Game worlds are typically quite static, with some games allowing you to change the world, and even fewer allowing changes that affect movement in significant ways. One of the ideas I wanted to explore was to have the world change significantly, but the coordinate system keep the player in a “reasonable” place even while the world was changing under him. The game idea is that you are playing the role of a tiny ship inside a giant creature. As you traverse the blood vessels and shoot the white blood cells of the immune system, the creature becomes more agitated. As its heart beats faster, ripples run down the arteries, and the entire creature may start moving about. The game becomes more difficult not because the enemies are tougher, but because the world itself is changing and becoming somewhat disorienting.

Turn on animation to see some movement of the map.

(diagram showing a moving corridor for a dungeon crawl game)
(This is a screen shot of the Flash demo.)

The article about the demo goes into more detail about the code.

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4 comments:

kaolin fire wrote at June 11, 2008 3:08 AM

Code notwithstanding, it's beautiful :) And the code's pretty readable at a glance. And a nifty idea, to boot. I hope to get a chance to play with it. ((I'm thinking there should be a simple "death valley" game in it, at least))

Too many games on the brain just now...

Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous wrote at August 14, 2008 8:44 AM

The idea is nice and the demo is very very cool. Though I wonder how such a feature will be implemented in say an RTS game. I can see it being implemented in Adventuring/Dungeon crawl games.

But an RTS game that adapts its terrain dynamically will be awesome.

Amit wrote at August 14, 2008 6:26 PM

Yes, I had an adventure/exploration game in mind when writing this, and not an RTS. I think it's challenging enough controlling one ship with moving terrain, and don't know how well it would scale to controlling lots of units.

Anonymous wrote at September 25, 2008 6:30 PM

I like the idea of changing game worlds. Hogwarts (the school from the Harry Potter series) comes to mind. It can add a puzzle element to a game, where you need to figure out why and in what way the world changes, calculate next transformations and use it to a strategic/tactical advantage.