OLD_REJECTED_IDEAS.txt

This file contains various unrealized ideas/TODOs for things to add to castle1.
As I consider this game finished now, this is all resigned now.
Possibly some of these ideas will be used for future games.

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Fountain level:

- tentacles from fountain
- splash sound when entering fountain
- touch sensor to bring down elevator and go up over the columns
- a path over the columns around the fountain
- animated light, with shadows and bump mapping, circling the fountain
- water flowing from the fountain (water flowing sound),
  baked from fluid sim by blender,
  with mat transparent to look like water really
- maybe change the scenery to more sunny and indoors:
  sunny sky
  part. transp. dome over the fountain
- footsteps sound with more echo, to show space
- maybe small fog (3d tex?) rising from the fountain

- trees, bushes around (natural CasMoveLimit)
- light changing (fire pots in the corner(s) ?)
- footsteps: splashes on water
- fountain: water sparkling (use blender's particle animation)
- sounds: some birds, water sparkling

* Planned: To celebrate that we can use VRML/X3D in level pieces: new animated eye-candy to the "The Fountain" level (one of the "demo" levels, unlocked from the beginning for anyone). There's some animated water with reflections + refractions by shaders (actually taken from a similar demo_models demo), there's KambiScript usage (this fountain droplets, aka "poor man's particle engine"), there's some demo of VRML/X3D events providing interactive behavior of the level (TODO) etc. Enjoy!

  (For people with poor GPUs, a short video showing walking around the level is here TODO. But of course I encourage you to actually play the game, as it feels even better when you're inside the game. You can get the game from SVN, or wait for the next release.)
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Creatures:

- Let some creatures be shiny by using generatedcubemaptexture,
  just to show it off.
  Or maybe just static ImageCubeMapTexture would be cool enough?

- Alien: I don't like it much, the model just doesn't fit into the game,
  and I just can't texture it appropriately.
  The basic model was just taken from www.3dcafe.com when I realized that
  I don't have time to make some really nice creature model before
  stage 4 deadline.

- ball missile should hit other creatures too (helpful on crowdy places
  on Doom level), barrels too

- werewolf's mouth is too dark

- better spider_queen model. Inspiration ?
  http://ultimosdiasdegloria.bluehosting.com.br/downloads/arquivos/CitySpiderQueen02.jpg
  http://ultimosdiasdegloria.bluehosting.com.br/downloads/arquivos/CitySpiderQueen01.jpg
  http://ultimosdiasdegloria.bluehosting.com.br/downloads/arquivos/CitySpiderQueen03.jpg

- spider_appears.wav sound do

- spider: try to climb by doing additional MoveAlowed with higher destination
  position. They can't climb on logs now (but maybe it's a good thing ?)

  same for spider_queen --- it can't climb back to MeshTunnel.

- spider queen:
  - lay eggs, produce normal spiders.
  - remove/fix dying sound, it's too shriek (making it more quiet doesn't
    help for all positions)

- alien:
  more aliens on castle_hall ?
  texture the alien finally ?

- some effects: blood explode when player hits monster.

- sometimes spider_queen may get stuck in the ground ---
  that's because camera sphere
  middle changes with anim. Maybe make it non-changing ?

- Enemies:
  - More enemies attacks.
  - Nice 3d effects (lighting-like things, explosions etc.).
  - Models of the two current creatures need to be improved.
    Model of "alien" creature will probably be just removed and replaced
    by something else.
  - Just add more creatures.
    creature hydra (very tall, very long when killed; will be a nice demo of my good collision checking routines)
    creature that attacks by snapping it hand (tentacle ?) far out

- non-moving creature (just shooting etc.)

- ball_missile looks rather funny, too colorful.
  It must look like something fiery, or lighting, or just anything
  that seems at least a little dangerous :)

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DOOM E1M1 level:

- There are some colliding plane walls on doom e1m1 level:
  - at the first door
  - right when opening the secret (lighter) door

- creatures should take hurt from lava too, and should know that they
  don't want to step on lava. Room with lava on e1m1 may require some
  waypoints for sensible creature move.
- make small and blue armor for doom level (items' stubs are already placed
  in blend file, on layer 9/10)
- room 5: creatures should see through texture with alpha channel
- if you know how, you can cause bad collisions and get out of the level
  on elevator 9a-9b because of MovePushesOthers problems.
- still too dark. Secret on 9a-9b should be activated differently ?
  Or wall should be specially visible ? Maybe more visible the
  alternative entrance there (through the barrels) --- different wall
  color ?

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All levels:

- More bump mapping for everything?
  I actually tried it, it just doesn't look good with castle1 levels lighting.
  So this would require changing lighting.
  And also making some lights dynamic, to really appreciate bump mapping in real time?

- Circular (Laz forum), others:
  move speed too fast
  more visual hints when monster is hit

- (kasia usability test on castle1) enter/exit on levels should be more black, to suggest more that these are enter/exit, not a normal wall

- Things that I would like to show in new levels:
  - swimming feels great --- show it off more ?
  - lights: Spot light. Moving light.
  - Some moving objects on the level: this is easy to do in my levels. Use it more !
  - more environ sounds: wind blowing.
  - homing missiles make great effect on a vast empty space, like in "Tower" level. Demonstrate this in some "real" level too!

- chooseNewLevel menu: display thumbnails of levels

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Gate level:

- (rudy) level of oxygen under water could be shown?
- (rudy) unfixable? (just don't do this in new game...)
  - no more jumping puzzles
  - on 1st level, there is a general feeling that "you don't know what to do"

- make gate light darker ? like szymon proposed ? test on kocury.

