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[RevCosmosis]

Ghost in the static (working title) is a game that I'm hopefully going to be making! All I have so far is an aesthetic style and a rough idea of what I want to base the mechanics on, which is definitely the right way to go about making a game. I'm making this devlog as motivation to actually make the thing.

I'm going to stop this first post here and make another one where I actually talk about everything that I've done, because I want to keep this first post open for editing later along in the development cycle. See you in about five minutes!

[RevCosmosis]

This game started as an idea I had for a shader that I made an art test for. I had been drawing with some pens recently (for school), and I made these things:



I ended up using this style for a school project, but I wanted to continue it into something digital. I made a shader that would divide the screen into different levels of brightness, and then apply different textures to them. Using a simple scene of cubes with some hard shadows, I ended up with this thing:



I made some hatching textures (hand drawn, of course!), and used those instead. I also applied an edge detection shader to give more solid outlines to the boxes.



At this point, I decided I wanted some antennas. At first, I tried using simple cards with drawings like in my original sketches, as just a single stalk with some things sticking off of it. I decided that wasn't a good style, so I started putting together a bunch of antenna "pieces" that I could assemble into models. That UV sheet ended up looking like this:



Assemble those into models, and we get where I am currently:




So, where from here? Well, gameplay. I didn't set out from this to make a game, but I like the style too much to not do anything with it. I'm thinking of going for a sort of FEZ-style adventure puzzle game, but with more of a focus on mechanically focused puzzles like The Talos Principle. It's the kind of game that I like designing, so I want to play to my strengths.

I'm toying around with the idea of letting the player turn themselves into a radio signal and use the antennas as a mode of transportation, or even having the player be some sort of omnipotent presence that can manipulate the antennas to accomplish stuff. It's all very up in the air (hah) at the moment. Stay tuned!

(Also I'm really sorry for the low bandwidth users among us! I'm gonna be shrinking the images down after I post this)

[RevCosmosis]

Made some progress on the gameplay ideas!

Different machines can input or output signals as radio waves. The player can then grab these signals out of the air and send them in another direction, essentially acting as a mirror. The player, at first, can't move while redirecting a signal. However, they will eventually find an upgrade that allows them to grab a signal, and hold it while walking around before sending it again. Another upgrade allows them to keep a signal after sending it (so they can send the same signal multiple times without grabbing it again), another lets them store multiple signals in memory, etc.

The player can also manipulate signals (presumably after an upgrade has been obtained). They can alter things like the amplitude and frequency, as well as apply affects like delay (duplicating a signal) or filters (high/low-pass). This will then change how machines with inputs behave. For example, a fan machine blows harder in proportion to the amplitude of the incoming signal. Another example is a gun that shoots multiple times when the signal is duplicated via a delay.

It's also be possible for the player to change how they themselves behave through the signal manipulation. A bigger amplitude means a bigger player. I haven't figured out what the rest would do.

I also wrote some music that I think might fit the mood of the game. I actually wrote it for something else, but the music in the future will probably follow in the same direction.

I'm going to try and have a playable version of some of these ideas within a week, but school is eating a lot of my time away. Fingers crossed!

[TheChaoticGood]

Are you going to do rotation like in FEZ or keep it static?

[RevCosmosis]

Are you going to do rotation like in FEZ or keep it static?

I'm not sure yet! I think it's going to come down to whatever control scheme feels best. I've never been a fan of angled isometric controls (where up isn't actually straight forward), and I have an idea of how to get around that. I just need to actually get a player moving around, and see what camera scheme works best with it.

I haven't touched this game in quite a while because of school getting super busy. However, summer has rolled around, and now I have time to actually work on this!

[RevCosmosis]

I've gotten a bunch of stuff done in the last few days! If you want a chronological development of the game, there's



3 4 5 videos I've uploaded that show how things have progressed. If you want the short version, here's a summary:

Player movement is probably mostly done. Movement automatically snaps to 45 degree angles, depending on how the camera is oriented. It can be a little awkward at times,as sometimes its not clear when the angles change. I got a bunch of art stuff done, and I'm pretty happy with it. The scene is rendered through three cameras at once, but I don't anticipate performance issues, as the game is running entirely without lighting. I got a little bit of sound work done, although what I got done has pretty much just let me know that I need to put off some of the audio stuff until I can afford a quality microphone for recording. Lastly, I've set up a little bit of the architecture for handling signal input/outputs.

If you want the really short version, here's a couple of screenshots:




EDIT: You'll probably notice that the art style has totally changed! I decided that the sketchy style was both too limited in its applications, and took a little more effort to produce content for than I really wanted. It may make an appearance in the final game (as I plan on making a lot of different areas to explore), but it's on hold for now.

[RevCosmosis]

I added a bunch of things!

Falling off the map (and possibly other death states in the future) cause you to return to the last one you touched.

There's now a Signal class that objects can use to communicate with each other. I encountered some funny bugs! I implemented moving platforms! They've been improved since this video was uploaded. There are now pushable boxes. They also fall when you push them off of ledges. (They have also been improved since this video went up).

I'm really enjoying the format of uploading short little videos to show off new features, although it does make these update posts a little harder to follow. I don't want to stop what I'm doing though, so I might just edit together all of the recent videos for every time I make a post here. Either that, or I'll try switching to the gif format that a lot of people seem to be using. We'll see!

There's still a lot to tackle. The box pushing code, while it works, isn't great to play with. It's super easy to accidentally brush against a box, which will cause it to move. I'm looking to change it so that you actually have to push it a little bit before it "takes" the move, although I haven't figured out how I want to actually handle that behavior.

I also recently discovered that movement is faster when holding two arrow keys at once rather than one. I tried normalizing the movement vector, but for some reason that made the movement really choppy. I think I also want to make single arrow key movements lock to 90 degree angles, which is a great excuse to go ahead and just rewrite the movement code entirely.