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Solar Flare
Design Document
Stephen Clarke-Willson
Last Updated: July 14, 1997
Solar Flare is a space shooter. It will be based on the SuperSet™ Game Engine
used in CyberDome, but with significantly more ambitious design goals.
Whereas CyberDome was repetitive, Solar Flare has variety; whereas
CyberDome was linear, Solar Flare has a branching structure; whereas
CyberDome was banal, Solar Flare has character. The watchwords for Solar
Flare development are character and graphical variety. One might describe
Solar Flare as the "Duke Nukem of Space Shooters."
These goals will be achieved in the following ways:
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There will be at least eleven unique locations where the action takes place;
these are the nine planets of the solar system, plus the asteroid field and the
Sun. (Earth's moon as well as other moons are other possibilities for 'subworlds'.)
Each world will have a distinctly different graphical style based on NASA
photographs. In addition, unique features of each planet (e.g., Saturn's rings,
Jupiter's many moons and high gravity) will be used to make each
environment distinctive.
There will be a huge number of sound bites used to comment on the action,
e.g., "That's a big mother fucker!" (suitably toned down) and such like.
Verbal hints from a distant (outside of the solar system) computer advisor will
help players learn new game techniques without a manual.
The player will have the option of a second person "chase" view as well as an
out-of-cockpit view.
The out-of-cockpit view will have a ridiculous number of gauges and switches.
The game will be controllable from a mouse/keyboard combination or from an
8-button (at least) joypad.
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Various "flight regimes" will be included such as flying through the
atmosphere, flying through (inside) asteroids, and beneath solar flares.
Points will be given for all kinds of activities, including "flair" in killing bad
guys, discovery of powerups, secret paths, and minimization of shots fired.
The "world" of Solar Flare will be set in the C.I.N.D.-E universe. The concept
for the game is that the Voxellians have arrived to decimate the solar system
by exploiting a new technology for flying through black holes, and have
launched a successful surprise attack on the solar system while the player
has been away on another mission. (This is sort of a sequel to CindE where
one assumes that the player didn't manage to prevent the Voxellians from
using this technology.)
All activities will have separate sound effects and visual cues; so a hit on an
enemy ship will cause the ship to change color or a translucent shield to light
up along with a suitable sound effect, and so on. There will be visual cues as
to the amount of damage sustained by enemy ships.
The player will have to liberate Earth Armed Forces (EAF) strongholds that
have been taken by the Voxellians; once this has been done the player can
use these items for powerups.
It will be possible to save or restore the game at any time.
And so on.
The SuperSet™ Game Engine will be integrated with the control systems and
changes from both CindE and CyberDome so that both gravity-based combat
and space-based combat will be possible.
As a development strategy, screen shots for each of the major areas will be
developed on the SGI before any coding is done. This will enable the graphic
variety and "screen shot" appeal of the game to be easily verified in advance.
TBD:
Outline of the play mechanics and goals for each locale.
Development of art resources.
List of sound bites.
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