For our final project, our programming class needs to expand the features and functionality of the code we've been designing together. I'm looking for suggestions and feedback for one game proposal idea: a bubble-popping game.

Each feature that we implement to expand the current code base will be worth points, which is how we are graded. I've attached my project proposal to this post so you can see what I'm thinking about so far, but would like more feedback.

The code base currently allows us to draw simple 3D primitives like cubes and spheres, as well as perform transformations to them (scale, rotate, position transforms) and animations. We can specify all of this information in an XML file, as well as lights, object materials, keyframe information, etc. So my proposal attempts to add things like user keyboard/mouse inputs, a skycube/skydome/skysphere background, collision detection, and a few others.

The game isn't very advanced; it'd probably only be "fun" to a 3rd-grader, but I think it'll be fun for me to implement. Does anyone want to look over what I've got so far and chip in your own two cents?

Based on? Nothing, really. Think early '80s gameplay: you compete for a high score and hope you can beat yourself. Your mouse shoots a laser through all bubbles in the scene. They pop. You have to move the viewpoint somewhere else to get other bubbles to pop and maximize your score. Otherwise, you may never get the bubbles to respawn close enough to shoot within the time remaining.

Bubbles don't currently move: once their centerpoint is defined, it grows from tiny up until they pop, then the centerpoint is moved to a new location, and the bubble is drawn again. No bubbles "fall down" anywhere. Am I misunderstanding your question?

How do you lose the game?
I think there needs to be a time limit. Maybe the score gained can be related to the size of the bubble.

You could also have objects which fall/leap/fly/etc. out of balloons when they pop, which can also be shot.

I was meaning powerups/powerdowns. The water droplets would also be nice though.

I hadn't thought about colo[u]r/shape differences. That's a good idea.
I like the HUD radar idea. Will it be difficult to flatten the 3D field to a 2D plane like that, though, so people can tell whether bubbles are above or below their viewport (kinda like BZFlag ^[1] where flags on the same plane as the player are brighter and flags on different planes are drawn dimmer)?
The cross-hair would be interesting, though would that be dependent on both the spacial distance from the bubble, and the size of the bubble?

I like these ideas. You even sparked some ideas for a multiplayer version where you can only shoot bubbles of your team's color, or "neutral" colored ones that you, or the enemy, can both try to get. Of course, multiplayer may have to wait until after the project is finished (for school) and I have time to work on it afterward.

I like these suggestions, weapon_S!

And titties