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Title: Proteus Post by: shrimp on May 10, 2009, 12:40:54 PM Proteus is not dead, just sleeping! We're hoping to have it ready for GDC, and then downloadable shortly after.
Just posted this for #screenshotsaturday: (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/proteusx4.png) (http://s294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/?action=view¤t=proteusx4.png) Older stuff: Quote Current state (click for video): (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress11b.png) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2OqQ6-ESp4) Quote from: Original Post This is the early stages of a procedural RPG/exploration game. It doesn't really have a name yet except Proteus (a bit of a joke about the lack of a definite design (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteus#.22Proteus.22_and_.22protean.22_in_English)) or Nodeland, which is just based on the theory of how the stuff in the world is laid out. [/size]The landscape is generated as a series of regions, and then region-level features are added in like mountain chains, valleys, areas of water etc. Forests and towns are also added at the region-level and then the whole thing is converted to a heightmap, a terrain terrain is generated and objects are added (trees etc) (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress2.png) (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress3.png) The particle-system-ish cloud layer is the start of some sort of weather/atmosphere system which will probably change over time to add a bit of variety to the feeling of exploration and how the world feels. You can move about, run jump, slide down cliffs and that's about it at the moment. Final gameplay will be probably a bit like a very simple take on the Morrowind games. Not sure what combat will be like, or even if there will be any real combat. Non-violent would be cool! We're mainly thinking about focusing on exploration and quests. Also some fun movement modes like skiing and gliding, maybe riding some creature(s)? I'm also hoping to figure out some very lightweight survival-style gameplay, so you can choose to live off the land or pay for food and shelter in towns. At the moment I'm adding generated names to features and regions in the world, just for fun. There's a context-free grammar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-free_grammar#Example_4) system in there that I wrote ages ago and haven't really used for anything yet, so I'm feeling sorry for it. Next up is to put some logic in the town placement and have stuff like mineshafts and farmland in neighbouring areas, as well as connecting roads. (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress4.png) Currently the art is either my programmer-art or programmer-mutilated artist-art... so the next-but-one task is to fix up the .obj file importer and get some decent models and textures in. More on that later... ;) Tools:
[The project evolved from this (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=4649.msg149951)... the thread that I put in Feedback and then realised it should have gone in the Developer forums, so I let it die. Anyway, thanks to stephen and bezzy for the comments there - the feedback has been incorporated into the new terrain generator!] So, yeah. tl;dr :P I'll put up a test build when I have a bit of time to make something presentable... Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: mirosurabu on May 10, 2009, 12:43:13 PM I am in a hurry, so I skimmed over the text. But.. the 3D pixel stuff is very nice and inspiring. Will check this out some other time.
Cheers Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: Bree on May 10, 2009, 02:16:28 PM Looks really cool- can't wait to see the build!
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on May 10, 2009, 02:35:16 PM Thanks guys! give me a couple of days to sort out the build. I am slightly dreading machine-specific graphics problems :epileptic:
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: CK on May 10, 2009, 02:37:08 PM this looks really really nice - love the 3d pixels :-*
slide down cliffs i like that. the gameplay sounds enjoyable. the idea of a non-violent world looks like it would really work judging by the screenies. keep this alive and don't kill it with ambition. :beer: Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: Inanimate on May 10, 2009, 02:37:42 PM This is quite a cool idea. I hope to see it completed!
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: george on May 10, 2009, 04:52:48 PM Currently the art is either my programmer-art or programmer-mutilated artist-art... so the next-but-one task is to fix up the .obj file importer and get some decent models and textures in. More on that later... ;) I hear you about prettying it up, but I like the visual style a lot already :). Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: JLJac on May 10, 2009, 08:35:14 PM Yeah, it looks cool! I take it those buildings are only sprites right now? You mentioned something about models, are you going to use real models instead of sprites?
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: ChevyRay on May 10, 2009, 10:52:31 PM Pretty so far. I love exploring, and your world already makes me want to jump inside of it and go hiking across meadows and along the ocean beaches, across mountains... :crazy:
Gets some charming low-res models in there in place of those sprites and you'll definitely be in my good books. Everything about this so far gives off a delightful scent. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on May 11, 2009, 01:13:16 AM Thanks again for the encouragement!
