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Creativity Support / Questions about a KE-like game in development
« on: May 26, 2011, 01:20:11 »
I have been recently making an experimental Knytt Experiment-esque platformer game, which will have (assuming I finish it) a vast game world that is editable by anyone. However, I have noticed several problems with what I am planning to do, relating to how I still give level designers the freedom to create the world, but at the same time make sure that they conform to a few specifications. I was wondering, does anyone have any ideas about how to fix them? Any help would be greatly appreciated
Making sure some effort is put into the levels
Since the goal of the game is to explore and find treasure, and these treasures are probably going to be placed by other players, there is potential for someone to simply make the room a 16*1 platform, filled with treasure, in order to instantly score massive loads of points (If I add a scoring system, which I guess I will have to). I need a way of limiting how many can be placed in a certain proximity to each other, and I also want treasure to be quite rare in the game world (1/100 screens?). There will be lots of potential for making the levels look nice, and I want this to be the primary focus, not racking up as much treasure as quickly as possible.
Stopping two people editing the same screen at once
You will be able to pick any free screen in the game world (and maybe existing ones) and edit it. However, editing levels takes time, and if someone else decides to start editing that screen at the same time, stuff gets real. I was thinking of making the screens become locked after someone chooses to edit them, but then trolls could come and lock everything, so I thought of making the locks expire after a while, but anywhere I draw the line will be too short for some of the more awesmoe level designers but too long to wait for the screen to become free again...DX
There hopefully won't be more...
Anyway, any ideas or questions, no matter how small or large, are welcome
Spoiler: what the game will probably be like (click to show/hide)
Making sure some effort is put into the levels
Since the goal of the game is to explore and find treasure, and these treasures are probably going to be placed by other players, there is potential for someone to simply make the room a 16*1 platform, filled with treasure, in order to instantly score massive loads of points (If I add a scoring system, which I guess I will have to). I need a way of limiting how many can be placed in a certain proximity to each other, and I also want treasure to be quite rare in the game world (1/100 screens?). There will be lots of potential for making the levels look nice, and I want this to be the primary focus, not racking up as much treasure as quickly as possible.
Stopping two people editing the same screen at once
You will be able to pick any free screen in the game world (and maybe existing ones) and edit it. However, editing levels takes time, and if someone else decides to start editing that screen at the same time, stuff gets real. I was thinking of making the screens become locked after someone chooses to edit them, but then trolls could come and lock everything, so I thought of making the locks expire after a while, but anywhere I draw the line will be too short for some of the more awesmoe level designers but too long to wait for the screen to become free again...DX
There hopefully won't be more...
Anyway, any ideas or questions, no matter how small or large, are welcome