Interfacing Ideas?
by Demolishun · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 01/21/2007 (10:38 am) · 3 replies
I am putting together a life game based on Conway's Life rules and thought I would pick your collective brains about building an interface in Torque for setting up patterns. I am thinking about keeping the game 2D and just place cells on the ground over the terrain. I am having trouble thinking up a good/intuitive way to change cell states and move around. I was thinking I would spawn the player as a camera and limit the life interations to a bowl area of the mission area. I would kill any cells that attempt to leave (Muahahahaha!). I was thinking I would do ray casts and build up widgets that the player can click on to change states of the simulation and click on cells.
Any thoughts on a better way to do this interface?
Any thoughts on a 3D version of the interface?
Any thoughts on a better way to do this interface?
Any thoughts on a 3D version of the interface?
About the author
I love programming, I love programming things that go click, whirr, boom. For organized T3D Links visit: http://demolishun.com/?page_id=67
#2
Here is a thread to discuss the engine specifics:
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=56895
01/21/2007 (11:05 am)
These are very interesting ideas! Another idea I had that is similar to your torus is making the playing area the surface of a sphere. It automatically loops. Another idea to to use distance rather than an arbitrary grid to do population density comparisons. I could even use an area cast to simplify checks. Again, this would suffer from the interface issues you has with the 3D version possibly, but it sure would look cool as a floating ball of cells!Here is a thread to discuss the engine specifics:
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=56895
#3
i found a page where someone does display the game on a torus,
but it's sorta shoddily done: javaview.de/games/PaLife.html
(ie, it's difficult to interact with)
01/21/2007 (11:13 am)
Heya -i found a page where someone does display the game on a torus,
but it's sorta shoddily done: javaview.de/games/PaLife.html
(ie, it's difficult to interact with)
Associate Orion Elenzil
Real Life Plus
i think you're making a good decision in keeping it 2D.
i fooled around with 3D life several years ago and have checked out a few other experiments with it,
and it just isn't as satisfying as good old 2D. - for one thing it was difficult to come up with satisfactory "rules" to balance life & death. for another it's just inherently difficult to see what's going on, so the viewer engagement kinda drops. IMHO, of course.
why are you killing cells which go out-of bounds ? traditionally they wrap-around to the other side.
(note that this means the playing field is topologically equivelant to a torus.. i've always wanted to display a life simulation on a torus!)
i wonder if you could make a derivative of the EditorTSCtrl (i think that's the name) - that's the world editor, and in the form of the terrain editor it already has support for rendering a grid of squares on the terrain, as well as mouse-over and selection, etc. - if you'd like to chat more about the technicals of that, it might be good to start a new thread in the SDK-owner's forum.
what about having the player be just a player,
and you actually walk around the Life simulation?
you could have a couple modes: sower, reaper, toggler.
that could solve navigation and selection all at once,
and might be fun and immersive.
interesting stuff!