sonar - This crew member is seated at the sonar machine. The player cannot detect submarines and mines if this crew post is empty. Ballast - This crew member controls the ballast tanks. The player cannot dive or surface if this crew post is empty. Engineer - This crew member works with the engines. The player cannot move if this crew post is empty. Lookout - This crew member uses the periscope. The player cannot use the periscope if this crew post is empty. The top half of the screen and its gameplay: This action based submarine game is simple and standard, providing a familiar gameplay. This allows the player to play this part as he learns and gets used to the bottom screen's gameplay. The camera used for this is a third person camera, locked behind and above the submarine. The radar/sonar screen shows enemies as various small icons, with colour indicating if the unit is underwater, on the surface or flying above it. The combat focuses on the player out-maneuvering the enemy and destroying him using torpedoes. The player may also encounter aircraft, requiring him to surface and use the submarine's deck gun to shoot them down, while avoiding their bombs and dropped torpedoes. Each time the player is damaged, a room or crew post on the cross section of the submarine either starts leaking or bursts into flame. However, not every hit damages the player, the submarine's armor sometimes is able to ignore the hit. The percentage chance of this can be increased as needed to balance how often the player must repair his submarine. The player is given various missions, such as to trail a convoy, hunt a certain ship or fight an enemy submarine. These simple missions are given depth by the affects of the bottom screen. After the first encounter, the submarine will be damaged, and the player must assign new crew, repair leaking bulkheads and pump the water out of flooded rooms. However, after several encounters, certain systems will be damaged beyond repair and rooms will be leaking too fast for the crew to fix and must just be left sealed off until the submarine can dock at a repair station. Also, a lack of available crew members will force the player to choose which systems he wants working. These choices allow the player to use tactics and
develop a style of play. An example of this is the player focusing
on keeping the information systems running, instead of all the
weapons loaded, or the player may develop a playing style of having
only one deadly attack using stealth or many attacks in a deadly
barrage. Controls: The player would steer the submarine by default by using the ARROW keys or W,S,A,D. The submarine can be moved up and down in the water (surfacing and descending) by using either the PAGE UP/PAGE DOWN keys, or Q/E. The fire weapon button would be SPACE by default, with SHIFT being secondary fire. The player's abilities are buttons along the bottom of the screen. Each button also shows which hotkey triggers it. An example is: [ QUICK DIVE (F2) ] The crew are ordered about by left-clicking on them to select them, and then right-clicking elsewhere to order them to move. If the player right-clicks over an empty crew post, then that crew member will take that post. Crew pathfinding: This is not as hard as it seems. If each door and ladder can have a path node on each side, pathfinding can be done even in a cramped submarine. What makes this complex is that each door may be sealed, and each room may be on fire. To remove unneeded complexity, the crew members do not collide with each other or machinery in the submarine, only walls and doors. Encounters and combat: Since the world is so open, encounters would be based around locations that the player must travel to. These locations can be static or dynamic, such as a repair station or a V.I.P. transport. Again, since the world is very open, combat would happen only when the player decided to engage, so the level designers would have to put enemies in places where the player would attack them in order to kill what they are protecting, or protect what the player is escorting. The player's skill tree: Skills: Submarines: Player submarine types: Beluga - The basic submarine, this is the one that the player starts with. Tadpole - A slightly faster submarine, however, it has less internal space for crew. Barracuda - This submarine is focused on stealth, with a quiet engine and only one torpedo tube. Shark - The damage focused submarine, this has four torpedo tubes. Eel - This submarine has higher than normal maneuvering. Whale - This submarine is focused on information, and has the largest radar/sonar radius. It also has a larger then normal hull, which includes slightly faster engines and more weapon mounts. However, it makes more noise, and is slow maneuvering. In practice, due to unneeded complexity we might need to change this. The player would have a single submarine, and these submarine types would become upgrades. However, multiple submarine types give the player another goal to strive towards, which is worth the extra work. World: The gameplay set out in this document can fit in many worlds. The first ones that come to mind are 'world war 2' or 'cold war'. But many others are possible. So... Welcome to WaterWorld! The whole earth is covered in deep water, most of the land beneath has been washed away to dust, and those that still live harvest sunlight and seaweed, living on the rolling ocean that is the surface of the earth. Teams: In this part of the world, there are three major clans/tribes/teams of people. They are: The Sky-lords - The sky-lords towns are mostly large floating carriers of shining metal. Their strength is their aircraft, which support their weak navy very effectively. They also use aircraft such as zeppelins to transport and deploy their light submarines. The Zhan - These are a basic farming people, who live on floating towns made of rafts, harvesting seaweed fields and collecting sunlight. They have simple patrol boats that guard their farms, and are generally peaceful and friendly. They also have larger floating fortresses, that extend underwater, to act as strongholds for the protection of their people. In the missions, the Zhan tend to be innocent victims, heroic allies or tragic sacrifices for the player. Xxigoth - This is both a single person and a whole team. Xxigoth was a single mad scientist, who created a method for wiping a human mind, and replacing it with a version of his own. He became many, and his power grew. Xxigoth is filled with the desire for power, and it always trying to expand his empire. Only exceptional minds, those with great intelligence or discipline, are imprinted with the full mind of Xxigoth. The inferior minds he imprints with various slave-mind versions, creating loyal slaves of many levels of intelligence. The race/tribe/team of Xxigoth makes a great main
bad guy, as the player can fight him and defeat him many times.
The basic Xxigoth slave-mind only groans and mumbles, the basic
Xxigoth soldier-mind speaks only simple phrases and praise for
the Xxigoth, and the advanced Xxigoth prince-mind Slave-mind: 'Xxxxxiigoothhhh!' Xxigoth bases are underwater stations, with red metal pressure hulls floating underwater. Enemy ships, aircraft and submarines: Attack boat - A small speed boat with a machine
gun mounted in the front. Sky-lord only units: Zhan only units: Xxigoth only units: Deep station - A submarine station, the standard
base for Xxigoth. Missions, narrative and character advancement: The game starts with the player having just bought his first submarine, intending to become a contract mercenary. He hired for his first mission to raid a bandit base that has been bothering a Zhan town. After this first mission, the player is shown how to use the 'job screen', which lists all available jobs. Missions are listed for all the teams, including Xxigoth. Each mission the player completes for a team causes several more missions for that team to become available. This allows the player to choose which team he wants to join. This means that there is two major storylines, for either the Sky-lords or Xxigoth, as the Zhan missions fade out after the first five or six. A multi-storyline approach is possible because the missions do not require level design as demanding as in a FPS or RTS. This increases the replay and interactivity of the game, but could be dumped if the game goes over time quite easily. This gives the team a buffer, allowing full use of the time provided, no matter how long that time is.
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