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This is a bit terrifying, but I know better than to think that a book comes out fully formed or a movie never has to be cut.


The central mechanic is using a camera to take pictures.  An example would be keeping certain things in focus (say, a wounded child) while other things are out of focus (say, the guy who accidentally shot at the kid).  Different photos convey different meanings and, thus, are worth different things to different parties.  For example, a rightwing newspaper might want a heroic looking American soldier giving aid to a village or a sinister photo of a leftwing politician.

The most current build of the game, which is a bit like a sandbox to try out the mechanic, is up on the IMMUNITY competition page at http://musegames.com/community/immunitychallenge/ (http://musegames.com/community/immunitychallenge/), but I will be iterating--regardless of the competition outcome--a new build approximately every two weeks.  Those will live on my blog at http://www.bentropy.com (http://www.bentropy.com)

I would love: feedback on the mechanic.  All of the art is temp while I try and really nail the mechanic and make it fun.  Some things to expect in the next version: refined controls, an auto-exposure/focus to make more action-packed gameplay possible, picture valuation based on objects in the frame and how they have been composed.

Now this is a wonderful idea! I can see though that 'rating' the composition will be quite hard to code out well. I'll try it out later, but this sure looks promising!  :) :handthumbsupR:

Holy shit, this sounds awesome! It's like what I wished they'd done with the reporting part of Global Conflicts: Palestine.

Trying this now. Tried it.

So are there any subjects to photograph in the game yet? I spent a few minutes running around some hills with trees and white text, but no Pulitzer-material in the making anywhere...

It would be good to maybe have the white text in the landscape fade in as you get closer. Feels weird to have it around all the time, plus makes it hard to read when there's overlap.

Wow, yeah!
This is great news.
I've had an idea like this for a while, it's great to see someone going for an implementation!

How far are your systems?

My ideas were something along the lines of propping around hit-boxes which are key image elements, then seeing how much the player has managed to capture key elements.

Another idea I had, was using a special texture with colors identifying important part. I.e, the eyes of a child that's placed in a certain situation, would have a "photoscore"-texture.
With this technique, the entire world would be able to view in "photoscore"-mode. capturing an image and scoring it, would then go through the original image and search for contrast variations, etc, and it would go through the photoscore texture. One scoring method could compare the light variation in pixels with high photoscore and the rest of the image. i.e, it would try to judge if it's under-exposed or over-exposed.

Uh, heh, sorry I'm rambling so much. heh.
Did you read this thread?
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8594.msg271605#msg271605 (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8594.msg271605#msg271605)

*gonna test, but I'm on a netbook, might be too crappy hardware here*

yup, unity plugin crashed. I blame my netbook. Will try on a real computer later.

Rating the composition might end up being fairly easy based on what I know about an object’s color, place on a grid, distance from the camera, whether or not an object is in focus or not, and whether or not an object is exposed correctly.  I won’t be able to know if it is brilliant art or just a screenshot, but I can know if it fulfills requirements about what information is portrayed and what is obfuscated.  I’ve currently got a pretty finessed focal distance, focal range, exposure, and zoom.  I’m putting the rating system together and will try and squeeze that and the auto-mode into the next iteration.

The white text is all temp nonsense.  I’m debating if the white text even works and if it should move the plot along or just be some gameplay marker

Looked at the other thread.  I’m gonna try and make the player’s response to the difficulty define the bias  :gentleman:  I’m not entirely sure how I’ll do that, but I know I want to get the game’s core mechanic pretty solid before I start throwing in content.

Wow, really awesome to see someone making this game.  I'd thought of this idea myself at one point as well.  Best of luck making it all work!  :)