JLJac - Yep, they're sprites. The buildings are the main things that look bad as sprites (apart from the silliness of the sprite assets themselves), so they will probably be first to be switched over to models. In general the visual style is totally placeholder, but I guess it has a naive charm ;D We will try not to ruin it by turning it into some kind of failed Elder Scrolls clone! Chevy - this is exactly the idea! I hope it works..... Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: Halcyon on May 12, 2009, 08:05:12 PM This looks very interesting, I too want to jump in and start exploring; will be watching this progress. :)
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: Alec S. on May 12, 2009, 08:12:56 PM This looks cool. I like exploration in games quite a bit, and this looks promising.
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: Dave Ravel on May 12, 2009, 08:27:13 PM It reminds me of the time I've been spending in theHunter, but that's mainly because so few games are fun enough to just walk around in and enjoy. I don't envy your difficult task of not compromising the exploration for the sake of easing players' questing; balancing those two elements always seems like a difficult act, especially if you're thinking of going non violent.
Good luck sir. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: RayRayTea on May 13, 2009, 10:38:01 AM Which Hunter, the Amiga classic Hunter (http://www.lemonamiga.com/?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php%3Fid%3D512) or the other one (The Hunter (http://www.thehunter.com/pub/))? I assume the latter, since the first one doesn't have "The" in the name.
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: nihilocrat on May 13, 2009, 10:44:03 AM Why not call it "Proteus in Nodeland"? :P
It's looking pretty cool. If you want some sort of actual conflict in the game, you could have some sort of nonviolent one. Perhaps the world is dying (mysterious black clouds in the sky that kill vegetation and, slowly, make regions of the world uninhabitable) and you've got to search high and far for some relics or something that you've got to put together at an altar to save the world. It sounds really cliche, but I think "gopher" style quests could be more interesting when the things in your way aren't just enemies you have to kill. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on May 14, 2009, 12:17:34 PM Hello - here's that
build (http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e22e5a81f5d2878bb64026cfc06112360251828d1bdcc6165621d66e282a0ee8). It *should* have all the DLLs and stuff, but I reserve the right to do some hasty editting in a few minutes... Anyway, hopefully it runs ok. There are plenty of obvious and not-so-obvious glitches and rough edges. One bug I am expecting on some machines is the landscape not being lit... haven't looked into that since the previous thread. I put in the region names, which appear in the bottom left. These will probably only appear in NPC dialogs etc rather than in the "HUD", and also they'll be based more on the real features of the area, once these sort of details are in. I'm not sure how often we'll be posting updates - we might try and get something a bit more finished before revealing too much/building false hopes (as applicable) ;D Regarding exploration/quest balance, it will probably be heavily exploration-biased, at least at first. If there's a quest it will be fairly abstract. Maybe the exploration is the quest... hmmmm... Non-violent conflict: there might end up being something rather Miyazaki-ish going on, but... see above ;) Oh also: Regarding Hunter/the Hunter - it's funny because Ray (co-developer) and I were talking earlier about the nice open world of the Amiga game "Hunter", but I reckon you're probably talking about the online hunting thing. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: Alec S. on May 14, 2009, 03:55:21 PM I tried out the build. It's pretty awesome so far! I can't wait so see what you do with this. It should be pretty cool! :eyebrows: :handthumbsupR:
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on May 14, 2009, 11:27:27 PM Nice one, thanks!
I just realised that I forgot to say it requires .NET runtime (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en) Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: agj on May 14, 2009, 11:57:46 PM So nice! I like that you can go above the clouds. So, it's all procedural, right?
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: KennEH! on May 15, 2009, 03:20:07 AM This looking great. I wondering though maybe put some stuff be higher? Everything I like the idea of climbing actual mountains instead of hills. Also the clouds felt really low too.
