Back then, all I knew of development was the basic C practices I taught myself with a "For Dummies" book. Now I finally feel I've had enough formal education and work experience to at least try to make something. Even if it's a complete flop, it's a hobby that I'd really like to pursue. I've been teaching myself how to use the Unity engine and I think a new Battlezone-style game is do-able.
I've given a fair bit of thought into what I would want to improve or change about the Battlezone games. After playing many rounds of BZ2 and even some BZ: Classic with a friend, he has also given me some ideas. Still, you guys are much more familiar with the game and I'm curious to know what improvements you would want to make for a successor?
Here are some of the random ideas I've thought of:
- I'm not particularly fond of how supply rate and capacity are tied to extractors. I think that the rates and capacity rules should be similar, but the recycler should provide a much larger cap (from 40 to, say, 80 using the current resource units) with even slower resource accumulation. Importance could be added to regular scavengers by implementing areas where meteor showers periodically strike, leaving scrap deposits.
- The satellite/relay bunker are particularly useful components for controlling units across the map. I would want to bring back the ability to pull up the satellite from anywhere. Ideally, a "fog of war" would obstruct anything which is not directly in a friendly unit's line of sight.
- Infantry are week. They just are. I'd like to see an infantry squad system to given them a bit more power and importance. I think they would be best suited for defense and should probably fail miserably if you send them out to directly attack a group of enemy vehicles/defenses in the open.
- The ability to modify weapons of the units you produce is a pretty awesome feature. I would like to see it expanded with some sort of "loadout" system which trades speed and/or ammo capacity for additional/more powerful weapons. Special loadouts and requisitions could (possibly) be restricted for use by actual players.
- I feel like pilots players in coop could be effective. Instead of being at the mercy of the commander for units to command and even vehicles to drive, I think pilots should be able to recruit units and specially equipped vehicles using some form of experience currency. This currency could be awarded by destroying enemies or by completing select tasks given by the commander, although I haven't figured out a particularly robust system for this. Similarly, I'd like pilots to be able to erect defenses and utility structures using the same currency.
- Tugs. What are they good for? Absolutely nothin'. Still, the ability to move objects is kind of nice. I think this functionality should be extended to either some set of combat vehicles or maybe even scavengers.
- I would like to implement an editing system similar to both Battlezone 2's editor and Halo's forge mode. Ideally, a satellite view would allow for terrain manipulation and first or third-person views would allow for object placement and editing. It could support multiplayer in theory, but I'm not sure if that would be important or not.
- In a perfect world, I would also like custom assets to be easily imported and spawned as well. Of course, these would have to be created outside the editor environment.