- (kasia) spider on the gate level is not really interesting. Make spider ambush ?
  On the cart --- suddenly a group of spiders crawls from an egg ?
  Or on the sword pit --- suddenly group of spiders crawls from underneath ?

- shadow of ghosts over the wall ?

- shadows baked on ground.
  This is done in gate blender model, and once I used it actually in the game
  --- but it looks too ugly. We must be able to handle much larger
  texture sizes to actually use this on the gate level.

- (Paul) going up the steps could do with a smoother animation

- use S&K red light with maxed intensity to shine on the top of the sword.
- one tree is inside murek, move it
- top of columns and "wieza" have wrong UV coords, fix

- Wall of fence around the level, to get rid of invisible walls.
  (Chebmaster):
    a) impassabe cliffs/abysses at the edges of the landscape
       (too high/wide to pass even by flying)
    b) endless sea (level=island)

    Hmm, both are good ideas. I don't want to surround the whole level with sea (I want the level to "feel" like in the middle of the forest). Actually, maybe I'll use all three ideas ---- on the left side of the level I could do a cliff, on the right and bottom I could use wall of fance, and add a little "opening on the sea" on the right side where the river ends.

- idea from quake: water surface slowly moving (change/move the texture?
  some deformation of the texture ? I'm not sure how to do this trick,
  but it looks very nice!)

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Background level:
- add some shadow, with moving light source
- camera floating around level with fog ?
* remake water on castle1 bg level to use single x3d file, and have mirrors by cubes?
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Weapons:

- weapon "swaying" (when you walk, your weapon moves with your steps)
  Careful of motion sickness: it seems, we should either do head bobbing,
  or weapon swaying, never both!
- some anim of blood when hit (more feedback that you hit)
- design just better (and more, maybe randomized) animations
  of sword attack. Do them in Blender, not by hand, like current
  anim.
- better checking for collision with sword? Maybe actually calculate
  oriented bounding box of the sword for collision with creatures each
  frame?

- bow more interesting:
  - When you hold attack key, arrow/bolt appears on your bow/crossbow
    and you're holding the bow. There is also a crosshair (circle target area)
    that "trembles", because your hands are trembling.

    You shoot when you release Ctrl key. The longer you held Ctrl,
    the more power has the arrow (more velocity), but also the trembling
    of your crosshair (and it's circle) is larger, so your accuracy
    is lower.
  - crosshair for bow
  - showing arrow in shooting anim for bow

- various kinds of swinging the sword, with various animations.
  Also they can yield various damage and various hit chances.

- apply nice "strips" texture to handle of the sword,
  see http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartII/Basic_Mesh_Modelling

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Others:

- fire over barrels - pixel pracht or other particle engine.

- why with wide angle the corner geometry is sometimes clipped ?

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castle hall level:
- stand very close the box that has the button on it.
  Press "crouch". You start slowly getting falling down effect.

- mail to author of
  http://www.astrooptik.com/Bildergalerie/latest_namibia/pictures.htm
  : permission to use stars.jpg in my game ?

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Items (not weapons):

- (2006-05-08 11:42:27) Szymon: hej tu kasia co do poprawek takich prostych i na szybko to mam pytanie o klucz
  (2006-05-08 11:43:15) Szymon: bo szczerze mowiac to go ledwo widac... fajnie by bylo gdyby byl jakos oswietlony...

- "shrink" spell (that was *coool* in DUKE 3D !)
  "freeze" (it's from DUKE 3D also)
  "fry"
  "throw back" (throws all enemies slightly backward --- this is also useful
     for player to actually see that monsters get hurt when falling from high)

- Some buttons visible at lower part of the screen to access some
  things with mouse and to show (as hints) their key shortcuts ?
  ("i" - inventory on/off, "m" - messages).

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Cages level:

- windows: don't look like windows
- player can fly through windows --- not good.
- stairs beginning cages and ending castle_hall: endings should be more black, current vertex colouring is not black enough

- on the other side of the wall, also a door, but blocked by rocks
- from queen lair, passage to this 2nd hidden room --- some treasures there
- make real doors that you must click to open them

- thunder: if the light would only shine through the window's shapes it would be even better. So, make the thunder light casting shadows.

- this natural rock thing better ?

- headlight on cages level ? By torch item ?
  No ? Spot headlight looks poor (must over-triangulate meshes),
  and it doesn't resemble a torch anyway. Positional light with attenuation
  also doesn't look too special.

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Tower level:

- put some vertical crates around GlassPrison

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dist-making to-dos:

- real exe installer for Windows,
  include OpenAL installer
  (run after the question "install Creative's OpenAL implementation ?"
  Problem: OpenAL installer is quite dumb and can only do system-wide
  installation (you need admin access)).

- real packages for Linux, depend (as recommend:) on OpenAL packages

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Each time before uploading release:

- test data/ things easy to forget:
  - All textures in VRML/X3D files must have relative filenames
      find data/ -type f -iname '*.wrl' | \
        xargs grep filename | \
        grep --invert-match "filename ../" | \
        grep --invert-match "filename \"../" | \
        grep --invert-match "filename //../"
  - All sounds that are intended to be spatialized must be mono:
      wavidentify data/sounds/*.wav | grep stereo

- make release like for all other programs, see ../www/pack/README.txt

- extract created dist
  - test running from extracted created dist
      make install
      ./castle
  - test building from extracted created dist ("make")

- upload to WWW:
  release on SourceForge as usual, see ../www/NOTES.txt

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