I remember when first playing Mario 3 on NES. When I became the raccoon for the first time and gained the ability to fly it was awsome - there was a whole other stage above the clouds (or at least tons of secrets). I remember the feeling of leaving the ground for the sky. But the earth was always there ready to great me if I wished to come back (or lost the raccoon) I going to cut the intro and get to the point. I want to create a game where the player controls a (human) character who has wings and can take to the sky at will. I will try and make the game as fun on the ground as in the air. Giving the player a choice of wether to fly high in the sky or just hover above ground or walk. Of course if you want to explore an underground area you will be confined to the hieght of the complex - making the gamer feel all the more free when they complete the underground task and take to the sky once more (like letting a bird out of a cage). I think the games initial setting will be in a forest sort of like the forest moon in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. This is because a place like that has three main levels: the ground, the bridged village of the trees, and then above the trees. Imagine breaking through the trees out into the sky to get a better view of everything or (more importantly) being on the ground and knowing you have the ability to do so. Im not done yet there is more to my idea but I just want to find out if Im talking to myself first. Your input would mean alot to me - thank you.

I certainly think that the feeling of flying has humongous potential. I also agree that capturing this feeling would best be done in 3D, considerably more so than with virtually any other genre.

There are a lot of flight sims, but I think the thing that''s closest to what you''re talking about would be Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64. In that game, jumping three times while wearing the wing cap will let your character fly around. Another game that comes to mind is "Nights" on the Saturn console. I don''t remember a great deal about that game, but I believe there was some interaction on the ground, and most of the game was oriented around flying through certain airborne courses in a set period of time.

And regarding your suggestion of a treetop village setting - I, for one, think it would be a lot of fun to have something like this where, for whatever reason, a group of enemies persues you through a treetop village, and at some point you''re forced to jump off the edge and fly away to escape them. Or if some of them were also airborne, and you had to try and cause them to crash into trees or whatever to escape.

Also one of the most amazing aspects of flying is the ability to land. If the character is always flying (or can only fly on some stages and walk on others) it would take the fun out of flying. Nights on saturn was cool - the problem was he was limited to the sky he could not land - and when you where not Nights you could not fly.

I was also thinking about studing the behavior of birds and how they fly and land and take-off(particularly the wings - probably rent some national geo videos). One interesting feature is how their wings move when they are about to land (they seem to flap them rapidly to soften the landing.

I remember seeing the making of the movie The Lion King in which the artists studied the actions of lions.

one last note: I agree with the fact that the game would be best realized in 3rd person 3d but I can only program with directdraw (I know no D3D what so ever) and I know no 3d modeling techniques. In short I have to make it 2D.

Landing always seemed to me to have more "impact" in 2D games anyways. Also I think that because of the lack of the extra dimension, the feeling of freedom when going fom a say cave to a forest is greater. And in 3d games it seems that when you look out ahead of you, all you see is sky instead of the cool scenery whichi would be the whole point of working in 3d anyway. 2D is always good especially if it''s one of your first games.

One thing that came up while flying in a dream was that if you maintain a horizontal position for long flights not only is it more areodynamic, but it''s easier on the back.

Well, you don''t have to have wings to fly...If it''s a fantasy setting then you can use magic, in a sci-fi setting you could use a jetpack strapped to your back or even an "anti-gravity belt" which would be really cool.

Play Drakan! Once you got your dragon, it is awesome! Even when you are on the ground, he follows you

Three stages: walking yourself, riding the dragon, or flying (with dragon). Wonderfull game... Play the third world!

Flying is great. Multiple levels of flying is great as well. What I mean by this is there are some games, like Soul Reaver, where you can''t really fly but you can glide. This limits your freedom somewhat (can''t just fly wherever) but still gives you the ability to use the gliding to solve puzzles and its still pretty cool to just glide around, especially down from a high ledge.

Another limited-flight example is in the SNES game Demon''s Crest by CAPCOM. In this (2D) game you could fly but you couldn''t gain altitude... all you could do is maintain your current height or let yourself fall. This worked well with some of the game''s platform action as you''d have to find high ledges from which to start your flight.


Also, there was some game I used to play on the Amiga (I think it was called Exile?? or something similar) that was more sci-fi based, you could fly using a rocket pack on your back, using a Lunar Lander style physics system. Another cool example of different ways to allow for flight.