Baron Waste
02-14-2005, 03:22 PM
There's a lot of things I could fix, without changing any of the models!
The trenches don't look right, as I mentioned in
http://dreamcatcherinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19162
> Frontline trenches were usually about seven feet deep and six feet wide.
> The front of the trench was known as the parapet. The top two or three
> feet of the parapet and the parados (the rear side of the trench) would
> consist of a thick line of sandbags to absorb any bullets or shell
> fragments.
>
> In a trench of this depth it was impossible to see over the top, so a two
> or three-foot ledge known as a fire-step, was added. Trenches were not dug
> in straight lines. Otherwise, if the enemy had a successive offensive, and
> got into your trenches, they could shoot straight along the line. Each
> trench was dug with alternate fire-bays and traverses.
>
but they -could- look right; we see sandbag fortifications all the time, starting in Level 1_2, so they could be added to the trenches. It's just a matter of -doing- it.
But as that earlier thread mentioned, I'd change the play of Level 1 completely:
> There's nothing in this game engine that would preclude doing it
> correctly. Level 1 would happen at night, and getting from the Friedrich
> Line of trenches to the Anton-Denikin Line would involve crossing No Man's
> Land at night, either alone or as part of a patrol. It would look much
> like the prison-camp sequence in Level 2_4, just before Wolfenburg --
> night, searchlights, sentries, campfires, bob-wire, one false step and the
> game's up...
It'd be fun to do it like that.
I'd also make one change to the program itself -- Col Mitchell says, "Don't forget your first-aid box," but weirdly, you don't actually have one, you have to glom 'health units' as you go, like Sonic the Hedgehog.
Imagine if 'first aid' was an item of inventory, carried just like grenades, and like them, could be -used up-. You still glom as you go, but you're restocking that supply just as you do ammo, to be used as needed.
The other thing I would do -- again, using the game mechanics themselves -- is use the green goof-gas effect for wounds (colored red, of course, as happens now when you're hit). A sudden, major wound produces disorienting shock, as anyone who's taken a bad cut will tell you -- you can faint dead away.
You can counteract it immediately with first aid -- if you have any! but if you don't have any, you have no choice but to totter away from the battle as best you can until the effect dies away.
[This might just be an option in 'realistic' mode.]
The one other thing I'd fix, is the absence of posters, of signs. Wolfenberg is sterile -- there's no sense, other than the odd chair in the street, that anyone ever lived there. Look at 'Call of Duty' -- there's French advertising posters painted on buildings and fences all over the place. It makes it look so much more realistic!
If Iron Storm can have pin-up pictures on wrecked artillery pieces [and it does; look at the seated heavy machine gun in front of the church] and a couple of tongue-in-cheek entries in the multiplayer maps ["Wanted - Dead or Alive"] it can have travel posters in the train station and advertisements on the walls.
Dang it, I want an expansion pack -- and I want to design it!
The trenches don't look right, as I mentioned in
http://dreamcatcherinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19162
> Frontline trenches were usually about seven feet deep and six feet wide.
> The front of the trench was known as the parapet. The top two or three
> feet of the parapet and the parados (the rear side of the trench) would
> consist of a thick line of sandbags to absorb any bullets or shell
> fragments.
>
> In a trench of this depth it was impossible to see over the top, so a two
> or three-foot ledge known as a fire-step, was added. Trenches were not dug
> in straight lines. Otherwise, if the enemy had a successive offensive, and
> got into your trenches, they could shoot straight along the line. Each
> trench was dug with alternate fire-bays and traverses.
>
but they -could- look right; we see sandbag fortifications all the time, starting in Level 1_2, so they could be added to the trenches. It's just a matter of -doing- it.
But as that earlier thread mentioned, I'd change the play of Level 1 completely:
> There's nothing in this game engine that would preclude doing it
> correctly. Level 1 would happen at night, and getting from the Friedrich
> Line of trenches to the Anton-Denikin Line would involve crossing No Man's
> Land at night, either alone or as part of a patrol. It would look much
> like the prison-camp sequence in Level 2_4, just before Wolfenburg --
> night, searchlights, sentries, campfires, bob-wire, one false step and the
> game's up...
It'd be fun to do it like that.
I'd also make one change to the program itself -- Col Mitchell says, "Don't forget your first-aid box," but weirdly, you don't actually have one, you have to glom 'health units' as you go, like Sonic the Hedgehog.
Imagine if 'first aid' was an item of inventory, carried just like grenades, and like them, could be -used up-. You still glom as you go, but you're restocking that supply just as you do ammo, to be used as needed.
The other thing I would do -- again, using the game mechanics themselves -- is use the green goof-gas effect for wounds (colored red, of course, as happens now when you're hit). A sudden, major wound produces disorienting shock, as anyone who's taken a bad cut will tell you -- you can faint dead away.
You can counteract it immediately with first aid -- if you have any! but if you don't have any, you have no choice but to totter away from the battle as best you can until the effect dies away.
[This might just be an option in 'realistic' mode.]
The one other thing I'd fix, is the absence of posters, of signs. Wolfenberg is sterile -- there's no sense, other than the odd chair in the street, that anyone ever lived there. Look at 'Call of Duty' -- there's French advertising posters painted on buildings and fences all over the place. It makes it look so much more realistic!
If Iron Storm can have pin-up pictures on wrecked artillery pieces [and it does; look at the seated heavy machine gun in front of the church] and a couple of tongue-in-cheek entries in the multiplayer maps ["Wanted - Dead or Alive"] it can have travel posters in the train station and advertisements on the walls.
Dang it, I want an expansion pack -- and I want to design it!