graviton brainstorms

[symbioidlj]

1) different asteroids/debris that comes floating in is colored various ways: Green for low threat/value, yellow for mid, and red for DANGER! Each of these has a basic score. 1, 2 or 3. These scores determine how much radius is added to the hole.

2) the energy/resources that may remain after destroying an asteroid is also colored/valued, and provides a certain number of bars of energy. If any asteroid has resources, after destroying the asteroid, resource is released, and it continues on the same trajectory as the asteroid (sorry no complex gravity sim, here) this value is separate from the destroyed asteroid value and is probably going to be randomly generated... Maybe. It's your job to intercept these resources and deploy the tractor beam to pull it in... When it's pulled in, you level up...

As you level up there is a meter on the right hand side of the screen that indicates what power level you're at... Red means you're stuck there. Yellow means you get a power boost, and can use that as a speed enhance for emergency situations in the circle to move around faster, but it'd be depleted. Once it hits green, you're good to go, and can escape.

3) each level will have different sizes of orbits, and rates of growth. Lower levels have a larger orbit (thus more time for the black hole to grow and more time for you to be able to gain material) Later levels have smaller orbits..... Earlier levels also have more

Comments

[vesicular.livejournal.com]

I like! Further ideas:

- Asteroids come in at different speeds, perhaps random, or perhaps based on size
- Same is true for the items that are dropped from them. Could continue on the same speed or change randomly. So for example a slow target that drops a slow moving item may give you time to circle around to blast a different asteroid and come back to get the item
- Not every asteroid gives items.
- If you do not pick up the item, it falls into the black hole and adds to its mass, but only in a very small amount.
- Powerups can include speed as you said, and also the tractor beam as you said, which would be cool, as you wouldn't have to intersect the path with the item dropped, just go near it to suck it in. The more powerful your tractor beam the farther away you can suck stuff from.
- Big asteroids should take more shots to blow up than small ones. Powered up guns will make it take less shots.
- if you die, you go back to zero in ship upgrades, and start the level over.

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

I like some of those. I think the tractor beam i see more as an inverted triangle reaching out in front of you like a conical ray that allows for a larger area of potential "pick up" space so you don't have just a tiny collision point to intersect to get your object (and yeah, you can get it before it intersects)... Definitely if you miss an object, and it goes towards the hole it can add like 1 to the radius regardless of size or something.

I was thinking it might be interesting to add some enemies in later levels. Like "you're invading our sector -- prepare to die" so you have to dodge asteroids, and such and then dodge enemy shots AND kill the enemies, who are flying in patterns.

We'll see how basic asteroid gameplay goes first, heh...

[vesicular.livejournal.com]

Yeah I'm not thinking of it from how to implement it (probably because I'm not), but more of just ideas for a game.

I wish I had the time or energy to make a pen and paper, or board game. Either could be really fun.

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

OH! Tech Tree upgrades for power ups. Like real simple classes of power ups. Instead of, say, you capture a power up, it's like a currency and after x powerups, you can "buy" a bonus weapon.

Each upgrade has a class associated with it: bomb, laser, multishot, speedboost, armor plating, etc...