I'm getting a bit confused how should I call you? Arne or Promster, other... ?
Anyway, I wanted to ask about the enviroment in Cortex Command. Namely the planet.
Do you have any big visions how the planets eco-system works and what kind of features can be seen in gameplay. I'm trying to make the planet, the enviroment you fight in very alive and interesting.
But obviously it wont be too distracting, but still do its thing in the background to give a sense of nature being around you while you do your battles.
For now, we currently have these ideas planned:-Terrain is layered into different strengths, with harder materials as you go deeper to the planets core.
-There are several types of enviroments visible from orbit: Forests, Hills, Mountains, Deserts, Cold tundras, Sea.
-There exists a crab-based fauna of many variations that have inhabited all areas of the planet.
Certain areas obviously will feature more of certain types of crabs compared to other enviroments.
-There is flora on the surface that grows on topsoil around the planet that so far consist of grass plants of sorts. And we've seen ideas for interactive types of flora like exploding plants and plants that shoot of hats that can harm things.
What I want to find out is this:Are there arctic areas on the planet with snow and ice? (Polar caps)
Are there any volcanic areas with active volcanoes and do earthquakes or other disasters (meteorites) occur on the planet? If so, these can be used in gameplay as enviromental hazards. It would be great to get more information on these and where might they occur.
Any tips when creating terrain and how large should maps generally be?
What plans do you have for Sea enviroments? Is there special underwater flora and fauna down there like Crabfish, Crabsharks, Armored-Crab-Octopus-Whales or similar? The way the water works ingame is demonstrated as a mod in
here. (and no, Hydro plus itself or part of it will not be official content).
During a battle, should the eco-system grow new plants and do crabs reproduce and how do they do it?
The question is how did you think the enviroment would keep living and growing while you blow it up?
How does the day cycle work in the game? Are there nights, or is it always sunny and cloudy everywhere?
Since with this, we could make backgrounds to give different feels to the time of the day. Like a sunset BG or a sunrise BG or a night BG.
Is there rain, wind, snow, hail or such enviromental things in the game? They're all doable, even tornadoes, thunder and lightnings lol.
What are the forests like in the game? One thought was that only craft can collide with them along with bullets, but soldiers can pass right through them.
One thing you could do is make some landscape image views of each enviroment that is present on the planet. One for the forest, the mountain areas, underground, tundras, deserts, and sea (shore and underwater). The pictures would also show what flora and fauna might be present in those certain areas. These images would show the concept of how the enviroment looks like and what it includes.
Here's an example what I mean: (without text through, I just added text to clarify what I mean.)
Another picture of the planet and what enviroments I can see on it are roughly indicated here: