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[mokesmoe]

I just completed chemistry 12 and learned all about how breathing works so I got this down.

[Giaddon]

There may be some good reason, but it seems like there should be a "while" in between "in" and "underwater" (overriding the comma).

[leonelc29]

look cool, really short and clear.(the tutorial)

There may be some good reason, but it seems like there should be a "while" in between "in" and "underwater" (overriding the comma).

it try to say breathing in, then place are underwater.

[droqen]

There may be some good reason

Ran out of space ):

It's grammatically correct, if slightly harder to understand.

[Giaddon]

It is correct, yes. Just takes a second to process.

This also makes me wonder why English doesn't have separate words for breathing out and breathing in. That would be pretty cool.

[droqen]

inhale, exhale!

[J. Kyle Pittman]

It is correct, yes. Just takes a second to process.

This also makes me wonder why English doesn't have separate words for breathing out and breathing in. That would be pretty cool.

Exhale/inhale?

Doh, Droqen beat me to it.

[Giaddon]

I know THOSE. 

I meant words that don't share an affix. Unique words. 

[zukalous]

Awesome,

True story:
I had a friend who concentrated so hard while playing Star Wars: Rebel Assault 2 that he would involuntarily hold his breath. He didn't realize it until one time he passed out.

[moi]

actually a lot of people do that

[droqen]

xD Amazing story

moi, but do they do that until they pass out

... aside from those who mean to o.o

[Ashkin]

This looks cool and I would like to play it by the way.

[moi]

xD Amazing story

moi, but do they do that until they pass out

... aside from those who mean to o.o

no but a lot of people forget to breath once in a while

[SirNiko]

What will be the maximum amount of time a player will be required to hold his or her breath in one go while completing the game?

[droqen]

Well that's up to the player :3

If you take the route that facilitates such, probably not more than 30 seconds, if that that.

Oh- unless you just take the quick way to the end I spose!


---> But to be clear, there will be opportunities to hold your breath for much longer.

[droqen]

The following won't be happening:

Alright, so for some real devlog stuff, I've been thinking about some solutions to problems I've been having.

---> PROBLEM: How to reward the player for going out of their way to do things? I don't want to have gems/jewels that just count up a number, because that's kind of boring. Completionists can get a kick out of it, but I'm not particularly excited by it!

---> SOLUTION?: Rather than just 'look you found a cool place!' I'd like to reward the player with abilities or game-relevant things. Unfortunately: there are no enemies at the moment. Should I change that? Even if I do, I'm not convinced I can come up with enough game-relevant things.

---> SOLUTION!: Deactivated machines will be located underwater. The whole game will be filled with a bunch of these machines, and while submerged they're useless. I'm going to add some more mundane ones (doors), but the general idea is that the cave, while littered with jewels and stuff, also houses some kind of larger machine that is made up of several parts. I'm not entirely sure what they'll do, but... goddamn, is there going to be some kind of subgame made up of interaction with these machines?


Anyway, if you have any cool ideas I'd love to hear 'em O: I might be implementing some kind of hacking interface -- the natural 'cave' is already oddly littered with mechanisms (drains, faucets). It'd be cool to explain that; to eventually explain it rather than let it fall under 'game logic'! Of course, the ultimate goal would be to 'wake up' the entire big machine and then figure out its inner puzzle.


Originally I was considering a town that you could return to (and the game would save itself) but somehow this machine idea is making me feel better. And shit. The player's going to be a robot now :/ I guesss I've never actually done that before, but it still feels overdone. OH WELL


(There will probably be a secondary goal related to just getting rich as balls and running away with all the jewels. Forget the cavemachine's problems! Get rich!)

[SirNiko]

I like the idea of machines and such underwater, but this feels like an awfully complex thing to stack on top of the basic premise of "Hold your breath for reals".

I think you'd be best off keeping to that basic mechanic. Design the world in such a way that holding your breath for longer periods of time allows for shortcuts. Hiding too much cool stuff underwater encourages the player to simply explore without holding their breath, which is counter-productive to getting them to go along with the hold-breath theme.

Keep the mechanical design and graphics on hand, and when this game is complete make a sequel with a traditional oxygen timer and cool stuff to find. A game built around exploring underwater and fixing machines sounds awesome.

[Giaddon]

I agree with SirNiko -- keep it focused on the unique player participation aspect. Cram the place with secrets and peeps will just do what they want.

Consider a player-based reward, something like hidden rooms that contain the message "Eat a cookie" or whatever.

[droqen]

Hmm. This is good points.

And I think I should return focus to my original thought of:

Don't give rewards -- but drop the player into shockingly bad situations at unexpected times, or make easy-looking situations suddenly worse than expected. Create panic around breath-holding; if someone's already following the rule, they're likely to want to keep following it. If they don't care anyway, well, who cares?


Thanks for keeping me on track, guys :3

Maybe I'll just make a bunch of set pieces (dead machines) as minimal rewards that look kinda cool -- but are also rewarding just because you fought your hardest to get there.

[supershigi]

This is great for all of the people who hold their breath when they see someone in a movie underwater.

Hehe, that's exactly what I was thinking XD  There's that scene in The Little Mermaid when the Sea Witch turns Ariel into a human, and she suddenly can't breath under water anymore.  As a kid I'd always hold my breath until Ariel got to the ocean surface. 

Anyways, very interesting concept for a game.  I'm not necessarily against hiding a bunch of secrets and non-linear options, so long as all the options can be achieved within a reasonable amount of time (30 seconds... perhaps super ones can be over a minute).  Personally, if I were really trying to get into the experience, I wouldn't just cheat in order to find everything.  If I wanted to do that, I'd just go play another adventure game.  But I do agree that keeping it simple in the beginning is probably a good idea -- throwing in things like real life challenges to holding your breath or creating panic is great.  It would give the player a sense of fight-or-flight in the way that horror games sometimes do.