I found the third camera (the one farthest back) the clouds were usually in the way. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on May 15, 2009, 10:34:42 AM This looking great. I wondering though maybe put some stuff be higher? Everything I like the idea of climbing actual mountains instead of hills. Also the clouds felt really low too. I guess the main reason the mountains are so low is because with the current map size, the slopes would get quite steep and that was causing some trouble with the camera (at the time). However, we will definitely be experimenting with these parameters, and also perhaps adding some variety to mountain faces. Maybe if we have mountain trails and step-like scramblable cliffs, mountaineering would be pretty nice! I think the clouds will probably come and go depending on the weather, the current fixed height feels very claustrophobic when underneath, which is meant to contrast with the feeling of being above the clouds. Quote I found the third camera (the one farthest back) the clouds were usually in the way. Ahh yeah.. I really should remove those other camera modes. I think we're pretty much settled on the default over-the-shoulder one. So, it's all procedural, right? Landscape and placement of trees etc is procedural, yep. The clouds are just a solid layer at the moment so are only procedural in a trivial sense. Depending on priorities, design decisions, etc, we might have some sort of cloud pattern. Sprites and textures are pre-authored. Happy that you like the clouds! Code tasks for this weekend: Improved towns, roads and farmland, and maybe some little features like forest clearings and Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: FishyBoy on May 15, 2009, 06:43:00 PM Oh man, that art looks fantastic! Can't wait to see what you do with it.
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on June 06, 2009, 12:58:05 PM Long time no update. PG town plans have been causing me a lot of headaches and wasted weekends.... but hey, even dead ends are a learning experience, right? :droop:
One of my algorithms had a tendency to try to make swastikas (in roads), which freaked me out a bit... Anyway, I took a new approach and left the code alone for a day and made some rough building models in sketchup so that I had a clearer idea of what the PG town code needed to do to make something that would look good *to the player* rather than generating flat maps and fixing theoretical problems with no real thought for what the game actually required! So, here are some (roughly textured, windowless) buildings and a mockup in sketchup, and a screenshot of the current broken planning code but with the building models slapped in. Needs rewriting from scratch with a much simpler algorithm: (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/Buildings.png) (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/townMockupSKP.png) (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/cqx3Atmp.jpg) Mmm... jpeggy.. (Also, some work has gone in on more sensible town placement on the island, and determining what regions should have mines or farms etc. This is what the text in the bottom left is, along with an example of a whimsical PG town name) Next jobs: - Optimisation of model rendering (see the FPS count on that shot) - Fix vertex normal import/export problem - Load in world object library from a text file - Make a simple, non-nazi PG town planner Slightly further away: - Farm and mine buildings etc placed in regions near towns - Improved roads and other details painted onto the terrain texture - Cliffs and other geometrical interest in the terrain, maybe some rethinking of the terrain renderer code - Write up the design for the first playable version of an actual game in the world - Everything else... Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: CK on June 06, 2009, 01:01:24 PM damn that's so hot, ed :-*
keep up the PG work :wizard: swastikas are silly :tiger: Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on June 06, 2009, 01:21:58 PM Haha thanks :-[
By the way, the buildings are supposed to be somewhat central/eastern European, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wroclaw_1a.jpg, although I'm not being particularly purist. Also, here's a slightly older pic of a road: (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress5.png) Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: dspencer on June 06, 2009, 03:17:11 PM Haven't had a chance to try it, but I really like the look of it! Keep it going!
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: JLJac on June 08, 2009, 04:30:45 AM I tried the build, and was it good! You have something going on here, absolutely.
A little feedback: It is super awsome that you can get above the clouds, but make them higher! It kind of ruins the feeling of openess/large spaces when you have a compact roof just a few meters above your head. I'd put the clouds at least three times higher above the water level, and make some mountains extremely high and steep instead, maybe so steep that you can't just walk/jump up, but need some kind of climbing equipment? Then the reward of those beutiful above-cloud views would be so much more rewarding. I see that you have a swamp ground type that you use in transitions between forests and water. This is super cool, but maybe you could do some kind of check if the water is sea-water or a lake? Then you could put beach tiles where the ground meets the ocean. Maybe some precipices and rivers? Make the trees bigger! It would be cool if they were quite a lot taller than the character, to really create the feeling of walking in a forest. Could you possibly add a little haze? Not so much that it covers stuff up, just so that distant mountains get a little bluer and toned down. Looking forward to see where this goes, best of luck! Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on June 08, 2009, 02:14:31 PM Hey, thanks for the feedback!
