The Wonderland Board

Okay, okay, I know, there's already the WA3 Update Thread, but it seems to be all over the place. I figured as a way to pique interest (hopefully) in WA3 again, making a thread asking what people would like to see would be a good idea.

These aren't necessarily gameplay features - they could be options as well. I'm also not making this thread as a way to say "ZOMG MS GO ADD THIS AND THIS AND THIS", just to see what kind of stuff other people want to see.

I'll start off with three things that I'd like in WA3:

• 1) WASD Support/Custom Keymapping. While (in my opinion) the arrow keys on a keyboard work fine for the original Wonderland trilogy, if you're playing a WA trilogy game (or custom adventure) with a keyboard and mouse, using the arrow keys is cramped. Custom keymapping would let players choose what they want to use to move, pause the game, etc.
  
  2) Widescreen Support. Most modern computer monitors or TV's are moving towards 16:9 or 16:10 resolutions. While a 4:3 window can fit onto one of those monitors fine, I personally find it to look a bit distasteful. 4:3 isn't necessarily bad, but Wonderland in 1920x1080 would be amazing.
  
  3) Auto-Saving. I was playing WA1 earlier today, and alt-tabbed to check my Skype account. When I tabbed back, I was greeted by an MAV, followed by my own self-rage when I realized the last point I had saved was four or five adventures ago. While someone could argue "Stop being lazy and save the game yourself", if you're distracted or not thinking about it, then auto-saving would be wonderful.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head right now, but I'd love to see these features implemented.

Anyone else have anything they'd like to see?

A button which allows you to temporarily switch to first person view, kind of like the 0 key on the keypad zooms in on the player. That would be awesomeness.

Qloof234 wrote:
3) Auto-Saving. I was playing WA1 earlier today, and alt-tabbed to check my Skype account. When I tabbed back, I was greeted by an MAV, followed by my own self-rage when I realized the last point I had saved was four or five adventures ago. While someone could argue "Stop being lazy and save the game yourself", if you're distracted or not thinking about it, then auto-saving would be wonderful

This could be great, but only with separate Auto-save slots, which work like Portal 2's save system.

Master Wonder Mage wrote:A button which allows you to temporarily switch to first person view, kind of like the 0 key on the keypad zooms in on the player. That would be awesomeness.

WANT

Dynamic lights which have RGB color settings. I'm thinking of something like lampposts, lanterns, etc that light up a circular area, similar to the GlowGem.

The ability to drop an item from your inventory to prevent some unwinnable situations.

Also, a zip mode with instant travel to some of the most important locations in each area would be nice for people who tend to take breaks -- when I got my last star in WA1, I was almost ready to post in level solutions "where is the floing guy!!!" I found him right when I wanted to close the game and say that.

This is a very useless and tedious feature to make, but..

Saving progress online.

/me hides

I just hope indigo magic is going to be EPIC!!! Here's my idea:
You begin a certain level with indigo magic. You have to shoot a barrel, and then return to the exit. A gate is in front of the barrel, and the button is on the other side of this section.
You solve the level by stepping below the gate, and shooting the barrel with pow. The gate blocks the way and the shot is wasted; or is it???
You now use indigo magic to go back in time to the start of this section. You step on the gate button, and the other you shoots the barrel through the safely opened gate!

A few tweaks:
1: no more then three stinkers at any one time (so you can only fling across time twice).
2: if you touch, kill, or even alter the other you, a paradox will happen and you DIE!

I wish that there was an online editor so that multiple people could collab on an adventure at once. That would hopefully be less tedious than switching back and forth like MWM and I are doing.

mightymegraw wrote:I wish that there was an online editor so that multiple people could collab on an adventure at once. That would hopefully be less tedious than switching back and forth like MWM and I are doing.

You can use versioning control system like Svn, Git of Mercurial to do that.

SVN hosting:
www.assembla.com

Mercurial hosting:
www.bitbucket.org

Git hosting (the best IMO):
www.github.com

MyNameIsKooky wrote:Dynamic lights which have RGB color settings. I'm thinking of something like lampposts, lanterns, etc that light up a circular area, similar to the GlowGem.

So much this.
I'd even like it a step further, maybe, with directional lights casting better dynamic shadows as well. I do like the "dark" levels in WA and MoFI, but the lighting in the entire game, in my opinion, isn't very appealing.

