life in a ball
This idea is half baked, but here goes
The playing field is the inside of a ball.
I'm thinking the graphics will be (accelerated) 3D, but I'm sure that's not necessary.
The center of the bottom of the ball is missing, and it's bad if you fall out.
There are a bunch of different kind of bots that do various things. None of them are good or bad in general, it depends on the situation.
They enter the playing field regularly, and you'll have to get rid of a lot of them so it doesn't get too crowded.
You can get rid of a bot by hitting it really hard (which leaves debris) or if it falls down the hole.
Bonking into things is generally not good, but not the end of the world either (perhaps it will be enough penalty that it could kill your momentum and make you likely to fall down the hole.)
Bashing is fun, but I don't want it to be all about bashing.
You play a ball.
I think you will be able to accelerate your ball in any direction, but not as strong as the gravity pulling you towards the hole in the middle. You will have to orbit.
Your ball is equipped with a strong magnet, which acts on bots and debris. (Note that this pulls you towards metal things as much as it pulls them towards you.)
I expect most of the bots will have traction, and will not be orbiting.
Some ideas for bots:
- goes to the center, and moves around the edge of the hole, making it bigger
- ditto but makes the hole smaller
- cleanup bots (go after debris and remove it) (possibly using it to make the hole at the bottom smaller)
- lump: it just picks a spot, and stays there.
- maintenance bot (goes around to any bot that has been damaged, but not broken)
- orbiter (a ball like you, will get orbiting nicely, and try not to hit anything)
- chaser: some bots will try to go towards you (some balls, some not)
- some will try to stay away from you.
- destructor: goes around destroying other bots.
That could be interesting.
Here are some ideas that don't fit a bunch of the bot stuff above, but would be so very very cool if it's possible to make it so you can see what is going on, and control your guy well at the same time.
The object of the game is to get the playing field to roll as far as you can. You would have more thrust on your ship in this game (and it would be quite heavy.)
While dealing with all the stuff in there (the ball with a big hole in it) you also want to be trying to steer the huge ball you're in by being on a certain side and possibly by getting the bots to help you.
You would want to avoid letting the hole be straight down, as this would get the ball stuck, or possibly behave unpredictable (if it was nearly straight down, it would roll along the outside of the hole, and probably turn abruptly.)
Samuel A. Falvo II had the idea to make this a network game, where each player is trying to get the ball to roll a different direction. AI for single player mode. A player wins by rolling the ball to his target. <hSee Also