These ideas match closely with a lot of stuff that is planned or semi-implemented, so that's cool! I got a bit carried away rambling about the various things you mentioned, but I'll post it anyway: Clouds - yep, the height needs reviewing. I currently have them turned off by default whilst working on other stuff. If the mountains can be made higher the clouds can go up with the snowline. Mountains - I agree, they could be more dramatic. I want to do some interesting stuff with cliffs as well, something like steps and chunks of non-heightmap geometry, so that should make it easier to make big dramatic hills without the dreaded stretchy-ground cliff effect. Special climbing equipment would fit nicely with the skiing and gliding ideas, although there is a chance that these might not make it into the first game in this engine, we'll see what happens... Haze - there is a *little* haze, but it's probably too subtle. Hopefully I'll get round to some sort of dynamic weather system and this and the clouds will be controlled by that. (Actually, maybe there was no haze in that build though... can't remember...) Trees - Current trees are very different and maybe 3-4 times the height of the character. I don't want to post a screenshot yet because they're ripped off from somewhere. When we have some homemade ones I'll post, maybe with another test build. Rivers - ya, these would be good. Apart from anything else they would lead the eye into the world, although they will be tricky to do well. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on July 09, 2009, 02:10:02 PM Just a small update with what is and isn't happening with this project.... it's not dead, just hibernating ;)
Unfortunately I have a slight wrist injury which has prevented me doing more than a few minutes real work on this over the past month or so. Last "real work" I was doing was with towns, but after taking an enforced break, I realised that the towns were giving me a lot of trouble and were not really serving the main theme of the game, i.e. wilderness exploration, so we've decided to drop them. Rather than have a populated island with all the baggage that entails, we're going to go back to an (almost?) unpopulated island, with an interesting variety of somehow coherent things scattered around. Stuff like ancient overgrown technology from a long-dead civilisation, as well as natural "wonders" like giant Totoro-ish trees and that sort of thing. The discovery aspect of it may be something like triggering memories of the old civilisation. The survival elements should still be present. Concept art to follow.... Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on July 09, 2009, 02:16:10 PM Concept art from a previous incarnation of this world/story... with the same player character ;)
(http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/WakeUpcopy.jpg) (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/paradiseLost2.jpg) (NB - painted/pixelled by Ray, not me!) Also, here's a pic with the new trees. Ignore the crappy pale green plants for now! (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress9.png) Next job is probably to do some optimisation or use of higher-end OpenGL functions (vertex buffer objects etc) to raise the FPS to some sensible level.... Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: undertech on July 14, 2009, 07:21:53 AM Very good work Mr. Ed. This quiet world has filled me with a quiet joy. Ran plenty fast enough for me though, so I take it you are targetting lower spec machines with this?
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: Joseph on July 14, 2009, 09:53:44 AM Woohoo can't wait to see how this progresses! :D
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on July 14, 2009, 11:52:52 AM Thanks!! We will definitely try to maintain the atmosphere as it develops.
Ran plenty fast enough for me though, so I take it you are targetting lower spec machines with this? Well, the framerate problems are mainly with the new 3D models. The code is just not really optimised at any level. On my development PC it runs at around 8fps, and on Ray's it's 1fps. The ideal framerate for this game seems to be about 25fps so hopefully we can achieve that on Ray's mini-laptop-thing. My dev PC (which we'll call the "Recommended Spec") is about 5 years old, and was a pretty good PC at the time, if that's any indication. :handthumbsupR: Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: JLJac on July 24, 2009, 11:35:17 PM Is it the PC behind the cat? And if so, is it proteus code that is being displayed on it? Just curios :whome:
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on July 25, 2009, 04:16:55 AM Is it the PC behind the cat? And if so, is it proteus code that is being displayed on it? Just curios :whome: Yeah it is! He gets quite possessive over computer seats, I was in some danger of being bitten :tiger: Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on July 25, 2009, 06:39:34 AM Still haven't been able to do anymore development, but I did manage to collect some inspiration/reference material. These are from Langdale, Cumbria, UK.
