Deep Sea Notes

Here are the notes of what we discussed on Friday:

• Transportation
• Big Submarine or possibly a surfaced ship of some kind
• This will be used as a sort of "Stage Select" since a large ship would be the fastest mode of travel from different parts of different oceans.
• Mini Submarine
• Arcade Adventure Marine Shooter Gameplay.
• This will account for most of the gameplay.
• The player will control the sub and avoid or battle enemies such as sharks or squids, while searching for a piece of the treasure.
• The player will take damage of some sort as penalty for colliding into walls and other solid objects.
• Third person camera that is zoomed out a fair bit to provide a large view angle for the player, and will be a "free cam" so the player can rotate the camera about. The sub's spotlight will also follow the camera.
• Diving Suit
• Puzzle Gameplay.
• When the player reaches an area close to the desired treasure piece but cannot progress in the sub, the player must leave the sub in a diving suit.
• The switch back and forth between sub and diving suit will be instantaneous, with a small animation.
• This is because we want to avoid reloading assets in between to prevent load latency.
• Another reason is that we decided the diving suit sections should be in the same environment instead of a completely new one, since this will seem more realistic to the player.
• The camera will zoom in further after the switch to make it more adamant that the player is now controlling a much smaller and quite different object.
• The player will not be able to leave the sub unless the sub is close enough to the ocean floor. This is to discourage the player from trying to leave the sub when unnecessary to avoid player frustration.
• The player will also not be allowed to exit the sub if it is under attack. However, instead we may allow the player to do this, and the resulting inevitable death of the player will serve as a lesson to not do so.
• This "mode" will consist of some puzzle solving with small 3D platformer mechanics.
• The puzzle aspects will be worked on by Shea and myself.
• This mode isn't always necessary for finding the piece of treasure.
• Both the mini sub and diving suit will have upgrades through a shop style mechanic. Some minor upgrades such as ammo will be available at the start of the game, but upgrades that will be necessary for completion of the game can only be found at the bottom of the sea, and they will be hidden. We explain this as other sunken submarines or ships that have unknown technology that the player can send data to the shop, for them to create and make available to the player through the shop itself.

Okay, I think I covered pretty much everything we discussed, if anyone notices that I missed something, feel free to modify this post and add it in.