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[increpare]

A big problem with this whole concept, the "past as replay" idea, is that it forces player copies in "the past" to behave basically unrealistically because they cannot react to new information.

That doesn't trouble me too much.  I guess the main thing is that it encourages a certain style of play - with players hedging a lot.

One thing I like about that idea, it would be interesting to make it where when you snap, you don't immediately get to see what's happening far away from you. Like maybe when you snap the visuals from the "new time" only appear at your character and spread out from there over a few frames, like from your perspective the "old" photons are still coming at you from pre-snap and it takes a second for light to catch up to the fact you've time-teleported. (I don't know if I can think of a non-contrived way to explain to the player why that happens in non-game-mechanics terms though. Emission theory of vision?) This would institute some kind of minor penalty for snapping "too much" while still allowing you to snap a lot if you really need to, because once you snapped it would take you a second or so to even be able to see what's happening around you.

Sounds a bit boring to me, but I guess if it makes a better game, then....

[mcc]

A big problem with this whole concept, the "past as replay" idea, is that it forces player copies in "the past" to behave basically unrealistically because they cannot react to new information.

That doesn't trouble me too much.  I guess the main thing is that it encourages a certain style of play - with players hedging a lot.

It does, and I'm curious to see what that style of play is like once I get something outright "playable"...

Sounds a bit boring to me, but I guess if it makes a better game, then....

Well just as well because no way am I implementing it for the compo : P

[mcc]

Day 25

Mac build (r110)
Windows build (r110)



Status: Added level maps and free-moving cameras.

[rszrama]

Hey mcc, just tried the latest Mac build and noticed 1) that the free-moving camera wasn't working for me in single player mode and 2) the player doesn't "slide" against walls.  So, if I'm walking along a wall and start holding up before reaching the edge so I can hug it as soon as I'm around the corner, I stop moving entirely. I understand how this is likely working from a collision detection standpoint, but it's awkward / unexpected from the player's standpoint (and makes it tricky to navigate some of the close corners / single block width corridors).

Also, I really like the snap blur... good effect.  :D

[godatplay]

(I don't know if I can think of a non-contrived way to explain to the player why that happens in non-game-mechanics terms though. Emission theory of vision?)

Why don't you do a radial blur with some glow to give it a sort of "tunnel of light" effect? I think that'd be a simple and intuitive way to get the point across, at least as a first pass at the idea. An even cheaper solution would be "radial ghosting," as seen when you enter into the stock trading mode in American Dream.

I don't see a problem with the concept being confusing at all, but I guess I thought Inception was a perfectly straightforward movie. But this idea seems like one of those distracting things that will prevent the game from getting done, heh. Those kinds of things are so tempting...

[mcc]

Rszrama-- thanks.

I havent actually been testing single player mode usually, I'll give that a look though.

Also I'm not sure if I said this but the wall collision logic as of that update was a placeholder. You might find the update I'm uploading tonight interesting tho...

[mcc]

Day 26

Mac build (r113)
Windows build (r113)



Status: Working physics! Chipmunk is now completely handling not just collision detection but all movement. This means not only that you can move up and against walls correctly (and there's a fun little bounce when you hit a wall that I think I'm going to try to keep in) but that players can push and shove each other around. (At one point I even had a little kickback when you got hit by a bullet, but I took it out for now because it wouldn't be able to work when you shot a "past self" player).

Downsides: There's now a little bit inertia of when you start or stop moving; the characters move like they have heft, sort of. I tried to minimize this but there's still a little bit. I'm not sure if this is actually something to fix or not. Also, if you just sit perfectly still for 10 seconds until your copy spawns on top of you, your copy actually spawns literally on top of you and it's just sort of weird.

Anyway the physics is a big deal because what I now have is basically a system where "new" objects (i.e. objects being controlled by a player) are totally driven by the physics engine, "old"/"past self" objects are driven by the recorded movements and velocities from when they were "new", and interactions between the two are natural and physics-y ("old" objects can't deviate from their paths, but they can knock "new" objects out of the way). You could at this point fit in any kind of physics Chipmunk supports (like I at this point technically could, and as an experiment at some point might, turn on gravity), or I think without much difficulty drop in a 3D physics library like Bullet, and the time engine would just handle it.

I think I'm considering this the first "playable" demo; there's nothing left at this point to "apologize" for, so to speak. You should be able to play a multiplayer game at this point and it should be fun (assuming the game is fun at all). Everything from here on out is polish, adding maps, and "additional features" like health/ammo canisters. If anyone's able to give this version a play, I'd be really curious how it works out for you (and I need to find someone to play against…). I'd be especially curious, if you tried any of the previous builds, what you think about the new "hefty" movement.

[rszrama]

Having a birthday party tonight (turned 28), so I'll be able to compel friends to play with me as their "gift". Will let you know how it goes!

[mcc]

Having a birthday party tonight (turned 28), so I'll be able to compel friends to play with me as their "gift". Will let you know how it goes!

