I always wanted to make a game on a sphere, seeing as it's more pure than a wrapping rectangle, and doesn't require invisible barriers.Seeing a video of the new Stardust for the PS3 may have spurred me into action though.
I wanted to use super elegant quaternions and stuff, and have some workings on a bit of paper somewhere for how to calculate collisions between circular objects in orbit, but it all turned out to be uneccesary: the speed of today's computers is super awesome, and i can get away with simple collision checks for overlapping objects. The only "special" thing i needed to do was a gridding system on a sphere, which is basically like a gridded cube, projected onto a sphere. This means the number of asteroids i can have is limited by the rendering rather than the mechanics.
So far this is just an engine. Someday i might make it into a fully fledged game. The main stumbling block is gameplay- how do i make it harder, more involving etc. Asteroids is a game that gets easier as you destroy stuff. Perhaps i have wormholes spewing asteroids, or a sinistar boss. Maybe bonus "Crystal Maze" style bonus levels where you shoot gold but not silver. Plenty of ideas, no solid plan yet. On the backburner for now.
I'm also pondering making a game on a 4d hypersphere represented in 3d space, or rather 2d on the computer monitor, natch. More likely to finish the asteroid game.
I also have a page full of puns for level names.
TBC..
Here's a link to the thread on TGC. More info and downloads there.
