The Sunken City
Overview:
An open-world MMO, set in a world where sea level has risen to cover most of the land. The survivors live on ships or the tops of former skyscrapers, and use large armored suits to dive into the sunken cities below to salvage lost technology and other valuables. Players must divide their time between these two worlds, taking on missions for rival organizations competing for dominance of the surface world.
Gameplay:
While an RPG in terms of structure, the game's play style itself is largely action-based, though slower in pace than most shooters or combat games. Generally, the player will encounter one challenge at a time, instead of a roomful of enemies attacking at once. In addition, there is more of an emphasis on evading enemies and using the environment against them than on straight fighting - when a player encounters a giant sea creature, he should be made to feel that facing it directly is basically suicide, and instead take shelter and come up with a more realistic solution. The gameplay in the areas above sea level is fairly straightforward and realistic, while the undersea combat takes into account the altered gravity and water currents.
Unlike most RPGs, experience points and levelling up do not exist, and are instead replaced with the earning of money to buy better equipment. In the undersea area, where players are confined to their diving armor, equipment is especially important, as it increases the mobility of the craft and makes difficult battles easier. These suits are large and clunky at the start of the game, and are effected by gravity, sinking to the bottom of the level. Some areas might not be accessible at all until the armor has been suitably updated - for example, an undersea plateau might require a jumping enhancement, while some deeper areas may require the suit to be outfitted for high pressure surroundings.
Some of the above-water areas are connected by an elevated train line, which transports the player as well as his diving suit, for a fee. While the main focus in the game is diving, there is a share of above water combat as well, where equipment is also important (albeit in a more traditional attack-and-defense setting). Both player and diving suit equipment can be bought in stores or found while salvaging, though some items will have to be repaired before they can be used. The money used in the game is earned by completing missions or selling goods.
Missions are offered by a wide range of clients, ranging from shady pirating groups to mysterious corporations to down-on-their-luck citizens. Depending on which kinds of mission a player takes, they can gain a reputation for certain types of work, and may receive offers for particular kinds of jobs more often than others. Sometimes multiple organizations will send different players after the same goal, bringing them into conflict with each other.
Story:
The game should function more as a series of connected short stories than one long narrative. While some missions are going to lend themselves to relatively straightforward stories ("dive into this area and retrieve this item"), all efforts should be made to create a range of diverse stories to prevent the game from becoming repetitive. For example, the player may be hired to capture an unknown life form, or to sabotage a rival drilling corporation, instead of just retrieving a certain item. Each mission should stand alone, though certain elements (organizations involved in the story) will have recurring importance, and their roles may even change as the overarching plot develops.
The general story involves humanity's attempts to figure out the details of pre-flood civilization, and try to unravel the cause of the flood itself. However, science comes into conflict with business, since undersea resources are highly profitable and in-demand. Even within the business and scientific communities there is fractured in-fighting - some in the science field want to study the newly developing natural life, while others see the study of humanity's past as a more pressing concern. Business organizations have different ideas as to which resources are better to exploit, and all of these factions come into conflict with a central government seeking stability ahead of research or profit.
World and Locations:
Cities and other areas include a large city built on the rooftops of old skyscrapers connected by walkways, a city of ships and other driftwood which moves randomly around the map, a series of mountainous islands where the residents have reverted to primitive lifestyles, and a submersible mobile research city, which moves around the map and is often completely hidden except on related missions.
Enemies:
The creatures which live beneath the surface are mutated versions of real exotic sea creatures, most of which have evolved to interact with the formerly human landscape. Some examples include hermit crab-like creatures which use the remains of old cars as shells, adaptable octopus creatures which can camoflage themselves and even climb onto land, and giant anenomes which hide inside of buildings until their prey is close enough. In wide open areas there may be extremely large creatures - giant squid twice the size of a blue whale, for example. The undersea areas should remind the player of how small they are compared to their surroundings, and the monsters should have this effect as well.
Diving Suits:
The diving suits are not only a player's weapon in undersea combat, but also their transportation device. While suits can be transported via railroad, this can get expensive if a character does a lot of running back and forth. Most of the time the player will rely on his suit instead, which can also reach areas not connected to the rail line. When not in use, the suit sits in the hangar at the player's current city, with the hangar also being the hub for the railroad and home to the repair and modification shops. The suits don't have HP, but instead certain important aspects which may be damaged by enemy attacks. The most important element to avoid damage to is the air tank - while the tank is normally unlimited, if it is damaged it starts to leak, giving the player a short amount of time to get to point with surface access. They then must pay a repair shop a small sum of money to repair the suit. Suits come in a variety of different body types, and are extremely customizable - players should be able to carve designs or attach accessories to the shell of the suit. While certain customizable features may become visibly damaged in battle, a visit to the repair shop fixes these with no extra cost.
Death:
A player dies if their HP runs out or if their damaged air tank runs out of time. When this happens the player blacks out, only to wake up in a hospital in one of the cities, where he must pay a fee to the hospital. If the death occurred in the diving suit, the player can find it at the nearest hangar, where he must also pay the repair fee. If a player is broke at the time of death he owes money to the hospital and repair shop, which is deducted from his future earnings. Players should be advised not to take on missions that are beyond their current ability - overly ambitious players may repeatedly take too-hard missions, likely keeping them far in debt.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Marathon Fortress
A level I designed for the classic game "Marathon," in which the player must defend a wood-and-stone fortress from alien attackers. Certain passages have been bombed and many of the doors malfunctioning, making the rectangular rooms and courtyards a bit more of a maze. The main goal is a water reservoir near the top of the map, where the player is instructed to open the gates and flood the compound. The player must then make his way back to previously explored areas, where ledges that were previously too high to access are now reachable by swimming.
Engineering Department Exterior
One of the areas from the in-progress game "The Textbook Spirits," about a haunted college campus. This is the exterior for the engineering department, where the player first accesses a series of abandoned tunnels that connect each of the buildings on campus. The building also houses an all-night coffeeshop, where the player can converse with overworked students who are apparently oblivious to the surreal happenings outside.
Science Department Exterior
One of the locations from the in-progress game "The Textbook Spirits," a horror-based action RPG set on a haunted college campus. The ghosts manifest themselves as scraps of paper caught in the wind, which come together to form shifting, monstrous shapes.
Marathon Swamp Base
A stage I designed for the classic game "Marathon." It's a pretty dark level, hopefully not so dark that you can't tell what you're looking at.
Players must make their way into a long-abandoned research facility (the circular area near the center of the map), where an out-of-control terraforming experiment has transformed the surrounding land into an overgrown watery marsh (the jagged mazelike areas, which cover most of the map).
The building is being used as a makeshift hideout for the alien enemy, who the player must try to avoid alerting during the invasion (with their elevated position inside the base and a number of flying units, they have a tactical advantage over the waterlogged players). In an additional challenge, the entrance to the building is hidden in the swampy overgrowth, and the player's starting position is randomized, meaning each player should have a different experience when first exploring the level.
Also note that Marathon crashes if the distance viewable to the player exceeds a certain distance. One fun challenge on this map was trying to give as much space as possible to the outdoor areas, while never overloading the program - in other words, fooling the player into feeling like the outdoor areas are larger than they are.
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