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I understand that its probably a little late - almost 3 months on since the last post in this thread. But i wanted to bump it for 2 reasons. 1) the fb page is dead too, and hopefully some email in people's inboxes could get the discussion going again or some news on the project status. Also from reading the issue about voxels/cubes the sort of thing i imagined was something along the lines of a XCOM style layout What i mean by this is basically the map is broken down into simple square ares, but it also has more complex detail within the said square that doesn't affect the gameplay mechanics. sorta like the original game with it's abilty to have very steep sloped floor tiles but raiders climb them fine etc. Also it might be nice to see an option or overlay tickbox to see the slope of the floor based by color, for the veichle slope. basically all the issues with things fitting in gaps etc are covered, simply by making nice little overlays and giving the play information about the world - something i see as very important in a game like rock raiders, all about mining and changing the world/level as you go. Now i wouldn't mind a voxel game, but i think it would certainly make sense if the cubes are smaller than lets say in mine craft, because a game more focused on the heavy mining, especially if its repetitive, seems to make more sense if you are able to leave little areas for a 'rough' touch. this way as people create things they would leave single blocks undug at the tunnel edges, and as they smoothed it over for building buildings on/reinforcing the area making core access tunnels then it would be obviously smoothed rock, more like the inside of a concrete building - very nicely mined/dug out But i do mainly like the core idea of still including sloped floors like the original. perhaps a cube based mining and level design system, but voxel corners are joined by polys to create a smoother, more modern approach. Like if you imagine building a single cube in a flat floor floor leaves a little 'hill' but the additional area that would go into the adjacent areas wouldn't fit into the hitbox at all. indeed if you built another cube right next to it then the hill would become a little longer hill rather than a rounded one. I like the idea of multiple consoles. Some people have spoken about their objection, but i think this is born of pc gaming in general. a strategy game like rock raiders 2 wont be limited by being on those old consoles, because at its core its not about graphics muscle - why are you still playing a game as old as the original rock raiders if its not about original and engaging gameplay. The graphics needn't be intense - i think i would prefer personally that the graphics were sacrificed a little to add a more 'complex' or 'realistic' world, with more time given to the experience i got when i first played the original - the fun of digging suddenly into huge caverns and imagining the breathtaking vistas of water and lava, along with the awesome but pointless first person experience. this i think ties into my first point about informing the player about the world's state. in more modern games this is increasingly being left to graphics muscle, but i think for a game with a gameplay like the original lrr the important thing is to feel like you are actually exploring a new world methodically like a mining team - mining nice squares. perhaps if conjunction with the 'smoothed' voxels idea i was talking about (im sure its been used before im not the first to think of it) the console versions could not smooth the voxels as much or indeed possibly at all, and instead display it like a block. I just like the idea of taking a smooth rocky world and leveling it out with rock i took from those walls and building my base on the flattened area, and having the area i just mined out all rough and jagged. Im not a regular community member - in fact i'm surprised that i ever played this game seeing as im 15 - the game was released when i was ONE! but somehow i played this game alot during my childhood on our old windows 98 machine, and really enjoyed it and had played though lots of times and even messed around with the rru map editor. I find the idea of a spiritual lego rock raiders sequel amazing. One thing i would want to stray from is the idea of little minigames for trivial tasks, such as mining out little areas. i think thats what people were worried about with the wii ideas. my understanding from your posts was that you weren't using the 3d ablities of the wiimote much, just more like a cursor on the screen which in my opinion is entirely reasonable. The whole game idea is great - but i think that sometimes people can get a little too hooked up about a name like some people on here. I mean honestly they can call it whatever but seeing as they got the rock raiders trademark (Payed for it!) they might as well use that. I dont really mind what its called or what the fb page looks like - btw i really like that concept art and the 3d models posted there. Imagine if they called it rock raiders:?????????? or something as silly and pointless as that. if the gameplay was half good, we wouldn't care. in fact, 'rock raiders' sounds gimmicky if you present it to someone who has never heard of the idea. Just leave it and let the hype build from the game not the name. On the topic of hotkeys, while i didn't ever think of trying to use any on the original, the new game would be great with them. Things like 'b' for build and 'tab' for cycling through units For the game gui, a topic i feel hasn't been discussed very much, i feel a solidly industrial design like the original would be good - albeit with updated graphics - spinning fan blades or cogs, menus opening by mechanics extending outward, loose wires sparking etc... so long as its not to distracting. The original gui was very nicely done; i think it is another important aspect of that feeling of knowing about the world. The gui should also include nice readouts like the ai priorities panel on the original. On the topic of killing things, i think that in reality the way the original game handled it was very nice. I like the idea of a game that is for once NOT in fact about killing things. i also like the way that the combat in the original game was fractured - just like it should have been; the rock raiders had mining equipment but not weapons, and everything they had was improvised. The game needn't become constantly in jeopardy from monsters but more having them as an additional threat there with oxygen, lava spread, cave-ins and the rest of it (power, time limits etc.) I like the way that there was no real way to just kill the monsters easily (apart from ice monsters hehe), even if it was from poor shooting ai - you had to find other ways of nullifying the threat, like drawing them into electric fences or trapping them until they went into the wall. I think the developer person who was here had mostly the right idea - building defenses like moats and focusing on slowing their advance while you continue mining rather than building a raiders vs monsters combat rts. Indeed i really like the idea given about selecting parts. in fact i play another game regularly called warzone 2100. you should google it sometime its got a free pc port, and its an old ps1 game too hehe The reason i say this is not because i want to advertise it, but instead show an example of the veichle customization. Also another game that i think you could possibly take inspiration from is an old ps2 game called naval ops: warship gunner. Again the game itself is very different, but the veichle customization with parts was very nice, and also i really loved the blueprint design screen. while these ideas may or may not fit into the rock raiders 2, they do show the general 'feel' i thought of when i heard your comment about custom vehicles. One way of doing it: Naval Ops's Ship design: A more simple approach: Warzone 2100's Truck/tank/hovercraft design: (seems closer to the idea you were having) I just wanted to post these pictures because they are similar to the effect you are looking for, although possibly just for inspiration. Also i like the way that in both of these games, while it 'felt' fully customization, it also ensured that the player-made designs still followed a certain theme, because for me games like drawn to life or some other lego games feel a little unfulfilling because i need to spent a very long time to get anything nearly as good looking as the non-customization parts of the game. Also i would like to see the ability somehow to keep going on forever, while also reigning in the 'resource inflation' that happens in minecraft servers and such. Its a very hard concept to do, but in the original small levels kept it in check. i feel that with the new version some other solution should be tried, because i really want to see huge long tunnels and endless caverns. Perhaps necessitate some sort of very difficult to survive place (buildings and vehicles and raider's health deteriorate and no items drop when they are teleported back) in order to get some very rare or expensive but necessary resource. to tell you the truth i liked the obsolescence of some of the things in the original rock raiders game, such as the hover scout or the lazer cutters. While these things didn't come into the average playstyle, they could still be used for a number of things, which in my opinion flavours a game much much better than the opposite, which most games seem to favour, which is that everything needs to be useful, and only for one use. i really like how the lazers can be used for digging or for combat, and i feel that this multiple use idea is very cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ztbYL49Wo

I have certain emotions everytime you make a pointless bump.

I took a shot of the Dynmapp and labeled important locations. Let me know if I missed anything of if anything is mislabeled.

After JJ fixed a few permissions issues with the Ships plugin, I decided to try out my first Airship (balloon). I'd say it went rather well!