TopDown Story Skeleton

Here is a list of planned story plot as extracted from other thread:

Mission 1
Kid, just graduated from flight school on Earth. His Mom and Dad are proud, but worried that he will be away from home and out in space and who knows what trouble (little could they know Smiley Kid searches for a job online and finds a job in the outer edge of our secure space area.This is the frontier for us humans and is now reaching areas near other species. Kid gets a job for Boss man. He is a nice guy, been through lots but still has a kind heart. Takes a liking to kid so gives him a job. He will shuttle supplies between 2 space stations. Simple enough that a rookie fresh pilot could handle easilly.

This is the first mission. Kid flies a shuttle craft with cargo. On his flight from station 1 to station 2 he gets a warning that a comet just broke up and one of the pieces smacked into a big asteroid and now there is a massive meteor shower right intersecting his kid's course.
The game he has to manuveur the shuttle and avoid all meteors and deliver the cargo.

Level 2 when he gets to station 2 and does level 1, boss man is happy he is safe and as his gratitude for getting the job done gives him a better shuttle with a weapon on it. He figures debris will be in the aread for some time to come from the impact. So this will be prudent.

Mission 2 is to deliver cargo from station 2 to station 3 farther away in the new shuttle. During the flight, an urgent message comes in a breaking news story. Apparently an enemy species is moving closer to our sector. We got news from those living even further out than our frontier, these are the true explorers and pirates of mankind. These space pirates(those that survived the encroaching enemy) are coming back to civilized space, our space. Kid is told by Boss man to watch out for pirates and get safetly to station 3.
So our mission now is to avoid the pirates who need supplies, supplies we are likely to have in our ship.

Mission 3, we manage to fight off the pirates and make to station 3. There boss man is happy to see us again. He tells us by order of Earth Mandate of Highest Priority all citizens are called to fight the new oncoming enemy. Boss man says that now we all work for the military till this threat is over and that we are recruited for now wether we like it or not.

Kid now gets a small fighter and the next mission is training in the new vehicle. He is too take out enemy cargo containers and know how to do pickups dropped in by big supply ships. He learns about what the pickups do and basic hard core game play information


Mission 4 kid goes off to first battle near the furthest inhabited human planet this is the first encounter. Kid fights off light fighters out on scouting patrols.

Mission 5 kid is rewarded and moved up to a bigger fighter with dual guns. He now encounters more of the attack forces small and medium size ships.

Mission 6 kid moves to the current fighter with a co pilot, of all people boss man. Together they face there first really tough enemy ships and find there are more than one race involved in the invasion. Kid and Boss man are rewarded for this discovery and coming back alive to give this intelligence report.

Mission 7 they are on the best fighter ship we have. Part of a fleet they go into almost the final battle. Part 1 is fight off the enemy invading smaller vessels, part 2 is take out the capitol ships.

Mission 8 the flight back home. This is the reward mission, just fun flying back through all the places we have been back home to Mom and Dad and they get to meet Boss man.

We will need to come up with a better Mission 6 if we have the text adventure. Let the text adventure have the cool intelligence storyline. Ours will be more action based so mission 6 can be just brilliant flying and winning a very odds against type battle and hence the reward of best ship we have. Maybe topdown goes low into a planets surface with the enemy chasing and with Topdown skills forces them to crash, shoot each other and wins a very tough battle with lots of skill of flying and not just shooting.

Mission 6 could be a 3d side scroller for this one. Maybe start out in topdown fashion, then transform into side scroller with cool effect and then the fancy flying and pursuit can be done nicely and little shooting just cool flying.

Hi kryton,

this sounds good !
I was also thinking of changing camera in some missions - but we must give player chance to get oriented and not confused. So mild beginning of mission and then BAOOM :D

Bye,
Petr

I was thinking about it, start like normal, then the camera zooms out from our normal angle. We see a capital ship with tons of fighters coming. One of the factions heads towards topdown. This is when the camera zooms in and we see topdown head down to the planet and the factions follow him. Then it goes into side scroller but in 3d, we will need to play around with it. maybe almost like star craft and orthagonal view from above and to the side, so we can steer topdown around peaks, through canyons and tight turns, control elevation, so have total control in all directions but just limited in height somewhat. It will be a great fun game mode and maybe even be more useful for second version of the game in the next release. The rolls could be reversed, this style more the norm and then space version less.

Hi,

just quick idea which occured to me in school :)
What about boss being the traitor of Earth ? Our hero works for him, but when he finally ( in mission 8 ) visit him he will see him how he is doing some video communication with our good old enemies, which want to pay him in natural resources for his "service" thanks to which they can pass through Earth shield ( and start hell in "Down and dirty" )


Bye,
Petr

Oh, wow that breaks my heart. Sort of like seeing Captain Picard turn into a BORG. Maybe if we can somehow make a him a good guy again, maybe he is a double agent later or we find out, he was being brainwashed or controlled against his will.

The ending is supposed to be happy not sad, you must have had a tough day at school :)

Hi Kent,

not tough, just too long day :)
I don't know, but take for example episode IV of StarWars - all ends happily by death of millions innocent souls on Death Star :D so I would not expect new episode continuing the story. But end of episode V is quite thrilling so I can't wait last episode :).

This shock with killing capital ship, our hero super happy that "problem is solved" and now he see that boss is treating them... This makes you curious whats behind it. Why boss is evil now and if it is really the boss ? :) Where is sequel ? ;D


Bye,
Petr

Actually when you think in terms of arcing storylines. Like in Babylon 5 they had the 5 years of story sort of planned. That is what made it so good. If we are going to make this a real universe, maybe we should figure out an incredible story line that arcs across many sequels. This way all the stories will combine into one big story.

