[TuxKart-devel] Game design: list of possible game modes besides racing

[Willian P. G. <wge...@za...>]

Hi,

As I told you, Steve, here is a first draft of possible game modes for Tux
Kart, besides the racing one(s). Considering the AI involved, some of them
may be easy to code only for multiplaying without bots. Again, racing will
be treated later, separately.

1) Collecting an item:

Let's take big shiny golden coins as our item in this example. We need
freedom of movement for this mode, so it's better suited to larger envs,
where players can go off-road. If making bot karts find the items become
troublesome, we may need specially designed tracks, without places where
they could get stuck, for example. Or leave some or all levels to
multiplayer between humans only. The mode is basically this: all competitors
(alone or in teams) are put somewhere on the landscape and N copies of the
item are thrown in random places. Some START! signal happens and all
competitors are free to hunt for coins. When all have been caught -- or
time T has expired -- the match stops. The partial score (# of coins grabbed
by each player) is displayed. Another match, there or somewhere else,
starts, with coins and maybe even players placed randomly again. The kart
that grabs X coins first, or the one with more coins after Y minutes, wins.
This and the number of players, coins, matches, etc. should be configurable.

2) Variation on #1:

An item (a big bouncing red ball, maybe) appears somewhere -- you find it
first, you win. Optionally, there may be a radar, or easier, a point on the
2d map of the track showing where the item appeared. Players are initially
placed randomly, but when someone touches the ball, it reappears somewhere
else  without stopping the match -- players continue where they are and with
control of their karts. There are two completelly different possibilities:
with or without indication on a map or radar of where the ball is. The first
gives a fast paced "reach known points first", while the second puts players
in suspense, searching all around and counting on luck.

3) Chase and bump:

Divide players in teams: the objective of all groups is to chase and touch
the back of karts from the other teams. So players chase and try to escape
all the time, leaving the match when their backs get bumped X times.  The
remaining kart's team wins of course. Number of players in each team, of
teams and of times to be hit before exiting the game are configurable.

4) The reunion:

Join #2 and #3, changing #3 a little: instead of leaving the match, a kart
touched on its back freezes for T seconds. It's possible to join #1 here,
too: coins collected could give powerups (based on a choice after N coins
collected -- the more the better powerups one can choose) or based on random
powerups like Mario Kart. Number of times the ball was caught, last
player/team "alive" or time elapsed may end the match. Imagine this mode,
it's a fast paced action game with an interesting design. For ex., it can be
tweaked so that getting hit makes you loose points, so when there's little
time, the ones with more points will be more concerned about not being hit
than grabbing the ball, etc. With proper design, we may come up with a mode
where objectives and attitude of the players change during the match.
Actually more than one, so there are sub-modes in this mode.

5) Suggested by Steve: hide and seek -- one player seeks and the other(s)
hide. Score based on time. Maybe like the kid's play, hidden karts have to
reach some place before the seeker does (the seeker can only do that after
finding a hidden kart) to be safe and not become the seeker next time. This
way "finding" the others has to be coded properly, maybe it has to bump on
them to "find" them.

6) Tag: one player is "it" and has to touch some other, who will then become
"it". Players win points for, e.g., each 30 seconds they manage not to be
"it". And loose when they are (so players will concentrate on hunting the
ones with higher score). For this to work in bigger levels, there has to be
a mecanism to keep players not too far apart from each other. A sample
possibility: a kart freezes for X seconds when it gets a considerable
distance Y apart from "it", and a signal on the screen tells others about
it, so the frozen one becomes an easier prey. Another variation: no score,
but after T minutes (configurable, of course) "it" explodes -- I mean,
looses.

7) Normal battle mode like in Mario Kart, using the powerups.
-----------------------------------------
Variation is the keyword. Not just about game modes, but about objectives,
attitude, feel and gameplay, too. Make the player have to escape, or to
chase/hunt/seek or to compete for itens and so on. With changes even inside
a single mode or even match in some cases.

Note: an important aspect to make these modes come "alive" is making events
fun to watch, specially when something goes wrong for a player (he/she
becomes "it", gets bumped, etc.). This surely stimulates players.

Suggestions, criticism, comments... welcomed.
--
Willian, wge...@ma...