From SuperTux

This page has been splitted up:

• Milestone 2 Design Document/Tasks
• Milestone 2 Design Document/Enemies
• Milestone 2 Design Document/Levels
• Milestone 2 Design Document/Styleguide

For the old forest page, see Milestone 3 Design Document

For the last voice meeting see: SuperTux Meeting 18. August 2007

This document is meant to give a reasonably detailed guide on what shall and shall not happen in Milestone 2. It is also intended as a complete replacement of other, incomplete or otherwise flawed, Milestone 2 documents floating around in this Wiki. This design document is written by Grumbel, question and comments are welcome, use the Talk page or the IRC channel for that. At the moment this document is a work-in-progress, meaning goals might change as time progresses. This document as not yet been approved by any other member of the SuperTux development stuff.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Next Meeting Agenda (7. August 2008, 18:00 GMT) 2.1 older stuff 3 General 4 Screensize/Aspect-Ratio 5 Menu System 5.1 Profile 5.2 Options 5.3 Contrib Levels 6 Controls 6.1 Configuration 1 (jump with button) 6.1.1 Level 6.1.2 Worldmap/Menu 6.2 Configuration 2 (jump with up) 6.2.1 Level 6.2.2 Worldmap/Menu 7 Actions 7.1 Jumping 7.2 Running 7.3 Backflip 7.4 Flapping 7.5 Butt Jump 7.6 Blow Flyer 8 Configuration 9 Game Elements 9.1 Info Boards 9.2 Extra Items 9.3 Slope Tiles 9.4 Ice Tiles 9.5 Deep Snow Tiles 9.6 Icefloe 9.7 Reset Points 9.8 No Lives 9.9 Collectibles 10 Levels 10.1 Cleanup 11 World 1 - Icyisland 12 Intro/Credits 13 Things to know 14 Things unknown 15 Meeting Notes 15.1 2008-01-31

Overview

Doing a forest world turned out impractical with the current available and active man-power for that reason Milestone 2 got retargeted to a much smaller accomplishable goal.

Next Meeting Agenda (7. August 2008, 18:00 GMT)

• supertux.info status? integrate in mainpage?
• GP2x updates

• music submission: BlastOffTek music pack for Supertux.rar
• badguy name cleanup
• GP2x status
• large level, establishing milestone 2 'gold standard'
• editor news
• compiled data formats
• editor gui restructure

older stuff

• present newly build levels
• what to do with Badguy::freeze()?
• what to do with level flipping (suggestion: ignore it)
• Wiki & SVN backup again

General

• uni-solid tiles shall be provided for all tilesets
• multi-layer paralax scrolling background tilemaps shall be used in all levels
• menu system should be replaced/reworked
• save system could need a rework as well
• language shall be changeable via the option menu, LANG environment variable shall only be used as default setting
• worldmap Tux sprite should get animations for left, right, up, down directions, not just a single one as now

Screensize/Aspect-Ratio

Milestone2 will allow near total freedom in setting the screensize and the size of the projected area:

./supertux -g 1280x1024:1680x1050

This command for example will give a Window of 1280x1024, but with the visible area of a level being 1680x1050.

This means that level design must not focus on 800x600, but should be flexible enough even when the user has a much larger visible area. However all levels should remain playable even as low as 640x480.

The maximum resolution to deal with is 1920x1200 (HD-TV Monitor), 2560x1600 (Apple 30" Cinema Display can't be handled since that would cause issues with enemy respawning, the respawn distance is currently 1600x1200, relative to Tux.

Menu System

Menu system of Milestone1 is rather ugly and could need a rewrite as well as a reorganization of some things:

• displaying the level name in/above/below the pause menu would be nice
• there should be an option to display the full GPL in the menu
• the menu system shall use icons to make it easier to find things even with no reading skills

Profile

• Create new profile
• Delete profile
• Profile1 -> Main Menu
• Profile2 -> Main Menu
• ...

Options

• Language
• Fullscreen: yes/no
• Aspect Ratio: 16/9, 16/10, 5/4, 4/3
• Sound Volume: off/0-100
• Music Volume: off/0-100
• Setup Keyboard:
• Setup Joystick:
• Use Profiles: yes/no

Contrib Levels

• Check for new stuff online
• complete contrib worlds
• browse folders with level stuff

Controls

The game needs to take special care to distinguish between jump-with-up and jump-with-button. Running is automatic in this game.

