Re: [tsc-devel] [ANN] 2nd General Discussion - Request for Agenda

datahead | Sat, 26 Mar 2016 22:00:42 UTC

Post via forum by datahead <…9@x…>:
[quote]A platformer doesn’t need much of a story, but is a good complement if we integrate it in the game. [/quote]

Yes, having a story will make us different from most platformers and hence stand out.

[quote]For example, we can think the campaigns as “missions”, like Indiana Jones films.[/quote]

I would probably view a campaign as one story.  A mission would be a world or level.  I'm open to other ideas if we can make it work, however.

[quote]adding more characters to choose from[/quote]

This actually is what I meant.  I especially would like to make Dr. M playable later in the game, maybe after a sub climax in the story.

[quote]If we develop a story we need to introduce it in the game. I’ll stick only to visual narrative, without text or speech. That way we can mantain TSC more language independent, and avoids lot of translation work. The problem with this is that a complex story can be hard to explain without words.[/quote]

The problem, as you mentioned, is that some concepts are hard to explain through animations and graphics alone.  For example, it would be hard to describe Dr. M's abuse of licenses with pictures alone.  We'd basically end up using pantomime, which is possible, but probably wouldn't establish the mood for a deep story.

An example of a game that primarily uses visual elements is Super Metroid.  The player generally sees visual elements in the levels and draws his or her own conclusions about some of the the back story.  This can work very well, but it doesn't allow for an all out immersive story.

Narration can help to get the story in front of most people who won't read game text.  We can also use spoken dialogue by characters to some extent, possibly.  This is basically what movies do.  Translation issues are inevitable, but we can at least display text for languages for which we don't have speakers.  Movie companies deal with similar issues.

What I basically am suggesting is to use an RPG-style plot and juxtapose it against traditional 2D platformer gameplay.  We probably are not the first people to think of something like this, but it will make us different from the average platformer.



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