(http://lh3.ggpht.com/_j7O-IPmOyo4/Smiv5XgthRI/AAAAAAAAAkM/0B5pEmhOnUg/s144/100_3243.JPG) (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lh/photo/cJEP4rsQBVNeaknIRqQpoA?feat=directlink) Low clouds over the peaks at the end of the valley. The wind was strong (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtKSt2LSGgc) at that level and was pretty interesting to watch the bottom of the cloud layer breaking into curls of mist. Definitely going to try and rewrite the cloud layer to give this kind of effect, and allow the clouds to blow over/around hill tops, CPU budget permitting. (http://lh3.ggpht.com/_j7O-IPmOyo4/SmiwKDLqOLI/AAAAAAAAAko/CStOrjneNvM/s144/100_3272.JPG) (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lh/photo/z9m1hsNGGA9YcFTyj474Zw?feat=directlink) A mysterious-looking structure. I think this is a shelter for sheep/shepherds, built onto a naturally-occurring boulder (the wind is blowing from the right). In game terms, this would be a nice "interesting" thing to find, but also could be a valuable resting place. (http://lh3.ggpht.com/_j7O-IPmOyo4/SmiwfCyyVYI/AAAAAAAAAlI/4N0OwcjUGc4/s144/100_3302.JPG) (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lh/photo/Qc7WvdREFXyS3xlk47078Q?feat=directlink) Marshy meadow, hills, trees. It would be great to be able to recreate this kind of scene. More here... (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/ed1key/LangdaleJuly2009#) Some other reference: (http://lh5.ggpht.com/_j7O-IPmOyo4/Sjf7H8pmD0I/AAAAAAAAAYo/4wAGTeQ4CSo/s144/100_2991.JPG) (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lh/photo/Lq2oTdW6KIoxWYZSRl1GZw?feat=embedwebsite) Industrial ruins. Might have been tempted to (illegally) look around this old cement factory, but (fortunately) didn't get the opportunity! (http://lh5.ggpht.com/_j7O-IPmOyo4/Sjf7MykGUkI/AAAAAAAAAY4/p8OR4oekeIc/s144/100_2980.JPG) (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lh/photo/SJcmDRc3hLzuVCNDCA3h1w?feat=embedwebsite) Older, mysterious ruins. (a bit of a Norman castle) Also been watching Future Boy Conan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhNErIJI9Zg), which turns out to be a pretty similar story/world! Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: DrDerekDoctors on July 26, 2009, 12:02:27 AM I like the vibe this has, slightly Robinson's Requiem (http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/robinsons-requiem/screenshots (http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/robinsons-requiem/screenshots)) / Archipelagos (http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/archipelagos/screenshots (http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/archipelagos/screenshots)) -esque feel to it. Pity about losing the towns as by just making them more decrepit you could have had some nice rooftop platforming going on without ever feeling you needed to populate them in some manner. Love the idea of a cloud-layer, particularly when you get above it and just see other peaks of interest in the distance. Like that it'll be really explorey, will you have lots of little spritey wildlife buzzing about and little bits of life like that?
Control in the build is obviously very primative, it'd be nice to have some real sense of inertia and speed in there so as you're crossing large tracks of terrain it goes whipping by. Very cool start, though, I can't wait to see what mysteries you pack into the world. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on July 26, 2009, 02:10:52 PM Hey, thanks a lot for the links and the thoughts! I will have to have a go on Robinson's Requiem someday, very interesting. The fuzzy painterly style is rather nice, especially something about how the fog works. I dug up this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR8g9S0-zOc) and this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaXEnPEkWsg). The FMV is... ummm... yeah... :facepalm: :durr:
I should say that the survival stuff will be much, much lighter than in RR. The first aid stuff looked great though. Archipelagos - also something I'd only vaguely heard of, and very interesting to read about! Wildlife - yep, planning to have dragonflies and other insects, and also ambient stuff like dandelion seeds blowing across meadows. Possibly also birds flying about, buzzards circling above.... Maybe extra buzzards when you're in bad shape ;) Sense of speed - I think normal walking will be fairly slow, but the special movement modes (e.g. gliding, skiing) should supply that feeling. Bit vague at the moment... The extent of these and any platforming stuff may rely on a physics engine. Towns....... yeah. Would be a shame to lose them. One of my favourite things on Fallout 3 was clambering about on buildings, running along railings, etc. See also, this bit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4cJKPl6lNU) from Conan. (specifically around the 2 minute mark). Even without platforming, exploring collapsed, overgrown streets would be cool. Ruined towns should be doable, especially if they are fairly planned and "inorganic", like barracks towns, or maybe really heavily sunken into the ground. Going to do some thinking and try not to get carried away with overcomplex town-gen stuff. