[singleplayer, puzzles] Interactive Landscape

[krateos_29]

Well, After this little project, I'm back with the icebergs project. I'm planning this project as a two years projects.


General game idea: The main idea is to have a very modular estructure (programming, gameplay and envirorments). Basically, the game is a first person GAME (not shooter) about puzzle solving “a la portal” (find the exit with a given gameplay). Every puzzle is an iceberg (100% of the game takes place in the artic) and the main objective is to reach the end (“magic light that teleports you to another iceberg”). For that, you’ve got a special artifact/skill; you can play with the climate. You can do global climatic changes like make all colder to freeze water and stuff and create solid parts, warm it to unfreeze them, wind to take impulse, fog to hide from you enemies, and stuff like that. The main idea is that this changes will always be GLOBAl and not local, si if we choose “hot” all the envirorment will change to “hot”.

Anyways, that’s just the main idea, when playtest time, I’m sure a lot of things will change, but for now it’s ok. The main idea is still to play with clima and weather.
About the story? I can’t tell a lot by now, but Thruman show is a big reference for me.

Yeah, I know. The menu shouldn't be one of the first things you do when you make a game. But I really needed it. It's because the Betatesters. I must be able to deliver just and executable with the maps to test in a easy way, and this simple but modular menu offered me that.

The menu was done with Scaleform ForecourseUI. Thanks a lot for the tuts Allar!

The background is a UDK level with a plane with the opacity for the silhouette for the boy, then the level rendered behind it and a particle system rendered above it. Then, in the top of the stack the UI is rendered.

For now in the menu you can quit the game, change the resolution or go to a new game (open whatever map I want).

For betatesting it's cool enought, but with time, I'm planning to integrate more options and later the load/save functions.

In the other hand, a very first version of the project (without that menu) can be downloaded if you want to test it and give me some feedback.

- 4 levels.

- Stunning Ice Cube texture

- Main objective: take the Ice Cube to the orange hole.

If you want to test it, you can download it here. I need to know if the reflective eater behaves strange in levels 2 and 4, and of course, if you like the "gameplay" and how hard do you find the different levels.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4816743/01-Dev_ice_prot.rar

[DavidStrife7]

Definitely a unique concept, I think there's an educational angle possibility for this game, it could edify people about something like global warming, or teach kids about
how the elements work at different temperatures etc. Those are bad examples, but you get my drift, it just screams educational game in some parts for me personally.

[Hellclown]

This looks good, can't wait to see progress.

[krateos_29]

Definitely a unique concept, I think there's an educational angle possibility for this game, it could edify people about something like global warming, or teach kids about
how the elements work at different temperatures etc. Those are bad examples, but you get my drift, it just screams educational game in some parts for me personally.

Yes, the educational angle will be there. I don't know how yet, but it will be there.

This looks good, can't wait to see progress.

Thanks!

In this video, you can see the complete resolution of the 4 levels



Lot of feedback, lot of stuff to fix.

• Jump (Solved)
• Lame menu (Solved)
• Water shaders problems (Solved)
• Lack of hints (this then goes to the player making bad deductions)
• Extremly high fortune factor
• Annoying ice cube sound
• Unloop music (so Randy can talk)
• Redesign some areas (use orange as a hint)

[krateos_29]

Dev_Ice is no longuer Dev_ice, now it’s going to be Interactive Landscape. And the player will have to solve puzzles with macrochanging the landscape (fog, night, rain, etc, and you can also combine them). The other day I had an “eureka” moment and it helped me a lot to solve a lot of conceptual gameplay mechanics. As Valve would say: we assume stuff that we think it’s true but it’s not and that limits us. The core of this games is; the player has to transport objects in order to activate events for macrochanging the scenario. My mind automatically associates do something change with and object > Button pressed, ergo, I need buttons (you can see them in those screens, the blue shapes in the floor). Well, I discovered that this was a huge limitation because the levels are big natural desolated landscapes (not apocalyptic) with diffuse limits of the map. Why? It just doesn’t make sence that the player has to puto those interactive cubes or balls in exact places of the scenario. Doing a button means to create a whole infrastructure near the button so the button makes sense there, and that is not cool. My solucion? Goodbye buttons.

Now the players needs to put those interactive cubes or balls in areas (defined by ruins, natural stones suspiciously in circle, etc, but big areas, not buttons. Also, this creates “good” mechanics because the player also triggers the event when entering in the area and that is awesome to feed the exploration. If the player seens something natural strange him will go there. And even more than that! It also helps me to create new puzzles. Imagine one of this areas in a hill and our interactive object is a ball (ball>hill>balls slides>ball doesn’t trigger the event). Time to think!

[krateos_29]

well, lot of hard work done this weekend. Now I'm not alone, and we are three: me, a programmer and a concept artist! Now this is a group and we've got responsability because we expect from each other so hopefully we will make a good team. For now, we are setting on the demo for kickstarter.

If you want to make a good game, you better do a good gameplay, but if you want to make an excellent game, you need to offer cohesion between the gameplay, the visuals and the narrative.
In PrIL (Project Interactive Landscape) this is going to be achieved by offering a visual representation of the dynamic macro-changes of the scenario. For example, if you need to activate the rain to make something grow instantly and then been able to climb to that cliff, you will get an instant rainy day, but if you also need the night so you can travel fast, you will get the combo night+rain, and we want to make sure that every state is really symbolic and unique (cohesion between gameplay & visuals).

LUT’s helps a lot in this process; doing a color correction directly in photoshop and the take it back to UDK is… amazing. Unreal matinee is also a good tool to achieve this “modular climatic design”. In the case of the fog, we want full fog when the “fog event” is on, but we want also more fog than usual when the rain is on. How do you achieve that? Unreal Matinee.
When the fog event is on, I animate the fog density parameter; from 0.05 to 2.5. For the fog of the rain, instead of animating the fog density parameter, I increase the Z location of the exponential fog density. In that way, the same effect is acquired but using two variables, so you don’t need to worry about hard transitions or problems between 3 values of fog density. Keeping stuff in a binary form always helps to put some order.