Configuration 1 (jump with button)

Level

• walk/run: left/right
• duck: down
• jump: button1
• grab: button2
• backflip: down+button1

Worldmap/Menu

• walk: left/right/up/down
• enter level: button1

Configuration 2 (jump with up)

Level

• walk/run: left/right
• duck: down
• jump: up
• grab: button1
• backflip: down quickly followed by up

Worldmap/Menu

• walk: left/right/up/down
• enter level: button1

Notes:

• backflip must work even when the user can't press duck and jump at the same time
• worldmap level entering is in one configuration done with the grab key and in the other with the jump key, this must be allowed
• escape/return aren't remappable in-game and hard bound to showing/hiding the menu
• peeking left/right handling stays as is
• a Start-button might be a worthy consideration, since its semantics are different from Escape
• allowing hot-plugging of joystick would be nice (calling 'Setup Joystick' should query the joysticks in the system)
• ladders behavior must be compatible with both configurations

Actions

The major change in the basic actions will be making running automatic. Running will automatically happen when you have walked continuously into a certain direction and will be different by a new animation. The acceleration phase will be long enough to be able to make walking-jumps. The jump height should be similar to what it is now with different height for run and jump. The current implementation of having a walk-key and and Milestone1-style running by default is *NOT* the intended final behavior.

Rationale: The run key is overlooked by many people making the game extremely frustrating and annoying for them, since it isn't obvious that there is one, the tutorial situation in the form of a high wall in Milestone1 didn't really fix the problem, since we got still plenty of questions about the situation. It also serves little purpose since more experienced players will basically always press it down, i.e. almost nobody actually walks through the game on purpose.

Jumping

FIXME: How high, how is it influenced by running?

Running

FIXME: How fast, how does it influence jump, how long is acceleration?

Backflip

The backflip is a special jump which gives Tux some extra height compared to a normal jump.

Flapping

By flapping his wings Tux is able to get a short amount of additional time in the air as well as gain a tile in height.

Reasons to have it: fits the penguin, interesting gameplay mechanic, has a reference implementation in the form of Yoshi Island

Reasons to not have it: Has been tried with not so much success

Problem: Its a "now or never" game mechanic, it changes the game to much to be introduced at a later point.

Will be ignored for now

Butt Jump

The Butt Jump is activated by pressing down while in the air. It causes Tux to crush down on the exact spot over which he currently is. The butt jump provides additional force that allows him to crush blocks and some kind of armored enemies.

Blow Flyer

Tux body catches a lot of hot air and thus starts to float. This action is triggered by objects in the game world and automatically terminates after some amount of time.

Can interact with wind.

Will be implemented later, not a high priority item

Configuration

The games configuration (fullscreen, aspect ratio, geometry, etc.) shouldn't be saved when supplied by command line.

Game Elements

Info Boards

Info Board Example

Extra Items

Egg needs a new graphic, Fireflower/Iceflower -> ?

Slope Tiles

Slope tiles should be integrated.

Ice Tiles

Make Tux skid around and harder to control

Deep Snow Tiles

Slow Tux down, cause him to sink in half

Will be implemented later

Icefloe

Problem: We don't have good water behavior.

Will be implemented later

Reset Points

There shall be no reset points in the game, instead it should be made sure that levels are small enough to not require them.

No Lives

There will be no lives and no punishment for death aside from having to restart the level, due to the lack of reset points there simply is no need for lives.

Collectibles

The game shall provide some form of special collectibles per level (5 special coins, 5 pieces of a crystal or stuff like that). How many of those collectibles are found is displayed in a prominent manner, not just part of the statistics.

Levels

The levels of Milestone1 lack verticality as well as unisolid tiles, Milestone2 should fix that by adding those elements. Also the levels should be shortened/split to avoid the need for reset points. Another important point is that each level should try follow a clear design premise instead of being more or less random collection of tiles and enemies. The levels from Milestone1 should be taken as a point of inspiration and starting point, not as something that is verbatim copied over to Milestone2.

The worldmap should be rolled back to that of Milestone1, i.e. a mostly linear map, but additional optional paths shall be added.

See Milestone 2 Design Document/Levels for a more detailed analysis of the current levels.

Cleanup

The test/ levels are currently quite a big mess, there needs to be clea nup to reduce them to those that are really needed otherwise its to easy to miss the ones that are important.

World 1 - Icyisland

World 1, the icyisland, was released with Milestone 1, the intend of Milestone 2 is to adapt it to the new engine features as well as improving it by adding new enemies and new gameplay elements. While level structure might be recyclable in many places, it will often need structural improvements to provide real use of vertical and horizontal scrolling, instead of just locking the player in a horizontal-only scrolling level. Things that need to be done:

• Jumpy shall be replaced with an enemy that fits better into the snow landscape, Jumpy himself shall be reused in a lava-like setting or in the bosses castle
• the walrus salesmen shall be added to the island
• some levels shall be separated out into optional paths, to provide a less linear path
• the old Milestone1 worldmap shall be used, not the one currently present in SVN
• iceblocks which will melt on contact with fire shall allow to lock paths in a level or lock secrets
• balanced platforms that start to rotate or move when Tux stands on them shall be provided
• water, in its simplistic tile form, shall be removed from all levels
• uni-solid/half-tiles shall be used to enhance the levels and provide optional paths
• bottom-less pits shall be either replaced by pits with spike at the bottom or allow Tux to climb back out of the pit