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: DrDerekDoctors on July 27, 2009, 10:11:57 AM Hey, thanks a lot for the links and the thoughts! I will have to have a go on Robinson's Requiem someday, very interesting. The fuzzy painterly style is rather nice, especially something about how the fog works. I dug up this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR8g9S0-zOc) and this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaXEnPEkWsg). The FMV is... ummm... yeah... :facepalm: :durr: I had the Atari ST version which was forever asking you to swap discs. The footage on those videos made it look like that version was height-mapped (3D0 version, I assume from the tags) whereas the ST/PC ones were voxel-based, making them look even odder but more clunkily organic. I should say that the survival stuff will be much, much lighter than in RR. The first aid stuff looked great though. Yeah, s'nice idea but somewhat over the top, like boiling water to make it safe or adding disinfectant pills to it - still, it's kinda' nice in games like Arx Fatalis where you drop a raw fish near a fire and it crackles and turns into a cooked fish, or when you mix two things (like pastry and apples) to make a pie when you otherwise wouldn't have a use for the pastry. But RR's habit of making you move slower because you're injured is just no fun at all. Archipelagos - also something I'd only vaguely heard of, and very interesting to read about! I mostly bought that game because I liked the cover (:facepalm: - I know) because it had a tornado on it and it reminded me a bit of the haunting final scene from The Quiet Earth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuLXSwIERMA) (30 seconds in) as I had an obsession with clouds. Wildlife - yep, planning to have dragonflies and other insects, and also ambient stuff like dandelion seeds blowing across meadows. Possibly also birds flying about, buzzards circling above.... Maybe extra buzzards when you're in bad shape ;) Be nice to use buzzards to maybe show where dead bodies are as a clue as well. :) Sense of speed - I think normal walking will be fairly slow, but the special movement modes (e.g. gliding, skiing) should supply that feeling. Bit vague at the moment... The extent of these and any platforming stuff may rely on a physics engine. Well, you can use pretty simple physics to provide platforming and other stuff. I mean look at the side-on flying in Super Mario World when you have a cape - simple dynamic but really nice feeling. If you give more depth (literally height) to the world then I can see hang-gliding being really nice, especially as it's third person. Towns....... yeah. Would be a shame to lose them. One of my favourite things on Fallout 3 was clambering about on buildings, running along railings, etc. See also, this bit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4cJKPl6lNU) from Conan. (specifically around the 2 minute mark). Even without platforming, exploring collapsed, overgrown streets would be cool. Yuss, very true, as long as there was stuff to find in there. Will the game have combat at all? Ruined towns should be doable, especially if they are fairly planned and "inorganic", like barracks towns, or maybe really heavily sunken into the ground. Going to do some thinking and try not to get carried away with overcomplex town-gen stuff. Yeah, it doesn't have to be awfully complex, as long as it acts as a visual beacon of "ooh, what's that over there?" and quite often delivers by giving the player something interesting they'll have done their job. That's half the reason Fallout 3 was so compelling, just the constant sense of "hello! woss that?". Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on July 27, 2009, 12:03:19 PM ...whereas the ST/PC ones were voxel-based, making them look even odder but more clunkily organic. Looking at that video it looks almost like a collage, partly because the polys are fogged as whole units, but also some weird fuzzy pixelly effect. Might be partly video compression artifacts... Quote Arx Fatalis [...] pastry Yeah, this will probably be the maximum. I'd quite like to put some cookery in there, although I would say it might be slight feature creep for the first version. We'll see what happens once the inventory UI is in. That kind of cooking by dropping something by/in a fire sounds really neat. Quote the haunting final scene from The Quiet Earth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuLXSwIERMA) (30 seconds in) as I had an obsession with clouds. Maaan.... that's one of those films I saw late at night on Channel 4/BBC2 as a child and was totally captivated/mystified by. Another one being The Andromeda Strain. I'll have to find and watch that one (TQE) again, looks pretty relevant to this game. Quote Be nice to use buzzards to maybe show where dead bodies are as a clue as well. :) Yeah, that's a great idea! Whether we have dead bodies is another issue, but they could also mark something less explicit, like a wrecked aircraft. Quote Well, you can use pretty simple physics to provide platforming and other stuff. I mean look at the side-on flying in Super Mario World when you have a cape - simple dynamic but really nice feeling. If you give more depth (literally height) to the world then I can see hang-gliding being really nice, especially as it's third person. I need to do some investigation into what's easier to do, simple