Infiltrator Part 31 - With a two in it!

The long and painful move from SFML 1.6 to SFML 2 is finally complete. There actually isn't a whole ton of difference, except that now my framerate has taken a giant tan- GUN BLAM IT! Just a minute...

Okay, so now the long and painful-aw skip it.

In order to give myself a proverbial pat on the back, I setup fullscreen to work with monitors that don't run at 1024x768, read: mine. This is really the only significant outward difference. I mostly changed to avoid big problems further down the line. I also want to implement two camera modes. Let's talk about that from a design history perspective. You know what that means, time to take another trip to the good old days of DOS.

Back in 1996 a game came out called Seek and Destroy. The game used an unconventional top view 360 degree camera rotation motion scheme that is still rare today. I've only ever seen one other complete game use it, and two incomplete games. There are a number of reasons more games like this probably weren't made. For one, imersive physical simulation in a highly stylized environment is enough to make a few people motion sick, but that is nothing compared to what happens when you mix it with a game like this. There is a long standing understanding that games that play like this make an unacceptable number of people dizzy or motion sick. I'm sure it could also have had something to do with the fact that it is plays a lot like a top view version of DOOM, a game you all know was pretty popular and sparked a new genre, but I don't care about what's popular. I want to make and see more games like this, and Infiltrator will be one of them. I'm only worried about dealing with the disorientation and other physically dis-pleasurable side effects of playing a game like this.

And that brings us back to having two camera modes. So long as one camera mode doesn't throw the games mechanics out of balance, I can have both. People who can handle it can play with a rotating camera, and people who can't can choose a different one. This is the biggest reason I switched to SFML 2, as it promises *wince* easy implementation of rotating 2D camera's. I will get started on implementing these multiple camera modes and a game menu with options once I finish the AI code for the shredder enemies. In the mean time, I'm going to be playing myself some retro games..


       --LazerBlade