Wonder Woman Concept rewrite

I'm not a massive fan of the wonder woman character. The more I find out about her myth the less I like. So here is my idea of a conceptional rewrite.


Modern Day. The Ancient Greeks Gods are dead. Only relics remain.

Diane Prince (AKA Wonder Woman) is the next in line to the throne of Thermscyria. However she is a dismissive 20 something-brat-teenager character. She is expected to live up to her reputation by competing in tournaments to earn powers, but she purposely drops out. Her mother, the Queen of the Amazons, sets Diane the task of going to the world of man and studying it. Its a ruse, that Diane would find the world of man horrible and come running back, seeing the errors of her ways.

But Diane takes the opposite view. She begins to see Thermscyria as a bubble trapped in the past, whilst she can make a real difference on Earth. So she starts competing in tournaments for mythical artefacts which grant the wearer super powers, then returns to earth to beat up drug lords and terrorists etc.

She gets found out by the CIA, who coerce her to work for them. So she works along side the CIA and military as a super spy, but at the same time going off mission to complete her own agendas. Then some monster like a Hydra turns up in New York. Diane rushes in and kills the beast in front of the press.

Diane is then given the title of "Wonder Woman" by the press and she has her 15 mins of fame. A little while later though there is a Coup in Thermscyria.  A farmer (no one really noticed before) now rules the Amazons and leads them to invade Earth. Diane from what she has learnt, leads a resistance gorilla style war against the Amazons. For a while it works but too many people are dying.

To stop the blood shed, Diane agrees to fight the evil Amazon 1v1, winner takes all. They fly around crashing through building etc, till Diane gets the upperhand and stabs the evil Amazon leader. At which point Athena's owl, (that another amazon won in a tournament) flies over to evil Amazon. Everyone reasons she is Athena. Athena cackles and tells them that its their destiny to be the new Gods of Earth. Diane refutes that too many people have died for the Gods and that peace and harmony should reign. Athena accuses her of being a fool and dies.

Diane then monologues about rebuilding and coxisting with man. She then talks of the legend of Prometheus. That as punishment for stealing fire from Zeus, he was chained to a rock and had his intestines eaten by vultures only to regenerate the next day to suffer the same fate for eternity. As a second punishment Zeus commanded Hephaestus and Athena to create the first human out of earth. Her name was Pandora.

The evil Amazon bursts out of a morgue locker, writhes around in pain as her body regenerates, she then exits the morgue. Diane is waiting outside. She indicates she knowns Pandora is Prometheus's daughter and that Pandora was testing them. Diane askes Pandora to join her but she refuses. Diane asks her about the "box". Pandora corrects her, humanity was the supposed evil and she was the vessel of hope. Through some back and forth Pandora reluctantly grants Diane her regenerative power, but she herself considers it a curse.

Additional rewrites

The lasso of truth is possessed or an actual living thing. So it can talk and morph between being a wip and a lasso.

Instead of calling "hera give me strength" its her suit of armour and the trigger line is "gaia give me strength" one of the Titans. That leads her to study history more and figure out Pandoras past.

Although Pegasus was the last flying horse, the Amazons make more out of clay.


Explanation

To me, the idea that a woman has lived since Ancient Greece yet is still young and puppydog eyed makes no sense. So I've split the myth to two different characters.


Pandora is the 'Eve' character of ancient greek myth. I think its nice to re-write history so she is effectively a Christ like figure.

Diane's storey is akin to Hercules, where she is mortal and earns her way up to being this demi-god Wonder Woman figure.

Likewise that Diane doesn't have all the powers that the comics attribute to her, enables other Amazons to stand out as unique and credible threats to her.


Back Story 

When the Olympian Gods overthrowed the Titans. One of the Titans Sided with Zeus. Promethus. Promethus then felt guilt, and took the flame of olympus to help his kind. Zeus catches him, chains him to a rock and lets vultures eat his intestines. The next day Promethus would regenerate only to suffer the same fate over and over for eternity.

Zeus orders Hephaestus and Athena to create humans out of earth. Unbeknowns to everyone, Athena (angry at Zeus) takes a lock of Promethus's hair and puts it in the mixture. So Pandora, the first human, is daughter of Promtheus and has regenerative powers that make her immortal.

Pandora grows up on Mount Olympus till she comes of age when she is sent to marry one of the Titans down on earth. Pandora gives birth to the human race, then disappears out of history.

