Thanks man, I will have those tubes glowing. They're going to be glass with lightning passing through them basically. I was planning on having either a helix spring and a metal ball at the end of each one or,.. my ultimate dream would be to have every tube connected to a cable that was anchored to the machine, and use physics to have it follow his head.
There's a few scenes during the intro, cut-scenes and ending where I have to animate some facial expressions during long sequences. I plan to make a suite of morph-target expressions for most of the main characters. I would also like to try actual dialogue aswell, but that makes me very nervous. However, if I can make something scowl when he's hit or look angry when he's shooting, I should be able to use the same thing in the cinematics. I have not yet tried playing with morph targets and exporting them. The scripting is well out of my reach at this moment aswell, though i'm hoping it's as simple as everything else has been and just needs syntax lessons.
I believe that a story should be richer than the game ever really lets on, so that there's room for people to develop their own reasoning. The notion that the scientist's family left him because he's working all the time is only one way to explain why they're gone. They could of very well be taken from him, or perhaps he left them. I will never say what happened. All I'll show is a house full of love and nobody there and enough wackiness and zanity going on to keep people from fully noticing until they get blindsided at, or near, the end of the show.
I have a few other funny ideas too, like the gigantic laser machine and strap-in chair being disguised as a cute little photo session with an old school camera and tripod. I'm gonna have the rat flutter his eyelids so he's looking cute and then BZZZAPPP! Rat = soldier. He'll be smoking in the chair and stand up and salute. Should get the point across without too much animating.
During this part, something will go wrong and chaos will ensue. You may discover later that this wasn't exactly an accident. Throughout the game, it will also be revealed to you that this event may have affected more than you realized and the fate of the whole world may rest on your shoulders! Oh snap. I smell a nuclear rocket ride!
I also have a developing set of ideas for a secondary set of characters I can introduce into the story as additional NPC's that lead you with dialogue or perhaps even participate in the game. For good or bad, this game will be as rich as I can make it and I hope to have at least a few layers of twists. One concept I had was the idea of resistance rats that live underground and are plotting various nefarious activities surrounding the scientist's experiments. They may not let on right away that they're concealing bad intentions and they may provide a nice gameplay moment of hectic combat.
I also wrote both the single and multiplayer games around the same exact storyline. In multiplayer, you are inside the training simulator playing wargames against the other teams. I also want to attempt multiplayer bots that I can use to have the player go in and learn the multiplayer parts of the game while in the offline storymode. I actually want to work it into the story that you have to go into the sim and beat the other teams before earning something you need.
My hopes is for 4 separate teams of up to something like 32 players. It'll basically be battlefield meets teamfortress meets the secret of nimh. Yeah, I'm gonna have an outside rosebush that is the only way into the mega-bunker under the whole house...you know, where mister nukie's been sittin since the cold war.
This story has been rattling around in my head for about 10 years. It and at least 2 others. One involving the most scary version of the boogieman in history, where you play the boogieman with various powers and a truly disgusting take on ragdolls and break-apart joints, and the other involving the most gory version of a werewolf vs vampire saga ever seen...oh and I'm also going to make Apocalypse: the MMORPGame, it'll probably be gory too.
I'm keeping this one nice and clean, though I kinda wanna blow the bugs to bits.
www.ratsgame.com has an ongoing update of the gallery, with videos and also I'm starting post these concepts from my notes into those forums if you're ever bored. I'm trying to pace it out, work on the demo first and focus all my efforts on making it as rich as possible while I still learn all i need to complete the project. If all is going well, I should have a flood of updates on there.
