Date: September 9, 2014
Up to more than one meeting a week, that's a good start! I'll be doing weekly updates, so these events happened over the course of multiple meetings and individual work sessions. We messed around with the weapons I created last week. In particular, the idea of pulling blocks out of the mass was particularly interesting. I'm not sure, though. It sort of feels like we are spinning our wheels a little on this one. Since these blocks are so prone to being moved, we considered the mechanics of Push/Pull and Grow/Shrink. They are fine mechanics, but they seem derivative to me and I still haven't come up with a way to reliably use these cubes. Fortunately, Leif was able to functionally replicate Jesse's simple prototype into UE4, so now we're in engine. Check it out to the right.
A Big Problem
So we have these physics cubes, but what are we doing with them? Because they're based on physics, they can't be relied on to do the same thing every single time. So how do we use them on a scale that isn't so large that we could put the player in a position where they might not be able to progress while simultaneously not making them so small that the feature seems tacked on. The latter is especially problematic when you consider the fact that, right now, these free floaty cubes are our concept right now.
We've introduced a sort of Time Dilation system (slow down, speed up, rewind). That might be our solution: Level can't be finished? Rewind time to a point where you can. Things are moving too fast for you to process or react to? Slow down time and work through it at a pace you may be more comfortable with. Currently, though, it seems more like a crutch to support finicky physics.
Not only that, but, as you may be able to tell from the above video, the collisions on those cubes is causing a slight hiccup in the framerate. It's not a huge deal in the video, but we don't have a lot of things happening in that scene. If we want to scale it up, it will be hard work optimizing it, if we can at all.
The Split
To that end, we split our idea into two differing concepts to toy with what we can do. For the first one, Leif took my idea of pulling a cube and ran with it. The first one refers to something along our initial vision, using the cubes to progress through levels via platforming on displaced blocks and time dilation. The second is one that I'm more interested in, EGP. Leif took my pulling-singular-blocks weapon prototype and turned it into something that is even more interesting to watch than the original piece we had.
PPlatformer
After writing all that for EGP, I realized that I should have probably put it on this side. I just don't care for this idea as much anymore. The basic idea is still the same, we have the cubes that you can displace and you can dilate time, but we decided to focus these aspects on platforming. Below is a few concepts that Jesse drew up to illustrate how it would work.
Take a collection of cubes, blow it up and jump across them. It sounds like something out a cheesy action movie and I'm not sold on the idea. Our problem persists that we can't have too many cubes or we begin to chug. How can we make this interesting and possible with a limited amount of cubes?
EGP
EGP refers to Explode, Gather, Project, and they are the three primary modes of gameplay that we currently want to go forward with. This name makes it a bit awkward to describe, so I'll rearrange them.
- Gather refers to collecting a smorgasbord of the cubes by way of some sort of gravitational field in front of you.
- Project refers to the ability the player has to throw these cubes away from themselves and at things. No longer are we throwing things at cubes. We are throwing the cubes themselves!
- Explode is the means by which you get more cubes. After destroying enemies or structures, you would collect the resulting debris and use it to create more debris!
Take a look for yourself, it's incredibly fascinating!
Excited About...
EGP is incredible, it interests me far more than the initial one ever could have. Not only that, but because the player carries them around, we don't need to design levels around them as set pieces; we can design levels around them as a player ability. Knocking stuff away, holding stuff down, keeping things away from you, breaking stuff, you name it! My designer senses are tingling, I'll think of something!
Worried About...
Occulus Rift might not be possible, unfortunately. As I mentioned before, the cubes cause a tinge of framerate issues and framerate issues do not mix well with the Occulus. According to Leif, if they can't sustain something like 45+ FPS, the user would be prone to nauseating disorientation. That's something we'll try to avoid. That, ultimately, might be fine, though. Especially since the other concept is platforming; first person platforming is a nightmare. Who knows, though. The way we are going, it doesn't seem like that idea will go through much longer.
Back To Unity?
This is more a fringe thought for us. We tested it and discovered that Unity can actually handle more cubes at a given time. Although, according to Leif, the difference is negligible enough to warrant sticking with UE4. I'll trust his judgement but, since I'm all but completely unfamiliar with it, I was a little excited to go back to Unity.