I guess what I am trying to say but the long way around is to decide, how long we want to work on this? 1 game, 2 games, 10 games and sort of develop a great story to fit the idea and make it that much better of a project.

I am up for anything the group decides. If we decide to go long distance, we can even plan different types of games so we keep ourselves challenged and get to make different types of games. Then we have the text adventures too. Or even Myst type game with puzzles maybe?

So it would be nice to make a plan and sort of make it as good as we can. The other thing is, as they do in TV writing... you plan for many seasons, but if the show gets cancelled by the tv network, you are able to wrap things up neatly for your fans.

So if the group decides, wow we can do this type of game and this type and all make it part of the same verse and arcing storyline, we could plan for that, but also make each story(game) complete in case we decide to stop so the fans are not left hanging.

Well just some thoughts. Amazing how your idea to make Boss man "Evil" started so many more ideas.

Here are the types of games I would be interested in working on, that is types that would be in our verse and continue the story in each game.

The way it is now, instant action and mission based top and side 3d scroller.
A first person adventure game with some shooting action.
A game like Starcraft or Command and Conquer, real time strategy
And maybe a hard core space game where you command a capital ship like the Enterprise in Star Trek and have a full crew. This would be based mostly in the ship so it would be lot of strategy, info analysis, decision making and away missions and of course combat and control.

What about you guys?

Let's stay with our 8 mission starter game first. When we have it done like we want to, we will see much better how much effort it was and can estimate better any other project. Let's start small, or it will fail.

btw, you guys have great story ideas.

Thanks Mike, no we will do this game of course, but if we plan on having more games, it would be neat to sort of at least out the basis of an arcing storyline and what would be in what game type. And then we can make this one self complete, but if we moved on it would be very nice to continue the story with some good planning and give the fans that extra joy in works planned this way.

Just think about it and the types of games you always wanted to make and we can see what we come up with, 1 game at a time, but with some planning.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MikeHart

Let's stay with our 8 mission starter game first. When we have it done like we want to, we will see much better how much effort it was and can estimate better any other project. Let's start small, or it will fail.

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Well I'm with Mike here. I've been apart looking at all those nice stories but it seems that now concentration on the game has been lost.
I think this game should help to

• find a good way to collaborate
• develop some kind of general code to be re-used, let's say a sort of game engine
• list all the possible activities to be considered when developing a game
• but also, write that game

Now we have a 8/9 Mb game full of candy but the game engine is not there. Also functionalities, enemy AI, levels, big boss levels, different armours, 3D movements, and many other game related activities are gone.

Ok, those are my critics. But I have also to be propositive.
What about restarting with a list of To Do things giving priorities?
Story is important, multimedia part is important, but if the game is not evolving they are nothing.
Decision can also be to stop here with TopDown3D and jump into another project. Important is to take that decision.

What do you think? I can be completelly wrong, so please correct me.
Eros

Hi Eros,

you are right. I got too excited by the possiblities that I forgot to code.

I would like to decompone each mission from just technological point of view now. This would allow me to get focused on features engine should be able to do.

I am at school now, I will post more ideas when I'll be back home.

So back to reality :), lets keep talking about original game plan as Mike suggested.


Thanks a lot,
Petr

I am all for focusing, but the story does lead to the programming big time. For instance in today's discussion about the story, you can see the need for transparency control of meshes. New movement ideas for the level came out. So they work together I think.

I think we all agree, topdown3d as it is top priority and with in that the 2 game types, instant action and story based, instant action is the priority as we can get that done so much easier and have a full fledged game that works great.

I think a priority schedule for these goals is a great idea.

That is where a wiki or some sort of collab tool comes in handy as we make these lists and they sort of get lost in the posts. But one place that is updated will make it easier to keep notes and progress updates.

For instance why not make a priority list for instant action and let's finish that first then. Since story is not concern for that game mode.

Guys, just as in our society today. We have cars that are at the cutting edge of technology and sleekness factor, while we also still have old cars that are clunkers.

I was thinking our universe would probably carry on the same way into the future. So for example, transport corporations, the top firms would have shiny new ships with the latest technology in all fronts, maybe even some impulse, or gravity space warping.
On the other end, Luna Transports would be the cheap solution. Using old equipment and offering that cheap alternative and under the radar type profile.

I will make the Luna Transports, especially early on mission ships low tech. You will see rocket nozzles and landing pads. I will make them with no weapons at first and then we talk about how to retro fit weapons on them, as I am sure bossman, I mean Antony McBurton, or a.k.a. TonyMac, TMac would figure a way to mount weapons onto his ships if needed but as retrofits, not new ships with weapons as part of the design.

But this does not mean the rest of the worlds are like this. There can be all sorts of ships from ultra cool mouth watering sexy designs, to utilitarian designs and everything in between.

What do you guys think?

Yip, that sounds good. Each race means humans and the enemys will have different technologies anyway. Having one race consistant is important. But can also show age differences in the designs for sure. I guess that it is only important for the human (UWF).
The enemy races should have a constant themedesign in their ships like I tried (The round shaped wings). I allready imagine a big mother ship, beeing a big disc with a huge opening for a landing bay at the front. But in the style of the cyclon motherships in battlestar galactica. Just one half of it. I think it would be a nice cutscene, seeing the mothership infront of a planet, launching Stinkybugs at mass.

I agree Mike only for us Humans as that is what makes us so different, we have a wide diverse tastes and likes. Our society sure shows that. So that will be neat to see the diversity we have, yet the sort of consistant attack fleets and designs.

Your mothership launching the stink bug attack sounds incredible!! It starts as words and then becomes reality, I know it is not too far into the distant future. That is a neat description of a scene for sure!!

Again nice ideas !

That would be nice to have this variety.
I would like to see some rusty half wrecks :D, it adds much to "reality feeling".
Can't wait for first models !


Thanks,
Petr