Custom Game/Game-Engine and Censorship

[isaiahk9]

Hey, I'm making a game/game engine. It's a game...well because, it's a game.
However, it's also a game engine (2D, mind you. Some 3D affects, but still 2D), because I made the code, so that one could easily change it to create entire racing, fighting, shooting, platforming and puzzle games in less than a few hours. Anyways, the highlights of the engine include:
- physics engine (and damage to the player/interaction with the objects)
- destructible terrain (with varying degrees- some terrain just splinters (like crates), and some actually shatters into smaller pieces, that actually have their own physics)
- some simple lighting effects
- particle effects
- pretty realistic water effects (momentum and such - adjusted to you swimming, water looks fairly realistic, actually splashes and such when you jump in, electricity hitting the water spreads through and damages things)
- pretty realistic flame effects (spraying gasoline on things causes them to soak up the gas, and then if one sets something on fire that is covered in gas, it spreads to everything touching, flames produce variable amounts of smoke, fires eventually die out (die out instantly when water is poured on), causes terrain to become damaged, sparks fly off the fire, which can ignite new fires)
- characters and stuff (got a lot of different models)
- weather effects, rain and snow actually effect the gameplay
- fairly intelligent enemy AI that learns from your gameplay style
- gamer achievements
- highly detailed gore (see below)

It's going pretty well, but the last feature is actually what's causing my problem. My friend made some decent gore and body effects on his game, and asked if he could contribute. Knowing that he was a skilled programmer, and that his details would make my engine better, and that his effects could be amplified by the effects already in my game. As a result, he and I made one of the greatest body and gore simulators I've ever seen. It's 2D, and it's fairly cartoony, so it doesn't get grotesque, no matter how violent things become, but here's everything included:
- all character models are composed of several layers (like in the new Wolverine game): the first layer (clothes/armor), the second layer (skin), the third layer (muscle), the fourth layer (internal organs), and the fifth layer (the skeleton). When a player is damaged, the character model changes. Being shot in the torso makes some of the layers dissapear, making semi-realistic wounds appear.
- dismemberment occurs. Mostly random explosions result in body parts everywhere, but snipers can take off heads. As well, Dragon Swoop shots result in a dragon swooping down and ripping off a part of the player.
- wounds use the water effects and particle effects very well. Grey matter actually squirts and can stick onto things after a headshot, and shots to the torso can result in some laughably unrealistic blood pouring out.
- this went a little too far for me, bodies on the ground (remain until the player respawns) will squirt a little bit of fluid if jumped on.
- blood can stick onto walls and other players for a little, so there came the hilarious time when testing out team deathmatch with the AI, my entire team and the entire enemy team got splattered, so that it was nearly impossible to tell who was on which team (from a human's perspective).
- Dragon Healing (an achievement) results in the character's shattered body coming together. Blood flies back into the person, and the layers re-form over each other.
- Meat-shielding downed enemies (when an enemy is knocked onto the ground, they can be pulled up to be used as a human shield by an enemy player) can occur, and one's shield will disintegrate (instead of the normal gore effects) when being shot.

Anyway, yeah. The gore system can be widely hilarious, and after showing it to some people, we've all agreed that the style it's presented in (a cartoonish style, think Fat Princess, except this detailed gore doesn't even get grotesque even then).

So, here's the bottom line question, if you skip all the reading above.
BOTTOM-LINE QUESTION: The gore system is great and everything, but I realize that some people won't appreciate it. I want to include an option to turn gore off, but I can't think of a good way to do this. I definitely can't just slap a "CENSORED" sign over everything, because the ample particle and water effects would leave much of the screen under a dark box marked "CENSORED". And I definitely won't change the blood to green and say it's Koolaid, that would just look stupid, and still too gory. I could just leave it out, but that would take a while, and would look kinda weird. I was wondering if any of the clever people here at compsci had an idea.

Thanx

[Tony]

I think this calls for some screenshots.

It might be interesting to have a "level" of censorship. Some constants that would limit how many layers of the character can be blown off (so a "mild" will let the armor fall off, maybe even allow for a flesh wound, but the rest of the layers will always remain intact). Similarly it could also adjust the constants of how much/far the blood shoots out, if at all.)

[isaiahk9]

As of now, the engine is not opperable, as I'm going over the code for commenting and more efficient practices. Once it's ready again I'll post some screenshots.

Thanks for the idea Tony, seems like a good idea. It wouldn't take as long to do as complete removal, and it would still make the game look good.

[saltpro15]

Wow I am excited to see this

What language is it written in?

and btw

isaiahk9 @ Thu Oct 15, 2009 wrote:

*snip* And I definitely won't change the blood to green and say it's Koolaid, that would just look stupid, and still too gory.

Hey, it worked for Halo

[isaiahk9]

I'm glad you're excited, I'm excited that the wounds system will work. Hopefully it'll mesh properly with the rest of the engine.

As for the green blood, lol, yes it did work for halo. But that didn't have dismemberments or seeing the actual wounds on the body. It was just like all the grunts kept a pouch of koolaid in their helmets to keep their soft skulls safe.

As for the language...this is a little it embarassing, but I started this in the summer in Visual Basic 6. The language just feels to intuitive and simple. I can easily make decently powerful programs, despite the language's limitations. I decided to pick up where I left off with the engine, and see how far I could run with it. Surprisingly, I've managed to keep on rolling.

Any drawbacks I've found I've compensated for. I make everything ridiculously efficient for VB and because it isn't OOP, I had to edit the functions so that it could act like an OOP language.

All in all, VB has served me very well. Couldn't believe that it could handle the water effects though without crashing.

[SNIPERDUDE]

isaiahk9 @ October 15th 2009 wrote:

- fairly intelligent enemy AI that learns from your gameplay style

That alone is a huge undertaking - I'm currently working on an vast AI system right now in Python using genetic algorithms crossed with a weight system (different choices have different weights).

I can't wait to see some screenshots or small samplings, sounds awesome.

[isaiahk9]

@SNIPERDUDE: I'll post some screenshots as soon as the engine is up and running again.

Yeah, the AI was murder to make. Especially because I tried to make it easy to use in all game types that one could create with the engine.
That's what I did, I used genetic algorithms and multiple weight systems. I also made the program record past "strategies", so that if it "remembers" your play style, it adapts more quickly. Trying to make AI across different game types didn't really work too well though, lol.

[saltpro15]

How's the progress on this?

[isaiahk9]

Sorry it's taking so long to show it off, but I'm kinda swamped with work right now.

I added in the gore filter, and it works well. However, the engine crashed, and I have to go through fixing the bug.