but solid platforming/flying physics or integrate a physics engine. I'm a bit worried about the possible complexities of the tops of ruined buildings, but maybe that can be worked-around. Quote Will the game have combat at all? Probably not, at least not in this version/edition/chapter. We're pretty keen to make a non-violent game, and focus on exploration and adventure. (I might post something about "Chapters" later, that's a very long range plan) Quote Yeah, it doesn't have to be awfully complex, as long as it acts as a visual beacon of "ooh, what's that over there?" and quite often delivers by giving the player something interesting they'll have done their job. That's half the reason Fallout 3 was so compelling, just the constant sense of "hello! woss that?". Yes, that's exactly what we're aiming for. :):handthumbsupR: I'll see if I can knock together a newer build - i.e. roughly corresponding to the most recent screenshots Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: DrDerekDoctors on July 28, 2009, 01:43:20 AM Looking at that video it looks almost like a collage, partly because the polys are fogged as whole units, but also some weird fuzzy pixelly effect. Might be partly video compression artifacts... I think youtube can take a lot of the credit, or whatever shonky capture rig the author was using. ;) Quote Quote Arx Fatalis [...] pastry Yeah, this will probably be the maximum. I'd quite like to put some cookery in there, although I would say it might be slight feature creep for the first version. We'll see what happens once the inventory UI is in. That kind of cooking by dropping something by/in a fire sounds really neat.Yeah, the fire thing is nice as it's a really unexpected interaction because you aren't using it on the fire, you're just dropping it near it so it's a bit magical and almost simulation-led. I love things like that, like the way fire spreads through the trees in Syndicate Wars, it's just a bit magic. Quote Quote the haunting final scene from The Quiet Earth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuLXSwIERMA) (30 seconds in) as I had an obsession with clouds. Maaan.... that's one of those films I saw late at night on Channel 4/BBC2 as a child and was totally captivated/mystified by. Another one being The Andromeda Strain. I'll have to find and watch that one (TQE) again, looks pretty relevant to this game.If you could get the pillars of cloud touching the ground, I'd marry you. ;) Actually, it's not often you get scenes of beauty in a game and you've a good chance to do stuff like that in your one with the emphasis on atmosphere and exploration. Will you have interior areas like caves, btw? (i.e. a pair of heightmaps sandwiched together?) Quote Quote Be nice to use buzzards to maybe show where dead bodies are as a clue as well. :) Yeah, that's a great idea! Whether we have dead bodies is another issue, but they could also mark something less explicit, like a wrecked aircraft.Yuss. Although bones are cool. ;) Quote Quote Well, you can use pretty simple physics to provide platforming and other stuff. I mean look at the side-on flying in Super Mario World when you have a cape - simple dynamic but really nice feeling. If you give more depth (literally height) to the world then I can see hang-gliding being really nice, especially as it's third person. I need to do some investigation into what's easier to do, simple but solid platforming/flying physics or integrate a physics engine. I'm a bit worried about the possible complexities of the tops of ruined buildings, but maybe that can be worked-around. Well, I'd just make it so that tops of buildings were flat or maybe, if your polygonal height-mesh is dense enough, just use that for buildings and make them look pretty using textures? That's what Magic Carpet did and that's honkingly old. That way all your collision guff is done really simply in a nice unified system. Although I can see if you want Tors and that you'd probably want more complex polygonal structures. Quote Quote Will the game have combat at all? Probably not, at least not in this version/edition/chapter. We're pretty keen to make a non-violent game, and focus on exploration and adventure. (I might post something about "Chapters" later, that's a very long range plan)Righty, that's cool. Maybe if you can't actually attack in it then you could add something nasty into the world as then it'll make it all the scarier - like in Robinson's Requiem there's a T-Rex in a cave you haven't a chance of beating, making it all the scarier to be in there? Just throwing out ideas, here. :) Quote Quote Yeah, it doesn't have to be awfully complex, as long as it acts as a visual beacon of "ooh, what's that over there?" and quite often delivers by giving the player something interesting they'll have done their job. That's half the reason Fallout 3 was so compelling, just the constant sense of "hello! woss that?". Yes, that's exactly what we're aiming for. :):handthumbsupR:Cool. :) Quote I'll see if I can knock together a newer build - i.e. roughly corresponding to the most recent screenshots Lovely. :) Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on September 20, 2009, 01:22:09 PM Ok... so... 3 months huh. I have lots of great excuses, honest.*
Anyway, been doing a ton of work on this over the last few days.
