Portal Mechanics in LT
Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2014 10:55 pm
What:
Lets Mod Portals into LT!
Why:
1. Mining: Way easier with portals
2. Combat: One portal before the enemy, one portal behind him, and watch him kill himself. Or show him into an asteroid. Or the sun.
3. Exploration: Intrasystem travel never looked so good.
4. Rule of Cool: Because we can?
The implications here would change the very nature of the game.
How:
Spawn Mechanics- One cool way to spawn portals is to have them spawn as a slow moving orb from your ship. Just like pulse lasers, but slower. As soon as the orb reaches the point where you want a portal, press a button (or hit it with a pulse laser? ) and it unwraps into a portal. The longer you press the "fire portal" button the larger the orb will be and thus the larger the portal. The portals will be paired, so you will fire two portals of the same color scheme and the color scheme of the next two portals will be different, indicating the new pairing. One could also allow only one portal system to exist(like in Portal the game), but I don't want to get into the gameplay ramifications here.
Functioning- The normal of the portal's plane would automatically be decided by your ship's orientation while firing the orb so that the portal will be facing you if you haven't moved after shooting the orb. The portal could only allow use from only one face to prevent problems, or you could color the two faces differently.For example, In a blue/green faced portal, If you shoot into the blue face it would come out of the blue face of the other portal and if you shoot into the green, it would appear from the green face of the paired portal.
Creating Limits- Portals should be limited in both their number and their size to avoid breaking the game. A portal generator could only maintain so many portals, and the limitation could function in two ways-
1. Same limit controls the number and size, so you can either have lots of small portals or a few large ones.
2. A portal generator comes with a specified fixed maximum number of portals it can maintain and fixed maximum size, these two being independent.
In both the cases, upgrading the(or buying a better) portal generator should allow for a larger limit.
This is all very rough, and I would welcome ideas. Pile on!
Lets Mod Portals into LT!
Why:
1. Mining: Way easier with portals
2. Combat: One portal before the enemy, one portal behind him, and watch him kill himself. Or show him into an asteroid. Or the sun.
3. Exploration: Intrasystem travel never looked so good.
4. Rule of Cool: Because we can?
The implications here would change the very nature of the game.
How:
Spawn Mechanics- One cool way to spawn portals is to have them spawn as a slow moving orb from your ship. Just like pulse lasers, but slower. As soon as the orb reaches the point where you want a portal, press a button (or hit it with a pulse laser? ) and it unwraps into a portal. The longer you press the "fire portal" button the larger the orb will be and thus the larger the portal. The portals will be paired, so you will fire two portals of the same color scheme and the color scheme of the next two portals will be different, indicating the new pairing. One could also allow only one portal system to exist(like in Portal the game), but I don't want to get into the gameplay ramifications here.
Functioning- The normal of the portal's plane would automatically be decided by your ship's orientation while firing the orb so that the portal will be facing you if you haven't moved after shooting the orb. The portal could only allow use from only one face to prevent problems, or you could color the two faces differently.For example, In a blue/green faced portal, If you shoot into the blue face it would come out of the blue face of the other portal and if you shoot into the green, it would appear from the green face of the paired portal.
Creating Limits- Portals should be limited in both their number and their size to avoid breaking the game. A portal generator could only maintain so many portals, and the limitation could function in two ways-
1. Same limit controls the number and size, so you can either have lots of small portals or a few large ones.
2. A portal generator comes with a specified fixed maximum number of portals it can maintain and fixed maximum size, these two being independent.
In both the cases, upgrading the(or buying a better) portal generator should allow for a larger limit.
This is all very rough, and I would welcome ideas. Pile on!