An Editors Riposte

Hi Tom  (our resource),

First of all; we need to keep this simple for a couple of reasons - there are only 16 weeks left of dev time (this is counting up both class sessions); and we don't have a graphics person/team organic to the group.

So - we are going to be stuck with whatever 2D images/sprites we can find that are open source. That being said, I'd stay as close to 'real world' as possible. Later on if the team stays together and we want to go full bore development then we can get a lot more wild.

So with that caveat - I'd say stay with normal zeppelin for the times etc.

And yes - I think you have it as the player levels up there needs to be

Increase in player hit points

Increase in NPC hit points

Increase in number of NPC's

Sprinkling of tougher NPC's (on both sides - think squadron ace's fighting against and fighting with)

With maybe a boss battle against an enemy ace and their squadron

Some way for the player to add capabilities to their ship

And yes - there needs to be zeppelins...

And I like the idea of the user having to make a choice right away.

So taking your story line I've come up with a concept of the initial story -

Player takes off in airplane (now here is the where some background information is going to have to be fleshed out - how does the guy keep his bird gassed up? Load up bullets? That sort of stuff. So clearly we are going to have to have our hero come from the future, with some kind of air frame that uses X fuel that never runs dry) - some kind of event happens and player transported to the skies over WWI Europe; Axis and Ally dawn patrol squadron getting ready to duke it out and our hero is smack dab in the middle of the fight.

Here again some kind of background information on the aircraft - it needs to be slow enough to be able to fight against bi-planes. We are almost really talking about the kind of vessel that was in the Descent series - ability to hover, move slow then fast etc.

Once the player makes a decision - the enemy npc's get killed and the player lands with 'his team' at their base. That finishes the intro, gives a nice segue to some kind of cut scene and then an invite to go on another patrol or some other task.