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Customisation V1.0 If there's one thing that appeals to a crowd of fans, it's the ability to customise. At TMA, we can customise our configs in many ways: text colours, background colours, signatures, thumbs... even entry/exit sounds in TMA Chat. Even if you're inclined to think that customising all of these things is too much of a "burden", chances are you're likely to have customised them anyway. And this applies, to some extent, to gaming. Visit the Ask TMA board, and note the reference to Custom Wrestlers (i.e. "Fat guys") in Mort's description of Dr. Night. I can relate to this, because the only reason that I play these wrestling games is for the custom characters; I don't even watch WWF anymore (and screw "WWE", I never watched that). What is alluring about creating the custom wrestlers, is
(1) that you choose the moves that you feel most comfortable with, and;
I've always thought that Twisted Metal would be another game capable of intense customisation. Actually, TMBO already proves that... you can choose your preference for methods of scoring, as well as other wide-ranging options available for the match, to best suit your ability and limit cheap players' tactics. But still, there are a number of other ways that Twisted Metal could be customised by the player: - Vehicles' appearances may be edited, or re-created entirely. The problem with this is that it might lead to the custom vehicles being used much more frequently than the designer's official vehicles... but, on the other hand, the driver of the vehicle could remain when you edit the vehicle's appearance, so at least you'd get the same story while progressing through the game. - A fully-featured Create-A-Car mode may be implemented. Not like the shitsack option of TM4, but a well-thought out and powerful tool. Instead of a few simple specials offered, there could be a wide range of specials to choose from, including: -- All of the Twisted Metal vehicles' specials included within the game, as well as specials of vehicles from previous Twisted Metals. -- Normal weapons may be altered significantly, and be used as specials. For instance, a power missile may be given the slight ability to home in on a target, or a napalm may be converted into a missile-like projectile. All of this may be done by offering the player to select a regular weapon before performing certain tasks to it. For instance, in the example concerning the napalm, the player would select "napalm", then enter a menu for how to launch it, and select "missile" (as opposed to say, "napalm")... he may then be given the option to control how much damage this new weapon is capable of doing- which would be strictly related to how fast it regenerates, so that there is little chance of it being used cheaply. Finally, the player is given the option to control how the special appears in-game when is fired; this may be done easily by allowing the player to choose a progression of colours as the special undergoes transition from when it is fired, to when it makes impact. Then, all the player would have to do is give this new weapon a name, and assign it to any custom-made cars in the future. -- There could also be the option to create an entirely new special. Maybe provide means similar to editing a normal weapon? Think back to the days of TM2 where all the weapons had a trademark sound... sounds could be one of the options for the new special, as well as the ability (and efficiency) to home in on enemy cars, perhaps Spectre-style "Ghost" capabilities... not to mention the appearance of the special itself. - To ensure that custom vehicles have no intrinsic advantage over other vehicles, the attribute system can be made more pronounced than in TMB. Given that there are the fields: "Speed", "Handling", "Armour" and "Special"; the player can be allowed a maximum number of attribute points, which would only be enough to nearly fill 3 out of 4 fields (a Maximum of 30 points, or perhaps fewer). TM2's Minion would not be able to be fully reproduced, but a revamped Spectre would not be able to ram the designer's version of Warthog to death. Fair? - In creating a vehicle from scratch, there should be a very wide variety of "car parts" and options to choose from: everything from vehicular height down to tyre size. Colours are a must, and TMB has opened the doors for varied ways for firing weapons from the vehicle. This would mean that cars that didn't make the cut to this Twisted Metal title could still have their presence felt. I should state that the size of the car created, and also the particular parts selected should have some bearing on the handing of the car: this, along with the attribute system mentioned previously, would help ensure that the created cars are as realistic as their official counterparts. Might I mention too, that particular car parts could be made to offer additional specials. For example, attaching an ugly pair of Mr. Slam-like appendages to a car sized like Spectre could allow it to have that Mr.Slam-like special (perhaps as a secondary special). Note that I never said that it would be as effective; features such as armour and vehicular height could have an extensive bearing on how efficient it would be. Wouldn't this make for a lot of interesting new gameplay? - Driver downloads. I think the most pressing issue with customising vehicles, is that the vehicles themselves, their drivers and respective stories may eventually be disregarded to some extent.. which doesn't do the impressive Twisted Metal storyline any favours. But with the introduction of the PS3, and if downloads really are made feasible, then perhaps offering alternative "custom" storylines for "custom drivers" could be made possible. Until then, maybe it might simply be worth having no further stories for custom vehicles... providing the gameplay improves significantly? Well, I suppose that's it; my ideas on customisation for today. If you agree to anything, or have any ideas at all on how they may be improved, feel free to reply. If you'd like to add any ideas of your own, feel free to blab. If you don't think like the idea of customising Twisted Metal, feel free to indicate this and please explain why. Thanks! |