Toroidal asteroid FPS

I think it's an idea worth money but*
since i'll undoubtedly never get around to it..

i've always wanted to make a driving around shooting people game
where the playing field is a giant torus (donut).

think a donut 30 miles in diameter.

i think this would make for some nifty game play,
especially if you modelled the gravity correctly
and had the ability to get airborn.

seems torque could be adapted to this.


a more complicated setting
is a "blob" world, generated by blobbing together spheres
randomly in three-space.

huh ?

well, i have to resort to technical words then:
generate a bunch of random point mass sources in 3space,
and then construct an iso-surface of all points in space
where the magnitude of the summed gravity vector is some constant,
say 1.

let that iso-surface be the surface of the world.

this gets you a few nice things:
- the gravity vector will always be perpendicular to the surface
- gravity will be well-defined everywhere in space,
- it solves collision with the ground because
for any point in space you can just test the magnitude of gravity there,
and if it's larger than that constant,
you know the point is inside the surface of the world.

it would be a bitch to texture,
and would definitely require some major changes to any terrain renderer,
but would really have some interesting gameplay, i think.

i actually got some very simple prototypes of this going,
complete with little bots cruising around the generated surface,
but my distraction x laziness quotient inevitably got out of control.

orion


* if i actually had some money for every time i've said this,
i could afford a new joystick i betcha.