Hera hears of Zeus boasting that a woman would never rule mount Olympus. So she creates the island of Thermscyria, puts some amazons on there and gives them the ability to make life out of clay. She then hides the island away so she can privately laugh at Zeus.

Concept: Will code for food

I'm beginning to see why people build tower defence games. Setting up 1 side to move towards another is relatively easy. Implimenting code OOP so that it can be reused for the opposing side tricker.

Basing the mechanics of real life weapons stats the weapons range is too far. Currenly I'm thinking of cutting drones (infantry) out, or cutting units off above destroyer.

Droners - Maybe Unit (infantry)
5.62- 7.62mm (1.8K range), grenades, rpg
Corvette - Smallest unit (akin to humvee)
12mm (2.5K range), Grenades, RPG
Frigate - Medium unit (akin to APC)
25mm (3-7K range), 12mm, TOW
Destroyer - Heavy unit (akin to Tank)
120mm (4-8K range), 2x 12mm,
Cruiser - Capital ship (akin to Frigate)
Long Range Missiles (120K range), 155mm (30k range), 12mm
Battleship - Capital ship (akin to destroyer)
Cruise Missiles (2.5 M range), 300mm, 120mm

In the set up of having each ship have a distinct feel, anything above Destroyer is massively over powered. Its difficult to see how I can rescale to include Drones, without making destroyers seem like mobile artillery. I would have to include some level of stealth sneekiness to smaller units to account for thier size so they stand a chance. Saying that in games like flashpoint anything beyond 1K range is Artillery style combat.

Cover wise, I can't be bothered adding another level of code for environmentals. Units will have shields where they can effectively build thier own cover. Under fire thier shields will degrade and can be mitigated by artillery weapons.

With the keyboard setup, the idea at least is that the game can be more point and click. You can maybe blind fire artillery, focus fire on units.

I kind of want units to have good AI, but that the they are restricted by terms of cost. IE, a unit unless ordered to, will fire the most economical weapon. Although my agressive/defensive setup idea may ease the micro.

That said the timer intercept idea, looks good. Obivious issues, like, if a good and bad unit are spawned at the same time, the game may miss it, if I code the AI too well it may get intercepts up the wazzu. Have to set up a system which tracks if something changes, who immediately is effected it should be doable. Depending how wide I make the map, there could be multiple front lines, so I will keep to 3 lanes.

Trash can - lol I started this idea in 2008
Time based, Isometric game structure - I may return to this but it feels less fluid.
Large Scale map - I'm going to limit to one campaign map.
Save states - I may have to do this or may influence me toning the scope down so I don't have to.
Scoreboard - funny how some say this has to be done, can't remember many that have
Drones - I think corvettes can replace them easily and remove 1 layer of weapons. I can just make a light corvette unit which is akin to infantry feel.
Captial Ships - I'll probably use these more as plot devices than playable units.

Concept: Fleet Commander I (V0.1.3)

After making progress I took some down time to play around with a splash / campaign map. Players will navigate this Map (and a simular Galaxy Map maybe) to move around. The scrolling isometric combat zones are the real time fun part. But all the while maintaining a fluid feel, ie you can zipp around the campaign in your ship and choose which battles you take, with maybe critical ones and extra bonus ones like Mass Effect.


I've jury rigged the combat environment into Isometric, improved coding elements. I got a bunch of hot keys working and a make shift timer. I think I may have to scrap the onEnterFrame idea shifting back to tweens. I aint looked into zoom control and restricting the Isomap movement. I suspect I may need another container MC.

I'll start soon rebuilding the combat engine. This version is a whole bunch of different elements I've had in different files I'm shoving all into one.

Some "working" artwork from itchystudios. He's a professional artist who has like 2 heavily active art blogs one where he keeps saying he's going to make a 'bazzilion' games.

I'm taking inspiration from him and ben olding.

Concept: Scope

I deved a complex combat engine which guffed up and kept each units equally killing each other. So I'm thinking of auto generating random events then applying them if and when with less ranGen() calls as its NOT random.

In so doing I have to lower the complexity scope of the units. Assault/Regular/Heavy units are as implied. With Drones, Corvettes and Frigates available. Atm I'm thinking keep destroyers and cruisers back as possible ships you fight along side or maybe in the second version if I ever actually make the first version.

