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[Eketek]

Orthot II is *the 3D transport puzzle.  Conceptually, it is all about manipulating a variety of puzzle elements into permitting you to reach goals. 

And, perhaps more importantly here, its status has been upgraded to "complete".

Puzzle Concepts & Elements:  obstructions, platforms, moveable blocks, ladders, stairs, keys & locks, gates, portals, and some reasonably vicious creatures.

Orthot II also comes with its own puzzle editor and, in theory, a forum for sharing puzzles.  To make it seem even sweeter (and a much larger project), I also made use of a couple new sound synthesis algorithms which I devised while revising a sound effects generator. 

Orthot II is available, both as a demo and as a full version, at its website:

orthot.eketech.com


* So far as I can tell, its predecessor, "OrThought" was the first of its kind back in 2009, and not much comparable has arisen since then. (although there are a lot of fun issues that can arise when one combines animation a third dimension, gravity, and portals, yet insists also on using discrete physics)

[Eketek]

Orthot II now has a functioning Demo (only one level, requires Unity's browser plugin):
http://www.eketech.com/games/orthotII_demo.html

Because it is a demo, I figure it ought to do the sort of thing which demos ought to do, so I added a title screen that used the "lightweight" version of my voxel engine.

[Udderdude]

For some reason the controls feel very stiff and unresponsive - I had to hold down a key for a second just to get the guy to move, and even then, he moved two spaces at once.  Something's seriously wrong here.

[Eketek]

For some reason the controls feel very stiff and unresponsive - I had to hold down a key for a second just to get the guy to move, and even then, he moved two spaces at once.  Something's seriously wrong here.

It will probably work better if you tap and release your arrow keys.  (something I neglected to mention in the demo)

I think I might also have forgotten to add sane behavior (or at least sane settings) to the "ArrowState" tracking code, so I'll probably work on that for a while.

Of course, if could also be a bug somewhere in the giant compromise I had to make between the continuous animations it uses for presentation and the discrete events used for the puzzle.

[Udderdude]

For some reason the controls feel very stiff and unresponsive - I had to hold down a key for a second just to get the guy to move, and even then, he moved two spaces at once.  Something's seriously wrong here.

It will probably work better if you tap and release your arrow keys.  (something I neglected to mention in the demo)

Tried that, the character didn't move at all.  Whatever you did, it needs fixing.

[Eketek]

Because the timing appears to be off and I only have my own system to test with, I uploaded a version which only looks at arrow-button tapping (or WASD tapping).

[Udderdude]

Well, WASD doesn't work at all now, but the arrow keys work fine.

It looks like a cool concept, good luck with it.

[Eketek]

Well, WASD doesn't work at all now, but the arrow keys work fine.

The WASD issue has been corrected. 

The correction to the WASD failure also made the input system more responsive by exactly one frame while nothing of importance is animating and by one tick (a fifth of a second under Orthot II) while there are significant animations to manage.

One of the major design goals involves support for a planned Game Creation System, so I built more complexity into it than Orthot II actually warrants.  At one point, I reversed the execution order of the underlying framework, so that I could safely alter the list of frame-hooks while iterating through it.  The call to "consumeArrowState" (which was breaking WASD movement) forced me to pay attention to that part of my framework.

[Eketek]

After a long self-imposed silence, Orthot II is now complete.  I have updated the original post with the details.