I would also like HDR or something, but that would be pushing it, to be honest.

yot yot5 wrote:I just hope indigo magic is going to be EPIC!!! Here's my idea:
You begin a certain level with indigo magic. You have to shoot a barrel, and then return to the exit. A gate is in front of the barrel, and the button is on the other side of this section.
You solve the level by stepping below the gate, and shooting the barrel with pow. The gate blocks the way and the shot is wasted; or is it???
You now use indigo magic to go back in time to the start of this section. You step on the gate button, and the other you shoots the barrel through the safely opened gate!

A few tweaks:
1: no more then three stinkers at any one time (so you can only fling across time twice).
2: if you touch, kill, or even alter the other you, a paradox will happen and you DIE!

So you want to make WA3 a combination of WA2 and Braid. Actually a pretty good idea.

Muzozavr wrote:

yot yot5 wrote:I just hope indigo magic is going to be EPIC!!! Here's my idea:
You begin a certain level with indigo magic. You have to shoot a barrel, and then return to the exit. A gate is in front of the barrel, and the button is on the other side of this section.
You solve the level by stepping below the gate, and shooting the barrel with pow. The gate blocks the way and the shot is wasted; or is it???
You now use indigo magic to go back in time to the start of this section. You step on the gate button, and the other you shoots the barrel through the safely opened gate!

A few tweaks:
1: no more then three stinkers at any one time (so you can only fling across time twice).
2: if you touch, kill, or even alter the other you, a paradox will happen and you DIE!

So you want to make WA3 a combination of WA2 and Braid. Actually a pretty good idea.

Except there already is time magic.

Yes, floing. I don't think it works this way, though. Maybe in MOFI? I haven't reached the glove version of floing yet.

Nope. It's more or less similar to Brr.

I don't think that idea for indigo could happen, considering all the other magics have spellballs.

~xpr'd~ wrote:

MyNameIsKooky wrote:Dynamic lights which have RGB color settings. I'm thinking of something like lampposts, lanterns, etc that light up a circular area, similar to the GlowGem.

So much this.
I'd even like it a step further, maybe, with directional lights casting better dynamic shadows as well. I do like the "dark" levels in WA and MoFI, but the lighting in the entire game, in my opinion, isn't very appealing.

I would also like HDR or something, but that would be pushing it, to be honest.

Now that is something I want to see. It would be awesome if there was a setting in the Editor that you could set the lighting to Dawn, Noon, Sunset, and Night. The idea of the lamppost sounds cool as well.

TheThaumaturge wrote:

~xpr'd~ wrote:

MyNameIsKooky wrote:Dynamic lights which have RGB color settings. I'm thinking of something like lampposts, lanterns, etc that light up a circular area, similar to the GlowGem.

So much this.
I'd even like it a step further, maybe, with directional lights casting better dynamic shadows as well. I do like the "dark" levels in WA and MoFI, but the lighting in the entire game, in my opinion, isn't very appealing.

I would also like HDR or something, but that would be pushing it, to be honest.

Now that is something I want to see. It would be awesome if there was a setting in the Editor that you could set the lighting to Dawn, Noon, Sunset, and Night. The idea of the lamppost sounds cool as well.

With textures and daylight options, maybe those night version textures will be used for real. o3o

Indigo Magic speculation is "Fun Ideas" territory.

TheThaumaturge wrote:Now that is something I want to see. It would be awesome if there was a setting in the Editor that you could set the lighting to Dawn, Noon, Sunset, and Night.

You can already do that with the existing editor. If you want something like sunset, then just change the lighting to an orangish hue or something.

StinkerSquad01 wrote:maybe those night version textures will be used for real. o3o

They won't. The night textures make the objects stand out too much and look awful.

Loopy does say that indigo is the "future" magic.
My idea is kinda future based, but it's a bit too different from other magic powers.

yot yot5 wrote:Loopy does say that indigo is the "future" magic.
My idea is kinda future based, but it's a bit too different from other magic powers.

For the last time, this obviously means that it hasn't been discovered yet!

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That WOULD be very useful, and a lot more fair.
But a few boss battles (Mr. ZURKON 1st holiday?) would be very difficult, if not impossible without in-game saving.

