Plan for Steven Campbell

Well I've been fiddling with Torque a bit over the summer holidays, and Uni is about to start up... the perfect time to start one of my insane game ideas *cough*.

Not quite but I did so anyway... it's not gone past much of the planning stage and hacking the engine about slightly to add a custom camera and part of cel-shading (the outlining ... I'll just texture the models themselves properly to finish the effect), but I'm having fun anyway, and that's the main thing.

Game I'm working on is called Crumblin' Caverns. Basically, think of it as The Lost Vikings meets Boulderdash. Here's some blurb:

Game Summary
You control the adventures of three miners - Paddy, Mick and Titch - as they dig under Farmer Joe's land to pull out all of the precious diamonds, nuggets of gold, and anything else they can find. Racing against the clock, before the tunnels collapse, Farmer Joe catches them, or the annoying moles destabalise the tunnels, how much can you get away with?

Character Rundown
Paddy - The brains of the operation, and in charge of making the support beams on surface in Farmer Joe's barn. He also builds the ladders required for vertical digging, and while down in the tunnels, will grab any bags of swag and carry them up to the barn.

Mick - The digger. Dangerous with a pickaxe, and just as deadly with the spade. He has the main job of just digging into everything and getting out all the swag from the rocks and earth. Not the brightest tool in the shed, more content to just bash things, so giving him a pickaxe and telling him to go dig seemed like the best option.

Titch - A fast wee bugger. Carries the TNT around for blasting through rock, or creating large holes in the earth. Is terrified of moles though, and if left unattended, has this very bad habit of chasing them and throwing dynamite at them. Some may say he's more dangerous than the moles.

Farmer Joe - Owns the farm on which the team, without permission, dig for gold and glory. Totally oblivious to what's going on until he get's alerted.. usually by a big noise, or catching one of them on the surface as they dart about. Will stop at nothing to protect his land, including chasing the buggers into their own tunnels with his shotgun to put paid to their exploits.

The Moles - Unknown to Farmer Joe, is the large colonies of moles that hide under his land and steal the occaisonal crop. Unhappy with the boys sudden interest in the gold, they'll make sure they have a tough time getting out by adding extra stress to the tunnels. However there's not an unlimited amount of moles, and if you can get to their nest, you should be able to get rid of them completely.

Whippet - Farmer Joe's bloodhound. Rather old and slow but can give a nasty bite if he catches you. He knows what you're upto far quicker than Joe does but is stupid enough to try take you on himself without Joe's help. Not the brightest mutt and will more often than not, get lost in the tunnels and give up the chase.

Game Style Big, Colourful, Cel-Shaded and Cartoon-like. The game's not going to take itself seriously by any means of the word. The game in general is a glorified puzzle game where you've to meet your quota of swag by digging for diamonds and gold deposits. There's strategy involved in that each of the three miners has a specific task and keeping them alive and out of trouble is necessary for succeeding in the game. Control methods could be all by mouse where you just point and click, or a more arcadey approach where you contol the actual characters via keyboard/joystick/gamepad, or even both.

Feature Ideas:
Singleplayer campaign of increasingly larger levels, more moles, and Farmer Joe detecting you a lot quicker.
Randomised Singleplayer Maps to play on with player set variables of how the level should be layed out.
Level Editor (single/multilplayer maps.. maybe)
Load/Save Games
Multiplayer support: IDEA 1 - upto three players controlling each miner in a co-operative fashion.
Multiplayer support: IDEA 2 - Large maps with teams starting in different places and fighting with eachother to get all the minerals out before the other teams.
Multiplayer support: IDEA 3 - One player controls the miners, the other player(s?) controls the moles.
Multiplayer Support - 2 players? or upto 4 players?

And here's a quick and nasty mock-up of the title/menu screen, done in a whole 30mins in GIMP (shows, doesn't it? ;)) http://gamez.stuckieworld.net/gamez/caverns/screens/crumbs-1.png

At the moment, I'm working as quick as possible to get a quick and dirty prototype of the basic game going. It's not going to be anything fancy at all, infact the player models are just coloured sphere at the moment (though the idea I have in my head and in my sketchbook have the characters looking like big, chunky Playmobil figures anyway). But I want to get moving the players about and digging sorted, since those are the two that's probably going to make or break the game... no-one'll want to play the damn thing if it's a bugger to control, heh, and seeing as I have a few ideas on how to control them.. I might aswell try them all out, or atleast implement them all and allow the player to choose as they see fit.

So here goes nothing... first game in Torque... and it's an insane puzzle game... I must be mad ;)