Rum Runner Physical Prototype Report

Physical Prototype

The complete playfield is divided into street fields and (not passable) house fields.
Every squared street field is divided into 9 smaller fields. Those are numbered from 1 to 9.
There are special pickup (blue) and delivery (green) street fields on the map.

There are 3 dice
- A normal 1-6 die for all players who play a police car.
- A 1-4 die for the player who plays the smuggler.
- A 1-10 die which represents the civilian traffic.

The game is round based.
The police players start on a randomly chosen street field.
The smuggler starts on a randomly chosen pickup field.
The smuggler draws randomly a delivery card and keeps it without showing to the other players. This is the target of the smuggler - which is only know to him.

First the civilian traffic (1-10) die is rolled. All fields with the given number are occupied by a civilian car for this round. Pass through one of these fields results in a crash.
After rolling their dice, the players (police and smuggler) move as many fields as their die shows. They have to move all the fields shown on the die - they are not allowed to move lesser fields!
The first to move is the smuggler, all the police cars follow.

When a player crashes with the civilian traffic, with another player or with a wall, he has to skip the next round.
The players are allowed to crash intentionally into civilian traffic and walls - but not into other players.

The smuggler wins when he manages to reach the (correct) delivery field without getting caught by the police. At the end of a round, he has to prove that he reached the correct delivery point by showing the (until now) hidden delivery card to the other players.
The goal of the police players is to stop and arrest the smuggler. This can be achieved the following way:
- When one of the police players manages to get into the same field as the smuggler, a 1-6 die is rolled. The smuggler gets arrested (and loses the game) if the die shows a number less or equal X – where X is the number of times, the police already managed to get onto the same field as the smuggler.
- For example: If the police players already achieved to get onto the same field as the smuggler three times, the smuggler loses if the dices shows a 1,2 or a 3.

The first layer (functional minimum) is more or less in place. The game logic is still missing since we focused a bit more on code design and some harder, more crucial development targets in the second and third layer (low and desirable target)
Since we changed some gameplay mechanics (you can get arrested by the police) we focused more on police AI and civilian traffic - since does become more important for the core gameplay.
The civilian traffic is already driving on two lanes with a basic collision detection and "stuck resolving". The path is chosen by randomly picking a destination and using an a-star algorithm to find a path to the destination.
The AI of the police is also already working in a pretty basic manner. They follow the player (also using the a-star algorithm).
The 3D graphics are working. The chase camera is also working quite well, but still needs some tweaking.

I	Attachment	History	Action	Size	Date	Who	Comment
pdf	PlayField.pdf	r1	manage	229.1 K	2010-03-22 - 19:11	UnknownUser	Physical Protorype Playing Field
jpg	pic1.jpg	r1	manage	50.2 K	2010-03-22 - 19:16	UnknownUser	Photo 1
jpg	pic2.jpg	r1	manage	76.8 K	2010-03-22 - 19:16	UnknownUser	Photo 2
jpg	pic3.jpg	r1	manage	64.5 K	2010-03-22 - 19:16	UnknownUser	Photo 3
jpg	pic4.jpg	r1	manage	55.1 K	2010-03-22 - 19:17	UnknownUser	Photo 4