Had a brainwave today amongst all the other stuff I was doing at work… “Build the levels out of physical objects!”
It works pretty well, certainly adds a whole level of emergent activity, I wouldn’t really call it gameplay as such… yet… still trying to work out fun ways to destroy the bad guys.
One idea I had was some sort of king of the hill type thing bonus points for the player who finishes on top of the stack.
I think the key will be to dig into the bowels of the physics system and record the forces acting on the rigid bodies and turn that into damage, at the moment I’m using the difference in the final velocity and it doesn’t really work for stationary objects that are getting squished!
Any hoo I’m off to New Zealand for a week of snow skiing and partying, see you all in a week.
Check out “The Incredible Machine”. That might give you some ideas. The creator Jeff Tunnel made some newer 3D ones but I didnt think it translated very well.