• there shall be auto-scrolling levels that force Tux to run by having a avalanche coming down behind him, the avalanche might either be simple snow or a large group of enemies
• the castle tileset shall be replaced with something that looks colder and features both snow and ice
• cave tileset shall be replaced with something that has a larger pattern, thus looks less ugly when tiled
• tiles picturing deadly spikes build out of ice shall be created

Intro/Credits

The text based intro and credits shall be replaced with cutscenes, showing the events that are described in the text. Instead of auto-scrolling text the game shall provide text that doesn't scroll, but instead only continues up on user interaction (i.e. press action button to see the next page of text). Text in cutscenes shall get printed letter by letter to the screen to provide a sense of 'motion'. Voice over from a story-teller might be consideration, while Tux, Penny and Nolok itself shall remain without speech.

Later in the development of Milestone2

Things to know

• data/levels/test/unisolid.stl show a few new features of Milestone2 (parallax scrolling, unisolid snow tiles, new water)
• News is there to be used, so if something interesting happens, write it down there

Things unknown

• Who is running backups of the Wiki and SVN repository?
• Shall we switch to GPLv3? Not now, but maybe later

Meeting Notes

Code:
- engine problems blending
- monster activation should be dependent on tux position and
  not on screen position (like it is now) because it should
  be independent from aspect ratio
  (Note for level designers: Think that potentially the user
  can see the whole level in front of him)
- Code for butt jump

Objects:
- new object to place images into levels (to replace info boxes):

http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/md5/ca5c98b54e92b1317776c49970f2bbbe-info-boxes-done-right.png

Menu System Rework:
- Scrolling level selection list
- Buttons in menus
- Add info box below menu (with explanations)

Profile system:
- create profiles
- delete profiles
- load default profile on startup

- Restart game on language change (do not put language change menu into
the
       Pause-Options menu)

Graphics:
- running animation
- butt jump animation
- improve egg graphics, so it does not seem like a "snowball"
- graphics for the stuff in "Creatures"

Behaviour:
- Angry Iceblock: like the mario blocks (in the castles)
- Owl: unclear... Carriers objects and drops them at tux somehow, but not clear.
- Canon: like in mario: shoots left/right
- MiniBomb: accelerates, follows tux (but does not jump)
- Eater: ?

Snowmen:
- take the jogger one for fall-down snowball
- take the japanese one for the gun
- take the "normal" one for stay on platform
- take the "ninja" for following tux

Enemy Code:
- support for spawning k-children in an enemy (for spitter for example)

Mods:
- we might want to support "mods". A mod is defined in that it replaces
stuff
that is already there (instead of only adding new stuff). Undecided if
we want
it and how exactly.

Controls:
- we need to support jump with up and jump with button
- support binding for left,right,up,down. allow double up+jump config

Game mechanics:
- no costs for reset points
- Mailinglist discussion: do we want reset points?
- Remove global coin counter, coin count is only per level now  (similar to collectibles)
- Add collectibles: per level, show them in the screen while playing the level
- When you find a collectible, fade in collectible count for a short time
- In pause mode show all collectible as once

Mailing lists:
- We want a separate team mailing list.
  Proposal: create supertux-user and supertux-team. make forward
  supertux-devel mails to supertux-user. supertux-team read everyone but write
  only for people with svn access...

World1:
- levels will be changed, and reworked to make use of the new features

Yeti:
- Sequence at end of castle: Tux find Yeti, Yeti jumps out of the window and  flees

2008-01-31

Code:

• New Badguy "Ice Crusher", falls down to crush Tux, then rises back up. Has a platform on its top
• Remove old Cannon, Dropper graphics and use new Cannon instead. Only shoots left and right
• Butt-Jump should easily be possible. Press down in midair to make Tux stop in mid-air and drop down vertically. Current effect is just fine. Don't forget to shake the camera.

Game:

• Figure out which Russian Translation to use (contact translators).
• Build test level using snow slopes.
• Do not use Ice Flower. It's not finished yet.

Graphics:

• Fix jumping Tux animation. It has weird black marks.
• Make Tux backflip animation smoother.
• New tileset for above-ground levels.
• New decorative tiles. Ice cracks, snowmen, cavemen, areas with more transparency, ...
• Frozen tree.

Misc:

• The forum of supertux.info is currently broken or unmaintained. Should we shut down the server? Contact maintainer.
• Sounds for Ice Crusher, Flying Snowball, Snowball splashing against wall. Sound of rockets exploding is too loud.