The tween , turn basedmovement system has been glitchy ever since I put it in. I'm thinking of replacing it with a onenterframe code which can more easily be stopped instantly. I can then maybe use tweens and my previous turnbased combat idea once a unit has stopped standard travel, ie in combat. Enabling timers for reloads and such.

As you maybe able to see I've increased max range to 3000m for the top class weapons. All units can use each others weapons but with a disadvantage. So its possible to have a corvette dragging and full level Distruper but no other weapons. To mix things up, but it will suffer a accuracy penality as the unit will have half the command skill of a frigate.

Cannons (Turrets - direct fire)
5.65mm, 12.mm, 20mm
Plasma Launchers (Missiles- direct fire)
light, medium, heavy
Disrupters (Arilitary- indirect fire)
Flak (ie Grenades), Standard (Mortar), Heavy (Artillery)
Disrupters suffer penality if used on front line.

Basically the set up is heavier units have more higher plasma and Disrupters, but slower firing and less effective against smaller units. Not sure if I am currently over loading units with too many abilities.

AI: I may for the first version have to dum down AI so it does some things but basically sends units towards enemy. If the AI gets in a bit of bother I may need to code some "do clever things" actions to compensate so it doesn't keep loosing units. Hopefuly and use the same AI functions I intend for the user units.

GUI/Gameplay I may set controls on enemy units so that you can choose which unit fires by a short cut set of buttons rather than having to select a unit then go back to the enemy to fire.

Zoom: My uber coded zoom may have been a waste of time alas.

Concept: Infrastructure

I'm mulling over the best way to create an AI and mechanics of the game. It makes sense the forward unit effectively acts as a path finder for the rest, rather than having to calc each units.

Mechanically I'm looking into predetermining/predicting events so the player sees a smooth action whilst its clunking away in the background. This is all around the idea that I can have a turnbased engine... each unit does so much damge per second, travels so far a second etc danger is it could be a bit cunkly. May need to reduce the duration past testing.

Range wise may have to dull down realism, if a unit is really firing at a unit on another lane its noticeably nearer. Could have "previous know target" set up, so even if you loose sight of enemy you could maybe select it and fire a grenade launcher. Same idea behind rally points. Units will all move towards a rally point (if you wish) for convience, although the enemy might bombard that location.

Be funny to see units fall back when injured, most others are very liner forward. Adds an annoying extra elelment, but can see how I could work in assault weapons are best for demoralising rather than outright killing. As I wanted to expand on the morale idea.

Unit Type: I love the idea of infantry, but may have to stick to ships else the level of detail required for visual fluff would be a nightmare.

Improved UI: Made the interface flat bar which makes in look more open. The Iso Grid really struggles with large maps, easier to use good old manual map with attachable details.

Concept - Weapons Range

Each square may need to be 50m, rather than 100m as two ships moving towards each other would close range very fast.
Range is split into good and bad (ranged).

Ironsight
Ironsight accuracy is hard at 350. Anything beyond 400m especially 600m is unacceptable unless there is a large area targets or #binoculars are employed as adjusted fire. (IE It maybe all units have unlimited ammo but firing at unacceptable ranges is considered wastage also it will reveal you more to the enemy.)

4x Scope
Basic scopes increase outter accuracy an extra 100m (to 500m) although the limitations of the rifle remain.

10x Scope
Sniper Scope. May increase total range. Sniper scope greatly improves long range targeting but under 300m the FOV is too narrow to be as effective.

Sniper
What I would more commonly see as a sniper is actually seconday to the Heavy sniper.

7.62mm Marksman/Sniper, (800m~2500m)
You defiantely need a spotter for anything beyond 800m. Adding a 10x scope to a battlerifle makes it a Marksman. IE better accuracy but weapon is still limited.

12.7mm Heavy Sniper, (1800m-2500m)
Designed as both Anti-Light Armour and counter-sniper, the 12mm is the true sniper. However it is heavy, needs to be fired in prone and has limited rate of fire. So its more a support/mortar type role than front line unit. Definately needs spotter to calcuate firing solution.

Concept 5

After building an experiemental combat engine and momentarily noticing that most of these style games occupy 1-7 lanes I realised I need to tone 21 lane scope down at least during testing.

For the present, there are 3 lanes like warfare 1944 where units are actually grouped in 1 MC. As for the World Map: Improved OOP and classed most stuff up so the fla is neater.

