Earth 1.5

Started on this spring 2012, had this awesome idea for the whole setting and even gameplay ideas and storylines to go with it. Turned out to be quite the job to finish it, if you can call it that. My attempt at cyberpunk you could call it.

Unfathomable Pitch Part Deux

So the more I think about the time constraints, the personnel constraints, the fact that we would have to make our own game engine and level editor from scratch, and the universe in general, the more i decide I need to scale this down to be a viable idea. Behold: Unfathomable! Now with one less dimension:

Other than that it's pretty much the same idea i had before. Submarines doing impossible things like loops, barrel rolls, and DOGFIGHTING. I'm sure you've played something like this before, flash games like this are all over the internets. Here's some examples for the uninitiated: Dog Fight, and Effing Worms!

With 2 dimensions we can still have unique, interesting level designs, possibly more so than with three dimensions. We can still make it beautiful and have fun lighting and rendering effects. We can still have a scary dark level where you fight that anglerfish from Finding Nemo. You can still have Cthulhu. Now it's just a lot more simple, feasible, and maybe even more fun.

Instead of an "open world" it would probably be better for the overall gameplay to be a set of "linear" levels, one after the other. Example: intro level. Go through around on the seafloor, fight some bad dudes, build up to a big giant submarine fight or sea monster, finish the level, upgrade your stuff, next level. Levels themselves don't need to be perfectly linear in a sense, there could totally be a couple of different ways to beat each one.

Just imagine the art style as more in line with what the first pitch showed, though. That there is more of a "gameplay" description, i guess...

Well here it is. Wish me luck, presentations are in fifteen minutes.

Here's the Pitch, Slow and Straight.

Behold! My pitch. Basically imagine something like Crimson Skies, or some other console flight sim, but UNDERWATER. Genius.

Why underwater?

Firstly, as far as I can tell it hasn't quite been done before. A quick google search of "underwater flight sim" revealed only videos of people playing Microsoft Flight Simulator and trying to fly underwater but not succeeding. If you're willing to take some serious liberties with the concept of just how submarines work, this could maybe be "physically possible" and somehow believable. Uberrealism, while great in games like Arma II and Gran Turismo V, doesn't translate too well to casual little games like what this class usually produces.

Secondly, I think an underwater setting would just be prettier than just sky or space or wherever else flight sims have been set. You can get all sorts of beautiful things like giant spires of rock or volcanoes or trenches or seaweed or animal life and so on and so forth. It would create a much more memorable experience, visually and aurally. You can have all sorts of old timey nautical textual references everywhere, like saying "Aweigh" and "Avast" and "Starboard". This means we can make it a bit silly and whimsical. Nobody hates a funny game.

Thirdly, along with the new visual stuff comes more potential for gameplay, like for instance fighting giant sea monsters or navigating tiny trenches or grottos. A submarine can stop to do things like explore wrecks. Naval mines can be released behind you. All of this could still be reasonable within our time and hardware constrains because...

Fourthy, we can cheat. An underwater setting essentially allows us to turn down the draw distance to make the developmental rendering process easier and quicker. Also the game will run more smoothly on xbox graphics allowing us to focus more on object detail to make things prettier. I had the idea to split the game areas into open world nodes connected by essentially empty stretches of open ocean. Enter one of these designated loading areas and you'll just swim through nothingness for a few seconds while the next area loads, like the elevators in Mass Effect.

I'm sure there are more reasons hidden in my mind right now but I'll remember them later. For now know that THIS IS A GOOD IDEA DAMNIT.

It's the future (or is it the past?) and people now live underwater. The oceans are covered in an ice cap, so you can't surface (but light can still get through. ingenious, no?).

Imagine docking at a seafloor station, repairing your damage and buying that new torpedo launch tube you've had your eye on for a while before setting off on a quest to clear out some pirates, or hunt down the Kraken, or loot a wreck. The possibilities are large, and I think it might even be reasonable for completion within our time and resource constraints.

and sorry about the "UNFATHOMABLE" font. Typography is hardly my strong point.

Here's some more versions of the pitch picture without the scribbles of a crazy person or the header if you want. It's not terribly beautiful right now and the submarine looks positively derptastic. I promise the final product will be a magnificent piece of engineering, if I get to make this.

Now to have my brainchild absolutely torn apart by my professors and peers tomorrow. Will update with a picture of my devastated face immediately afterwards.

First off before I get any sternly-worded cease-and-desists in my inbox, lemme plug Dr. McNinja for the inspiration for my super-secret game developer identity. I love you dearly, Christopher Hastings. Please don't have me assassinated.

So thus begins my trials-by-fire in the development crucible of EAE Capstone at the University of Utah. Over the next year or so I should start kicking my crippling PCP, bath salts, and reddit addictions to the curb as I'm going to do my absolute best to focus on this noise and be a useful cog in this efficient game-churning machine.

About now shall begin the pitching process, where I must come up with a game that will someday be birthed to XBLIG! Now believe me when I say I have no shortage of game ideas, the entire reason I went into this field was to hopefully someday put these ideas down on production in some way, the problem of course is scaling this down to the parameters of XBLIG and the available time to work on it.

Have you ever wanted to do a barrel roll... in a SUBMARINE?