Navigation Options

During the design phase of the game, I considered the problem of how the player could navigate through the solar system and came up with three possible solutions. Arcade piloting of the space ship, step by step plotting, and map based plotting.

The arcade piloting would essentially be the map, but the player would control a space ship icon by moving it around the screen. This would most likely be done using the same movement system that was used in episode 35. When the player got near to a planet, there would be a cut scene. To mess with the player the planet would have a slingshot effect causing the player's speed and direction to change. Getting too close to the sun would result in death. Leaving the solar system would still win the episode but with a negative score applied and a speech from Ykcul.

The step by step plotting would be the map screen. When the player clicked on the planet that they wished to go to, the animation for the planet would be triggered. Once that was done, the player would be taken back to the map screen at their new location and able to select their next destination.

While either of the first two options would have been fine, the idea of having a visual path that the player plotted was what I desired. Thinking about the problem, I realized that a very simple to implement path system could be put together really quickly. What made this path system really interesting is that it would be trivial to tie the path to the animation system creating a fly-by animation presenting the trivia preparation text as part of the fly-by.