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Emerald141 wrote:Your claim has no evidence to support it, and you're the only one with this viewpoint anyway.

No, I agree with that stance. I know at one point I pointed out that it could be very easily read either way, but personally I doubt it has anything to do with time.

There isn't any evidence that supports either stance at this point in time exclusively (keyword exclusively - Loopy's lines can be read both ways). If anything, Indigo Magic having nothing to do with time has more to support it (not quite sure how to describe it) - There's already a magic that manipulates time, Floing. Unless Indigo Magic manipulates time in a drastically different way, then having two time magics seems a bit strange.

Unless the Indigo Magic summons a TARDIS. I could get behind that in about five seconds!

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Hello!

Let me throw some fuel on the fire of speculation.

First off, I've made tentative first steps recently in getting going on development again. Just setting up the latest build and trying to remember where I was. It's been so long, it's almost like reading someone else's code.

I'm also looking at my feature list, and what I have left to do, so this topic is interesting. I'm mainly focusing on seeing what further changes can be made to the editor to make it more user-friendly and quicker to develop levels.

The main thing, I will say, is that major changes will not happen (e.g. a total re-write of the editor, or an engine change for the game). I have to work with what I have and finish it off - even it if does mean that the game will look somewhat dated, being basically the same look as the 2007 release of WA1.

So...

Lighting: Improved lighting effects etc will not be on the table. The current engine is not able to do good lighting effectively. I had actually tried this for MOFI - the original level was supposed to be Wonderfalls at sunrise, which streetlights illuminating the town and a gradual change in colours, but it just wasn't possible.

1st Person View: Sounds neat, but brings up a host of problems. The current engine is optimized for a particular viewpoint... Having you look around would mean I'd have to design all sort of things (underside of tall objects, skyline, further distance of the level, etc) that are currently invisible. Again, way too major. And - although it would look nice, it really has no use in the game.

Widescreen/Autosave/Keyboard Mapping: These are possibilities - I will have to think about them.

Dropping Items: Possible, although it brings up other possible problems. What if someone drops an object in a spot that later becomes inaccessible. (e.g. someone dropped their Magic Gloves at the beginning in Wonderfalls, just before being moved to Fire Island?).

Zip Mode: I will try to design the world of POTZ so that long walks become less frequent, ie have more connecting points.

As to Indigo: My original idea for it (as well as large parts of the POTZ plot) was actually quite similar to what yot yot mentions. Stinkers would even revisit the same level at different points in time, and interact with past and future versions of themselves. Is this idea still part of POTZ at this time? Well... TIME will tell, won't it.

I have ideas !
1- A lighting chomper !
That chomper give some light but it's still evil !
2-A rainbow magic !
The name is telep .
If you use it , you can make teleporters to go from place to place !
What about my ideas ???

I don't even care if I was proven wrong by MS himself right after getting support. I'm just happy that development has started again.
Speaking of which, I might work on AoDD2 later today.

Can you imagine trapping a past version of yourself in a floing bubble???
When will the bubble pop? Will this make a paradox? Does the past-you still do the same things?

Midnight Synergy wrote:First off, I've made tentative first steps recently in getting going on development again. Just setting up the latest build and trying to remember where I was. It's been so long, it's almost like reading someone else's code.

So it has begun once more. Don't turn back now!

Midnight Synergy wrote:As to Indigo: My original idea for it (as well as large parts of the POTZ plot) was actually quite similar to what yot yot mentions. Stinkers would even revisit the same level at different points in time, and interact with past and future versions of themselves. Is this idea still part of POTZ at this time? Well... TIME will tell, won't it.

Well, I sure hope it is! That could make for some really clever puzzles. Plus, I always love games with these kind of time traveling features!

kidkidaaa1 wrote:I have ideas !
1- A lighting chomper !
That chomper give some light but it's still evil !

There are already "glow in the dark" Chompers.

kidkidaaa1 wrote:2-A rainbow magic !
The name is telep .
If you use it , you can make teleporters to go from place to place !

That seems like a more costly version of Blink.

yot yot5 wrote:Can you imagine trapping a past version of yourself in a floing bubble???
When will the bubble pop? Will this make a paradox? Does the past-you still do the same things?

The past-you will probably just continue on like nothing happened, much like the other NPCs that get trapped in them.