Lol, that sounds awesome, thanks :D Let me know how it works out.

Couple tiny tips:

- It's better with a analog gamepad
- If when prompted for "fire up" you press ~ (backtick) on the keyboard, your "fire left" button becomes a general "fire last direction" button (this makes it easy to say put two people on one gamepad)
- It does store control settings when you quit and restart

[mcc]

(Will, I at some point really am going to try to answer your technical question at the end of the last page, it's just a little tricky to type out)

[mcc]

Day 27

Mac build (r118)
Windows build (r118)



Status: Abandoned project; will be spending the remaining time in the compo implementing a multiplayer version of VisiCalc.

Wait, that's not it. What I meant to say is that I have implemented a replica of the Apple // text display system which will allow me to do Apple // style menus. In addition to being STYLIZED, these will hopefully be more functional than the old menus once they are done. Huge thanks here to Gerard Putter who allowed me to use his extraction of the Apple //c character set.

If you want to play with the Apple // mode, enter F6 at the menu screen (you can also enter F6 after the game has started for bizarre results). Once in this mode: use arrow keys to move around, type to enter letters, hold down control and type a decimal number to enter a special character, use F1 to save the screen to disk, press F2 to load it again, F3 to enter/leave invert mode and F4 to show/hide the cursor.

This still needs some work, in particular I have made no effort yet to make Apple // pixels map cleanly to screen pixels so there are problems with aliasing and funny-looking seams between characters (click to see PROBLEMS):

[Will Vale]

Downloaded this version and had a play - sorry it's taken me so long to actually try!

It seems stable and fast, the controls work well and the movement has a nice massy quality to it. I found just experimenting in single player really confusing though - it was easy to mix up my current and past selves, although wiggling the controller helped

Is there a limit to how many times time wraps around? I had somewhere between 9 and a dozen copies of myself on screen in one session. I'd sort of imagined from the description that when time wrapped the world reset, and snapping was the mechanic that allowed you to meddle with the past, but I think I had that completely wrong.

I didn't understand was why I would want to snap during play?

Take the above with a big pinch of salt - because I was playing on my own I didn't get the kind of natural evolutionary pressure that comes from having an opponent - I just stayed dumb

The bottom line is that this is a really interesting project. Even more interested now!

Will

[rszrama]

- It's better with a analog gamepad
- If when prompted for "fire up" you press ~ (backtick) on the keyboard, your "fire left" button becomes a general "fire last direction" button (this makes it easy to say put two people on one gamepad)
- It does store control settings when you quit and restart

So, having a gamepad would've been great, but without one we had to play TOOK.  It was a bit of a challenge, but still a fun gameplay experience... I reeeeally look forward to net play, as I'm not often together with other people interested in playing experimental video games with me.

We really enjoyed the game.  It was fast paced, confusing as all get out, and fun to experiment with.  We each tried different strategies during the course of the game, which just felt like a natural response to the game mechanics.  "Oh, what happens if I just snap constantly?"  (Hint: you die quickly... it's a lot easier for your opponent to predict where you'll come back if you're constantly snapping than it is for you to predict where he'll be when you snap.)

We did notice the controls saved, but one thing that really needs to happen is for you not to have to exit the game after each round.  We probably would've played further if it just kept a kill count and restarted the round after a simple keypress or something.  The reason this stood out as particularly annoying is I had just finished showing my friend Super Crate Box, which very quickly throws you into a fresh round after death unless you press Escape to go back to the menu.

Now, I'm not sure we played long enough to get over the confusion.  Some of it was owed to the limitations of my keyboard... I suppose it can only handle so many concurrent keypresses, so occasionally we'd run in a direction we didn't intend. But other than that I realized one of the easiest ways to win was to just camp somebody's past form.  Since you can't control your past lives, it actually just seemed much easier to pick on your opponents past form... which resulted in us not often squaring off against each other.  It felt more just like a race against your opponent to camp your past self at times.

But that didn't ruin the game for us.  It was still quite fun, I just didn't feel like we could really implement a strategy to counteract our opponent's strategy.  Maybe if we'd had more play time we could've figured it out.

Game rounds were typically quick, rarely getting us a full journey through the timeline.  When it did, though, it was a lot of fun.  Oh, and we did have several fun self-kills.  I like the frozen snapshot of the end game, as you can easily see when you shoot yourself in the back.

Anyways... keep up the great work.  I look forward to playing some more!  We toast you. 

[X3N]

Awwww yeah. Sounds great. FPS ala http://www.achrongame.com/site/

[mcc]

Day 28

Mac build (r122)
Windows build (r122)





Status: Added attract mode!

I spent way too long thinking about these names. I sort of want to rename the first two to "HANK" and "TARA" but then that looks/sounds too similar to "JAVA". The rule for the names is they have to sound like they were ripped out of a 90s comic book.

Also fixed the aliasing/seam problems with text mode that I was talking about yesterday. Though it's hard to tell the difference because all these images I'm posting are resized to 700x438.