Ideas:

Formations/Fleets (Group Control/AI)
A player can choose a formation set up (maybe manually do so). This will mean a player can advance a group of units with scouts, machinegun type units on flanks, do pepper pot 2:2 cover formation type stuff. Maybe have it that more well trained units can do that automatically but not cheap units. This will also ease AI capability / construction.

Players may also group individual units into fleets to ease micro and enable reinforcement type stuff.

MovetoCover (breaking up the warzone in to easy chunks)
I like the idea of having a massive battlefield but it would be over the top both to code and to play. So much like 1944 I will break the map into sections where cover is, then units can move to the next cover, not just move forward like warlords. Maybe have it so units can lay down cover, or indeed if large units get disabled they can then act as cover.

Rally Points
User can define rally points so units will automatically move up if wanted.

CombatEngine
I'm working off infantry concept at the moment. Basically most main weapons can fire upto 8squares but are progressively less effective. (Stuff like Missles, grenade launches, grenades, mortars will have longer ranges.) I'm thinking of stealing an rpg engine ideas to ease things. Have just 4 arcs, and restricting reactions. IE units have to focus on thier lane first and foremost. So unless a unit has another unit infront of them, that unit can't effectively fire onto another lane.

Changing lanes is not available although may be added.

2 of the arcs will be sides, in other games if you get past a unit, thats it you just continue, in this game hopefully the units can attack sideways again based on restrictions. ie maybe some sort of "suprise attack"

Sneakiness/stealth/ fog of war I have to think about.

Concept (4)

The "full" iso structure of the game is restrictive in the sense only one object can move at a time effectively in close quarters.

So going to take a stab at a ben olding/warfare game, with the current iso as the world map.

Basically, I say "basically" the player places units on a map, and off they go to assault the enemy. I envison a mix between total war and men of war. ie players need to hold positions not just advance. More fluid and more fun.

Current Game Engine Version 0.001
movieclip world structure for good and bad guys
moveArray, so I can add objects to tween command

Known issues
there is a delay in adding movieclips which causes variables not to init
may need to have swap depth so faster units can pass slower ones.

trying to figure out how to use tween, so set interval say for 1 second and a tween which moves the units the correct distance for that 1 second, then the timer fires again and the unit moves 1 more space, hopefully seemlessly but last time it went crazy.

ie the game will be turnbased but more fluid for more "fun" gamer appeal

Game Concept (3)

OOP'd more stuff,

characters have UID and OOP'd code
minimap now holds more variables, will need to ref minimap more as Iso needs to be just for show.
enabled faction colours on minimap
improved freezoom, but doesn't recognise lastzoom for first scale change

Game Concept

V...6 Added freescale, OOP char init, improved 2d map, converted to basic ships, resized control boxes.

Game Concept

So this may become the twitter account for my game design. Although I'm interested in making a xcom inspired game, animating and structuring ground environs is a nightmare. So the idea is to convert it into a space ship game. With blank space as a background I maybe able to go upto 50x50 tiles without melting the average processor. (fully zoomed out would dramatically loose detail though)

Current Version: 0.0.1.4

Interface. Striped down concept to make the game feel simpler.
Enabled OOP character movement. Detects edge/character is in the way.
World Zoom Control. (Maybe a fully adjustable zoom)
Keyboard Movement controls. ( convert to plane up down movement)
Overview Map. Tracks characters, will show factions possibly weapons range
Combat Engine: Some sort of established RPG engine, I think I can then fluff it with extra detail which has no real mechanic.
Movement: May enable more complex movement, but thinking fast speeds should be straight line affairs.
Points: I'm thinking there will be combat points, then logistic points. IE you could win a battle but loose a war. Basic kill ratio.

Glitches to look out for: I intend to have fog of war so will have to enable a extra bit of code so if you move to an occupied square you didn't know an enemy was in, you would stop before it and suffer a suprise attack.

Known Bugs: zdepth sorting isn't enabled. When a character is clicked to move other characters go translucant to hide the glitch. Give zdepth sorting still has glitches and needs on enterframe I think its reasonable standby.

Iso Game Concept

Given the nature of my coding ability and the game mechanics I hit on a different tact. The game could be more in the nature of space hulk.

The player starts aboard a low grade cargo ship as a security detail who exist in cryo-sleep until needed. And hence works his/her way up the ranks.

Each unit within the team has an exoskeleton crisis suit which is a multipurpose cryopod / power lifter / tactical armour and space suit.

This would make it more reasonable, as the mechanics are a little wooden.