Hi Dark, Good point. Shades of doom uses a 20 by 20 grid, and I think it takes 10 steps to move one unit on the grid. Therefore giving you the total of 200 steps in any direction. That's actually quite small compared to a mainstream game. Now,imagine if the grid were expanded to 100 units. That would give you 1,000 steps in any direction, and give you five times the space to explore. If David Greenwood ever wanted to expand the game he certainly could do so.
However, regarding expansion items a lot of mainstream games do have Easter eggs, and we are unfortunately lacking in that department. Usually its something small like if you unlock a certain door, double back to the beginning of the level, you will be able to play a bonus level that is normally unavailable when you try and access that door initially. Those kinds of expansions are certainly doable but would have to be added in after the majority of the game is complete I think. For example, let's take MOTA. Right now I'm struggling just to complete 12 levels of standard game play let alone any bonus content or extras. That's fine. I can complete it as is, and then in a year or so go back in and add bonus content, extra levels, that are unlocked by doing certain things in the game. In a case like that all I have to do is work on extra content rather than building the entire game from scratch after I have the basic game written and debugged to start with. Cheers! On 8/9/12, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote: > Hi tom. > > The time aspect is true, though at the same time (ha ha), I don't really > think the full power of audio mazes have been explored as yet, even in a > game like shades of doom. After all, in shear size of area to traverse > something like tomb rader, metroid, ---- or even Turrican has much larger > levels than we've seen in audio thus far, and the larger the area, the more > > difficult things are to find. > > The searching problem is a point, but in many of the earlier metroid games > all items were actually pretty much in plane site, or in sites and > configurations of ledges that implied the player should search more > completely, and this technique could work in audio. For instance, in the > first level of shades there is that corridor with those tiny 2 x 2 rooms > going off it. Suppose, items were hidden in the back walls of some! of those > > sorts of rooms, leading players to have to check those size rooms when they > > come to them. > > Ditto with sound sorces such as radios. > > Another technique might be some form of scanning, where by you come upon > many objects and need to scan them to determine items, though once again, > unless this was tied to some sort of configuration in the maze having to > scan every single object or picture or bit of background could get annoying, > > but if the player had just gone through many small passages to find a tiny > room with a jar or a statue or whatever, ods are that statue would possibly > > contain something good, where jars and statues in more obvious places > don't. > > Then of course there's the fact that in such games, expantion items are > supposed! to take time to find, so having players check all objects would be > > a way of increasing the play time of the game. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
