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Design
Global design
High conceptThis shmup intends to continue the story of the tf4 pilot just after the escape performed at the end of the game. A concept of RPG may also be added to the game: story, XP and levels up ... Game descriptionThe story starts just after the destruction of the Vios Fortress when the pilot has to eject from the damaged Rynex ship (it is a parallel story to the Thunder Force V game). First level: EscapeThe very first level will then consist of the escape from an asteroid field with a ridiculous escape capsule (which has a temporarily activable shield). The escape capsule will crash on a big meteor owned by space pirats. The pilot will then maybe loose memory (which could give good story opportunities in future). The pilot will be made prisonner for some time but will sucessfully escape (helped by someone?) from the pirat headquarter by stealing a ship (now commonly used by people): the FIRE LEO-03 Styx (from Thunder Force III). This first level is very peculiar: the horizontal scrolling will take place as the end of TF4 with enemies coming from the left! However here enemies will consist of an asteroid field which really wants to play kamikaze :) The end of this level - the pirats' asteroid landing - will be very cool! Second level: New startSome weeks will pass while the pilot is still prisonner. After some weeks, the prison door will suddently be unlocked by some unknown reasons... The pilot will find his way to the docks where he'll steal a FIRE LEO-03 Styx. Just when he takes off, the alarm will start and now the pilot must again escape the pirat HQ. Flying quickly through thin corridors, you the pilot will have to:
After this successful (second) escape, the ship will reach the Galaxy Federation Space Portal but it is guarded by some GF entity. Only the destruction of this guardian will allow the pilot to finally reach back the GF HQ! Inter level sceneOnce the pilot came back to the Galaxy Federation HQ he will have access to a larger area where he can decide for the next level to go (also according to mission given by the GF). Optionally (has to be decided), he can replay a previous level in order to win some XP for example. Warning the lines below are here only for records since the concept of shop will certainly disappear. This inter level scene will show a large space map, with hidden parts of course. During this, the player can also go shopping for new weapons, shields, claws and also exchange... Technical level designEach level will be a standalone Java ARchive downloaded just in time (from google code). A core JAR and an other shared JAR will be responsible to manage common game tasks (load textures, sounds or musics, make collision detection, draw everything and treat player inputs). Each level will be run inside its own class loader. The minimum system supported will require OpenGL 1.5! RPG conceptsSaving pointsHaving some properties of RPG games means the player will progress with XP/money - craft responsiveness and capacities like number of weapon usable during a level, several weapon levels, new weapon to buy between levels... - and thus a saving model must be implemented. While it would be a standard model to save the player progression once a level is finished I prefer other possibilities (open to discussion) as:
XP pointsXP points will continuously increase as the player progress in the game. By "continuously" I really mean every frame, some XP are obtained. If for some reasons the player loose ship power, then some XP will also be removed; these XP points will really mean something. At the end of a level it will be possible to convert XP into money in order to:
Difficulty aware areasWhile some areas will be categorized as easy, average or difficult (if not maniac ;)), the XP counting system will adapt itself:
Pilot's memoryWhen the pilot lands on the pirat asteroid at the very beginning of the game he will loose memory. This will have consequences on pilot capacities (ship less controlable, some weapons not available yet). While progressing into the game, the pilot will then get back some memories and thus will be able to use forgotten abilities:
Future levelsPossibility to meet new people:
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