Scanning, Hyperburst and Homework

Cube Dev: Scanning, Hyperburst and Homework

Movement.

I'm starting to think movement might be the single hardest thing to get right on the WOWCube.

After everything I went through getting movement working properly in JOFD, you'd think I'd choose something simpler for SLOA.

Nope.

This time, the Cube is Earth.

A Very Small Earth

Well... a small section of Earth at a time.

One region might be entirely farmland. Another might be suburbs. Another could be a military installation.

The physical Cube becomes that region, and twisting the Cube moves your UFO around it.

Getting that movement to feel natural while crossing screens and moving around the Cube has taken some work, but it's starting to come together.

And now that we can actually fly around...

We need something to do.

Time to Start the Homework

The first real interaction I've started putting together is scanning.

Fly around the map, find something interesting, move your UFO over it and tap to scan it.

That identifies the object and gives you information about it.

For now, that's about as complicated as it gets.

Later, scanning will only be the beginning.

You'll be able to take samples.

You'll be able to abduct things.

And presumably do all sorts of other perfectly innocent scientific research that the humans will absolutely not find suspicious.

Of course, doing more also means increasing your chances of being detected.

But you have homework to finish.

And failing isn't really an option unless you're interested in discovering the alien equivalent of boarding school.

Maybe Don't Touch That Button

There's another problem.

You stole the ship.

You barely know how to fly it.

So moving around Earth carries a little bit of risk.

Every time you try to move off the edge of a region, there's a small chance you'll accidentally trigger the ship's Hyperburst.

Where does Hyperburst take you?

Somewhere else.

That's about as much control as you currently have over it.

Maybe you land in another quiet farming region.

Maybe you appear over the suburbs.

Or maybe your stolen UFO suddenly materializes in the middle of a military base.

Good luck explaining that one.

Sometimes You Actually Want Hyperburst

Eventually you're going to need to leave a region intentionally too.

A double tap will deliberately trigger Hyperburst and send you somewhere else.

The only problem is that you still don't really know how to control it.

So you can decide when to leave.

You just don't get much say in where you're going.

That should make moving between regions a little more interesting than simply picking the next location from a menu.

Need something for your homework that isn't available on the farm?

Hit Hyperburst.

Maybe you'll get lucky.

Or maybe you'll learn quite a bit about surface-to-air missiles. 

Bonus points for the homework! If you survive.

Building Earth

We've also started working on map generation.

I'm figuring out how the different regions should be built, what belongs in them, how objects are distributed and, most importantly, whether flying around them is actually fun.

There's still a lot to figure out.

But we're getting beyond simply having a UFO flying around the Cube and into the beginnings of an actual game.

Scan things.

Gather information.

Complete your homework assignments.

Take greater risks for better research.

Try not to get detected.

And occasionally teleport yourself somewhere you absolutely did not intend to go.

One of These Days I'll Learn

I said I was going to prototype SLOA and see where it went.

Apparently where it went was another real game.

Because instead of making something simple for my second WOWCube project, I'm building maps, movement systems, scanning, research, detection, abductions, random travel and an alien homework system.

One of these days I'll learn.

Probably.

At least this time I won't have to generate and hand-edit another 200 to 500 dungeon maps.

I'm counting that as progress.