Zeta Flow

Some ideas I got when I was playing aroung:

• - Setting custom HP for parts
  - Random rotation for parts
  - Part list (for selecting parts that can't be clicked)
  - Multiple switch parts (all parts listed need to be destroyed to destroy targets)
  - Triggers (when part A is destroyed part B starts shooting/rotating)
  - Shortcut keys for making parts bigger/smaller
  - Downloading levels for offline play (saving/loading levels to/from text files maybe?)

I had more of these, but one level crashed my computer and I don't remember them anymore :( I'll add them if I recall them.

EDIT:
And hey. How about aiming with mouse and moving with keyboard? :)
Or moving with mouse and aiming with keyboard.
Could be added as options.

- Multiple switch parts (all parts listed need to be destroyed to destroy targets)
- Triggers (when part A is destroyed part B starts shooting/rotating)

I too would very much like to see those features added. Keyboard aim and mouse move as an option would be great, too.

There are a lot of levels now, over 1000, so its kinda getting hard to find the really creative levels. The statistics help a lot but I'm not sure authors should be able to rate their own levels. Granted, some people will probably never bother playing a level without a rating, so maybe a default score of 2.5 to 3 stars would be best. The ability to leave feedback to the level designer would be helpful too. I see a lot of levels with extra huge bosses and so many weapons that it is hardly playable from the lag it causes. Not sure if they realize that most people don't enjoy getting spawn killed but I suppose the rating system would be enough of an indication.

Either that, or a level design section here on the forums where faq's and wip's could get posted, etc. An "Editor's Choice" gallery would be really cool too since there are quite a few really creative levels out there like Jonah and the Whale. If I think of anything else I'll edit this post. Really neat game you have here.

Another big shout out for triggers. Custom HP would be nice as well.

I'd love to see variables in the AI logic window. If statements would be fantastic as well, although that's probably just a trigger.

A simple field to directly set what a part links to would be nice (down in the dimensions window?)

Weapon Customisation:

• - can shoot
  - rate of fire (could be set to 0 to allow the above)
  - cool down time, this would be a foo,bar foo would set the time it fired for, bar would be the time till it fired again (this is not the same as rate of fire, with this you could make the single fire a burst of 5-6 shots then not do anything for a while)
  - 'variable' things like:
  • - laser beam width,
    - arc of fire for the spread shot,
    - all at once or spiral for the spread shot

A way to synchronise weapon fire, or better still to time it. Weapon a fires then b, then c with this many seconds between each shot. Weapons a and b fire, pause for 30 or so then c and d fire.

I'd like to be able to set limits on the amount and speed a part can rotate to follow the player as well. Basically to make it look more like the fixed rotate. Follow the player between angle x and angle y but no faster than z.
A way to switch between tracking, fixed rotate and random rotate. (weapons control centres?)

On the topic of turning things on and off it'd be good to be able to have the force fields flicker/phase in and out.

A way to make groups of weapons to make it easier to apply all of the above to lots of things at once.

Yes I do know I've more or less asked for a functional programming language. Sorry but this was so much fun to play with I might have got a touch carried away =)

Also to ease the moving of parts it would be nice to be able to select multiple parts which would all move like when the core is moved. Pretty much like the way you handle files in Windows.

Grouping on the editor? So you can select a group of parts that after that will move, scale and rotate as one object?

That'd be really really useful.

Having just built a 7 object turret only to find that I've got it pointing away from the player I've a huge amount of work to do to flip objects around the center of the group, rotate by 180....

I would like a custom waypoint tool were you just drag a line for the core, or seperate parts to follow.
And the option to make the parts follow the line either by its axis or in a locked angle.

I think this would be very useful.

New weapons and parts would also be cool.

How about the ability to make your own parts? That might be a bit much but on the other hand it could be easy to implement.

I dont like that its possible to rip off levels created by others, by loading it up in the editor, and save it in you own name.
This happened to me not long ago, Im not exactly angry about it (can't blame him for having poor imagination), I've noticed that this has happened with other levels as well. A lock-button or something like that wich make it impossible to save other users levels would be apreciated.
I doubt I'm the only one who think this is annoying.
By the way I also like the thought of level comments and triggers/weapon customisation.

It can also sometimes spoil the idea of the level if you can see how it's been made.

Some great ideas blooming here! I am slowly adding in your suggestions, just don't have much free time anymore. I've got some manual controls in that I'm testing now as well as some bug fixes I'm trying to iron out. I really like the idea of grouping objects in the editor btw, and I'll add in some security to prevent people from ripping levels (personally, as the maker of the game I don't care if people rip my levels, but taking levels from other players just isn't nice). Lastly, I did have a Levels forum when I started but converted it into a Help forum instead, I'll put in a Levels section again and we'll see how that goes.

~MD

Thx MD. Though I do like the ability to examine how the great levels were created in order to learn, but the re-saving of someone else's level as your own just isn't right. Some kind of lock or protection would be very nice to protect the classics that have shown up here.

I've got an idea conserning rotation.
It should be possible to restrict the "rotate part to ship" ability to ,for example, rotating between 0* and 30*.
The part would rotate after the ship, but inside this angle.

Actually, you could do that restricted RotateToShip already with a couple of parts; have one part rotate to the ship, while another part attached to it rotated back and forth through the angle you wanted. This would produce a part whose angle would sweep back and forth across the ship -- it would suck if it was a laser, but singleshots doing this would be an interesting variation on just pointing directly at the ship.

Of course, if you meant that you wanted to define a certain fixed wedge of screen such that when the ship entered it, a part would rotate to face the ship, but if the ship was outside it, the part couldn't rotate to it, that would be harder. I can't think of a way to do that off the top of my head, but if it were possible, you could make some interesting effects.

Hey MD, just thought about something else that would be kind of nice for the editor:

A special function that turns the Core, and all attached parts. Could have the same set up as part turning, with q, w, r, and t for 45 and 1 degree turns.

This would be pretty cool if you can implement it. Let me know if you need some help writing the actionscript for it, and i'll see what i can come up with.

I prefer the more general solution of item grouping. If you could group a set of items and move or rotate them such that they all maintain their location and orientation relative to each other, that would be really cool. I've asked for this before but I understand MD has better things to do than grant all our wishes instantly. I still hope we'll see this someday, though!

A command to jump to the next or previous item without having to click it would be really useful too. I like to stack parts, and it's a pain to have to unstack them all to get at the bottom one. It would also be nice to be able to work with zero-sized items, or items way off the screen. That or a text editing mode would make certain designs a lot easier!