Anomaly Warzone Earth Forum

To the people who are responsible for Programming "This War of Mine",

I have a very interesting idea that involves expanding on the two-dimensional aspect of this game which will help it feel a bit more three-dimensional.

Instead of having just one plane of movement, why not have two instead? Or even three?
Adding more planes of movement would help to significantly increase the amount of explorable area inside a structure without having to increase its height.

I have already found a working example of this mechanic in a very old game from 1997 called "Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun".



This game is very unique in the fact that the main character, Tintin, is not always restricted to just one plane of movement.

In some of the levels, Tintin can go into the background and even into the foreground.
This really helps the levels feel more vast and requires players to think differently on what they need to do and how to get to where they want to go.



I am confident that this mechanic can be successfuly implemented into This War Of Mine without having to drastically change the game from a simple, traditional 2D side-scroller into a complex, 3D open-world environment.

But if you feel that this idea is too big for the current game, I understand.
Maybe you can save it for use in the sequel.

And if you were wondering why I didn't just post this in the Suggestions thread, I really felt that this was significant enough to warrant having its own thread and discussion.

Actually TWOM is a full 3D game and characters are moving "on planes" like approaching the stove, workbench, climbing stairs by a wall, lying down on a bed etc. However, 3D mechanics is restricted for gameplay reasons and that's the designers' call. Don't you think it works fine?

Borys wrote:Actually TWOM is a full 3D game and characters are moving "on planes" like approaching the stove, workbench, climbing stairs by a wall, lying down on a bed etc. However, 3D mechanics is restricted for gameplay reasons and that's the designers' call. Don't you think it works fine?

Yes it works fine.
But the thing is that the game is only using one plane of movement.
All of the actions you mentioned (Approaching the stove, workbench, climbing stairs/ladders, and lying down on a bed) only allow characters to temporarily leave the plane of movement.

If the designers decided to use more than one plane of movement, then the areas would become bigger.


For example, if you were to redesign an Apartment Building in the game to have a central Hallway, all of the floors in the Apartment would have more rooms to explore and, in turn, have even more stuff to find in them.

Sure. It was one of many decisions made on the early stage of development so changing it would recquire to rebuild the whole game.

Borys wrote:Sure. It was one of many decisions made on the early stage of development so changing it would recquire to rebuild the whole game.

Perhaps I've been using the wrong words with trying to describe my idea.
What I meant by adding more "Movement Planes", I actually meant adding more "Movement Rails".

The characters are restricted to going up, down, left, and right by "Movement Rails".
In the Cartesian Coordinate System, Left/Right would be "X" and Up/Down would be "Y".

If you were to were to use more "Movement Rails" in a Parralel Arrangement and connected them with "Z-Axis Movement Rails", you can increase the size of the areas without having to change the game to a 3D Free-Roaming Environment.