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[Pixelthief]

Asunder is (will be) a game 'revolving' around Time & Space manipulation, loosely Metroidvania.
This is a Tech Demo of the now virtually complete core engine.
All graphics, sounds and music are merely placeholders.


This demo highlights some of the capabilities of the engine. You can:

• *Rewind Time
• *Slow Down or Speed Up Time - Specific to Each Object
• *Run Along 360° Surfaces
• *Attack By "Rewinding" Enemies
• *Parse Generic Scripts
• *Much Much More

This engine is currently ready to move into the next phase of production- making an actual game out of it. I'm glad to hear all feedback, especially critical, as this is the time when it can most influence the game's core. I'd love to hear how it runs (or doesn't) on everyone's computers. You may experience issues if your GPU is not particularly good, as some of the pixel shader effects are strenuous and on large textures.

In the next few weeks I'm planning to start putting together a team of people who would be seriously interested in working on this as a potential commercial product- I'm open to all ideas. I'll post more about that later in the other forum, but if you're interested always feel free to contact me. Its not too often someone's got a complete engine thats completely malleable, ready to start making a game!



So to everyone who recognizes me from haunting various communities for the past decade- Hi! And before anyone asks- I started making this a loooong time before Braid. Though I agree Braid is quite awesome!

Controls:

• Arrow Keys :: Move
• Ctrl :: Attack
• Shift :: Jump
• Enter :: Rewind Time
• Escape :: Menu

and for the purposes of the tech demo testing, I've included debug controls:

• "+" (plus) :: Speed Up Time
• "-" (minus) :: Slow Down Time
• "L" :: Set the Player's speed (to same as above controls)
• "X" :: Sends the player rewinding for 5 seconds
• "O" :: Blasts you quickly backwards through time
• "P" :: Lowers gravity to 30%
• "Q" :: Executes the "BOSS" script
• "Z" :: Pops up a dialog displaying the level contents
• "H" :: Pops up a dialog displaying the current sounds

Anyway, please let me know what you think. Thanks!

>Download<

[Skofo]

I love this!

It's just so freaky and nonsensical but doesn't seem totally thoughtless and random because of how it pays startling close attention to detail in some areas like water and swinging.

The disorientation and unpredictability of the game reminds me of playing games in my youth, a time when every insignificant aspect of a game filled me with awe. It may or may not just be the Super Mario 64 music, but I really enjoy this game either way. I would love to see more of it.

[Pixelthief]

:D Thanks! Yeah, I was very attentive to detail especially in the time rewinding engine- everything should be 'pixel perfect'- even sounds that are playing will reverse half way, then unreverse again. I'm really hoping to make something more of the water, once I've got an animator- maybe even underwater movement.


I hope it turns into something good too




Oh and for anyone curious- this is made in MMF2, LUA, C++ and HLSL

[Ataraxic]

It seemed really nonsensical, but at the same time very organized. Well done. I had a lot of time jumping around the different shapes. I expect some insane platforming levels in the future.

My only quarrel is with the enemies. I didn't notice many at first as they seem to blend in with the whole trippy environment. Also, the one-hit kill thing can be frustrating because of this. I think the enemies should stand out more and be more defined.

Keep up the good work.

[Pixelthief]

Thanks for the feedback. Thats definitely useful advise. Sometimes something as simple as a black outline makes things much more visible

[zez]

Dude. Sweet. If you are still looking for a team when I finish my action 52 project Id be down to do some pixels, and either way Im more then willing in the sound department. This engine has some serious potential.
My onnnne inkling of a complaint/question is; How dependent on MMF2 is this? As someone who has played around with the software, Im positive pretty much nothing you have going on is using anything in the core functionality of MMF2, and I think as a commercial project, having it based on MMF2 would ultimately hurt you. Mostly just the lack of cross platform options.
Ofcourse, that doesn't mean "Dont do it" or scrap the engine and start over, because frankly this is awesome, just if there was a way to cut out that bit of software without making toooo much more work for yourself, you probably should.

[Pixelthief]

Oh yeah, I'll keep you posted if you want. I'll be posting in the jobs and/or projects forums after I get back from this weekend.

But this is about 90% written in MMF2. That is indeed a liability on what it can export to- I don't think its viable to make this into a Wii game for example. But they've got flash and java exporters and unicode now, so portability isn't too much a concern. I'd likely be looking at a PC/Windows only game.

But as far as technical wizardry goes- Yep its mostly in MMF2 You can do some nasty things with that language if you know the tricks to make code efficient. A few large data structures like the time-recording array and some of the more processor demanding stuff like enemy movement are done in LUA for efficiency. But I've got it optimized enough that it runs in MMF2 at a good enough speed on most computers right now, so I'd probably rather go straight to development than rewrite it in C++; though I'd definitely do that if I was starting it over.

[Pixelthief]

hey thank you all for comments and offers and all. Everythings put together now
Moving into main development now! May have a prototype out at some point as a demo