Hey guys, I'm making a 2D scrolling airplane combat game. It is team-based. The basic concept is that each team has a base with ocean separating them. Everyone flies around and shoots people down while they try to make it to the other team's base. If someone makes it over the enemy's base, a siren will go off, and a bomber will take of from their base and start heading towards the enemy's base. The enemy team will try to shoot down the bomber as the friendly team tries to defend it. The question I have deals with when a player turns around and flies over their own base. There is no point to them flying past it because all of the action takes place between the two bases, not past them. So I'm thinking I need a way to force them to turn around if they fly past their own base. Some ideas I've had are to just have them bounce off, like the ball in Pong, or to play a quick animation of them doing a half loop or soemthing to reorient them (they would lose control during this). So what do you guys think would be the est way to go about this? The game is using WW2 planes, so if you come up with any clever solutions involving the time period, that's cool too. So, how would you turn them around, or would you not turn them around at all, just let them keep flying til they get bored? Thanks, I look forward to your suggestions.

Well, is it difficult to find the base? How easy is it to find things on the map in general? If they missed the base, then letting them fly on would be a bad idea. However, if they can't easily miss the base, I would say just let them keep flying and turn around on their own accord.

Use the Battlefield 1942 system. You define a region outside of the main combat zone, and anyone in that region gets "ALERT! You are leaving the combat zone! Deserters will be shot in 10 seconds!" The time continues to count down to 0, and if they haven't turned around, they're blown away.

This lets them know what they're doing is wrong, and for what reason. Playing a turning animation would leave me with a "wtf is going on?" sort of thing, and I'd try to do it again until I realized.

Quote:

Some ideas I've had are to just have them bounce off, like the ball in Pong, or to play a quick animation of them doing a half loop or soemthing to reorient them (they would lose control during this). So what do you guys think would be the est way to go about this? The game is using WW2 planes, so if you come up with any clever solutions involving the time period, that's cool too.

Being a pilot myself , I dont agree with your statement that doing a half-loop(Split-S) would cause an airplane, even one from the WWII time era to lose control; The Piper Cub I fly was built in 1941 and it can make some pretty sharp turns without me losing control, and it's just a trainer. I think that going with the half loop would be a good idea. I also agree with Grozzler , BF1942 did a good job of stopping you from exiting the map without having a invisible wall you cant pass.

Edit. Sorry, misread the post

[Edited by - Sir Sapo on March 12, 2005 12:29:56 AM]

"Being a pilot myself , I dont agree with your statement that doing a half-loop(Split-S) would cause an airplane, even one from the WWII time era to lose control"


I'm pretty sure he means the player would loose control of the airplane's actions, not the piolot loosing control of the airplane. Their UI wouldn't work, and the plane would turn all by itself, perfectly controlled- but by the computer.

My favourite implementation of this was Motocross Madness.

there's an enigmatic response. What did they do in MM?

I like the half-loop (or split S, or whatever) idea. It worked in Star Fox, and it'll work here. Make sure you get a radio transmission to explain it, though. "Where are you going? Get back in the fight!" That would do the job nicely.

Chef has a good point, as long as you let the player know what is going on then the split-S shouldn't be a problem. Also it would be nice if you put a dotted line or something at the point where the computer would take over.

hey, I just posted in a very similar thread to this. Many other answers (albeit 3D) are found there. Including the response to the Motocross Madness Enigma =)

Having played Motocross Madness I'll answer that one (fun game btw!). In Motocross Madness, when you reached the edge of a map, you had to climb a REALLY steep hill, which was difficult, but not impossible. If you reach the top of the hill, then you get thrown back towards the centre of the map, you'd just hear a 'smack' sound effect and then be hurtling away from the barrier, which was actually pretty funny, seeing yourself flying at 100 miles an hour really high above the level and then seeing the resulting carnage as you smacked into the floor again :P