Intro and Menu animation

http://toshnak.com/giflash/start_menu_1.html

Here's an update of what I have so far.
I may need one of the artists to redraw the gate in the beginning of the animation since it is pretty low res.

I think once you click on start, there should be another "lobby" type of screen before you start the game.

Under the "options" menu it should be things like FX volume, BG volume, display quality, etc. The technical stuff.

On Weapon Design

Note - Didn't mention this at the meeting, since I didn't think of it then. However I did mention a similar approach months ago.

Approach:
The approach is simple. Just define all of the important/relevant properties and considerations (Note - this should be a list that is built up overtime. And ask others for points/things that you may have missed). Then use them when designing something specific, so that you can hit all of the points you've listed.

Example for Weapon Design (for our game):
(Note - if I'm missing something, then consider mentioning it by commenting)

(Weapon/Projectile) Properties:
(Note - remember to consider what I'm calling as meta-properties, such as the static/dynamic nature of each of the following properties.)

• Entity Damage (i.e., damage to an entity/robot)
• Status Effect (e.g., stun)
  
• Projectile Damage (i.e., damage applied to colliding projectiles)
• Size/Volume
• Speed
• Health
• Multitude (i.e., # of projectiles)
• Life Duration
• Flight Path
  
• Other Special Conditional Effects (e.g., splitting up an opposing projectile into multiple projectiles, where the # depends on the size of the opposing projectile)
• Momentum imparted upon killing a robot
  

Considerations:

• What role/stereotype does the weapon make the person feel that he's playing? (e.g., the turtle, tricker, damage dealer, phantom, etc.) (Note - a list of possible roles/stereotypes should probably be written out and kept tracked of)
  
• What does the weapon feel like? What will generally be people's perception of the weapon itself? (e.g., a weapon may feel powerful due to the explosive impact, or unwieldy, slow, floaty, etc.)
• Is the design relatively unique (compared to other games)?
• Is it deeply designed? What are the possible pros/cons of using this weapon in each possible scenario/situation/condition?

Specific Example Weapon:

Consider a phantom bullet that phases in and out on certain time intervals. (Note - during the initial conception, it's not always necessary to define specific values for each "property". And the design approach listed above is intended more for thinking rather than writing out everything with each item designed, because it would be too tedious otherwise; but it's important to mention at least a couple of considerations and to mention the non-obvious considerations.).

• I can't think of the vocabularies to exactly describe what role/stereotype the player will feel like they're in when using this weapon, but it's certainly considered (and I hope it's obvious, given the "phantom" name).
  
• The projectile will give off an aura of phantasm/ghostliness to emphasize the type of role/stereotype that the player should sense.
• An example case when this would be useful is that it can bypass a single dominating projectile.
• A case when this would not be so useful is going against a head-on beam (or rapid series of head-on projectiles) that can dominate it.
  

Ideas Discussed Last Meeting

1. Player gain a movement speed boost when walking onto enemy glow trail or onto the player's own tiles. This allows a player increased mobility when directly chasing down an enemy as well as when fighting from an area mostly under that player's control.

2. Environment has energy/elemental fields that modify the properties and characters and projectiles that pass into them. Possible changed properties include size and velocity.

3. Player picks up materials to craft weapons and expends all carried materials to craft an item by pressing the craft button. The type of weapon crafted depends on the proportion of material types in the player's inventory at the time of crafting. The quality of the weapon depends on the quantity of materials carried.

4. Player has reserve weapon slot. Player can press button to swap active weapon with reserve weapon. Moving over a weapon on the map will swap the reserve weapon with the weapon on the ground.

5. Player picks up materials to craft weapons and chooses which materials to use by inputting a button sequence, with a button assigned to each material type. The order and number of materials used in the sequence determines the crafted weapon. Each match, the sequence that qualifies to craft a each weapon is randomized, so players have to experiment with each new match to figure out what sequences will create each weapon. Forcing players to relearn with each match allows new players a fair chance against players who play the game a lot.

6. Create single player campaign levels selectable from a menu or a world map. Each level is a challenge in which the player much accomplish some objective in the arena. The objective may be collection, survival, defense, killing, or others. Each challenge is a re-enactment of some historical conflict in the game world's history and is named for a historical figure connected to the conflict. Performance on each level is scored, and sufficient total score from all levels combined will unlock subsequent sets of challenge levels.

Some Thoughts

Weapon Spawns
People seem to like being able to choose the weapon to pick up on the field, but I think it's awkward if characters automatically pick up weapons under certain conditions and walk through weapons when they already have another equipped. Here's a couple of solutions I considered where each introduces some Pros and Cons of their own. (Note - I'm intentionally leaving some details unspecified, since there are several possible options for them and these details are irrelevant to the main idea):

1. Objects on the field are basically crafting materials. Players need the necessary ingredients to craft the weapons. There should be some method to clearly show what items the player can craft; one example method is showing the recipe on screen. (Note - if recipes are shown, then it's possible to procedurally generate recipes or decide which weapons can be produced during the match, which can give a bit of randomness/uniqueness to each match as the players' tactics/strategy may need to change.)
   
2. Weapons belong to equivalence classes such that they disappear once one (within the same class) is taken. (Note - a class corresponds with a team/player color)

What if the player also has to consider if it's better to stay within his colored tiles?

What if the player is more vulnerable when playing aggressively (i.e., taking over tiles)? The player is challenged to consider and decide when it's better to be defensive or offensive. For example, characters standing on enemy or glowing tiles take 1.0x damage, whereas characters standing on their own non-glowing tiles only take .5x damage. (Note - The logic/rules for the glowing tiles would be tweaked/modified to support this concept).

Other Ideas that was considered in unison with the above ideas:

• Suppose what if under normal circumstances fired projectiles don't take over tiles. Instead, players must activate their "supers" for this to happen. This adds additional choices/decisions for the player to make and can add a psychological element to a battle as the player must predict the opponent's next move in order to best utilize the effect of taking over of tiles.
  
• Suppose that Hp and Energy are one and the same. What if firing shots (including the use of "supers") or taking damage both cost energy/hp? ( this can be compared to gambling in a way as the player is paying a cost for potential benefits).

Some concerns which arises from the above ideas:

• HUD/Screen space
• buttons for player input