Pics (lots of rough edges still): (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress11.png) (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress11d.png) (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress11c.png) (* Mainly just that I had knackered my wrist ages ago and couldn't spend too long coding. It's getting better now, so time to bust it up again working on this!) That build... I think I'll make one once the clearings and some other stuff is done. Sorry, "just one more feature" Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: astrospoon on September 20, 2009, 02:36:00 PM Keeping my eye on this now. My wilderness survival competition. ;D
Seriously, good luck with this though. I'm loving the 3d. (I had considered doing Heat Line in 3d, but figured I would get more features into the actual game by sticking with 2d...) But still, it just feels so "explorery" in your screens, and atmospheric in a way that top down graphics can't really capture as well. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: aliceffekt on September 20, 2009, 03:08:23 PM Wow this evolved so much ! I really like the latest renders : ) I will be looking forward to more updates !
I really dig the concept arts :D Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: KennEH! on September 20, 2009, 03:20:16 PM Wow such a great improvement, awesome.
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: alspal on September 20, 2009, 07:18:21 PM this is looking fantastic, I love what your doing with this.
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: Shizin on September 20, 2009, 08:59:19 PM Sorry, I don't even know why I said that, :facepalm:
I feel really stupid right now :P I really love the atmosphere of the screen shots, very lonely looking... by the way, will there be any other character? Keep up the great work, maybe some game play footage in the near future? Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on September 21, 2009, 12:25:59 AM Thanks guys!
@astrospoon - I think there's enough room in the wilderness for both projects ;) The 2D/3D thing was indeed a tough choice, for exactly the reason you describe. Hopefully keeping everything simple and non-realistic will make progress smooth enough. @aliceffekt - since the plot and scope is being simplified (but is still very vague) I'm not sure if those concepts will be exactly reflected in the game. We'll see :) Watch this space! @Shizin - what? I missed whatever you said :D Anyway, I'm glad it looks lonely. Other characters... yes, there will probably be a few. Maybe a few villagers/hermits... maybe some ghostly figures that you glimpse running through the trees... maybe some other strange wanderers. :wtf: I'll have a look at capturing some footage.... I'm currently reading a book called The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane. There are some paragraphs that are so inspiring and relevant to this project that I might retype them and post them here later. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on September 21, 2009, 02:11:54 PM So, I tried to capture/edit some footage but got annoyed and depressed :D
Maybe I'll have another go tomorrow. My in-game camerawork is horrible... Meanwhiles, here are those bits of book: Quote The Koyukon people of north-west interior Alaska use intricate stories to map their landscape: narration as navigation. According to the anthropologist Richard Nelson, who lived closely with the Koyukon, the landscape is to them: "filled with networks of paths, names, and associations. People know every feature of the landscape in minute detail. The lakes, river bends, hills and creeks are named and imbued with personal and cultural meaning. People move in a world that constantly watches - a forest of eyes. A person moving through nature, however wild, remote ... is never truly alone. The surroundings are aware, sensate, personified. They feel." Walking in the dark to an irish ring fort: Quote Eventually I reached the fort, navigating by a mixture of map, memory and luck. Three rings of pale stone, partly grown over by grass, and the central enclosed circle a jungle of thorn and briar. I sat between the first and second walls, under the guardian arm of an old elder, which had curled round and down upon itself to form a nearly closed hoop. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: shrimp on September 21, 2009, 11:46:34 PM I managed to make a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2OqQ6-ESp4
(made with camstudio and windows movie maker) The camerawork is pretty jerky at times, and I found that making a video really highlights all the graphical glitches and rough edges, but it was quite a useful excercise. Known ugly bits: - tree trunks sometime not meeting the foliage properly - flowers are placeholders - terrain texture is still grid-based - the huts are (badly) randomly placed and don't sit on the terrain properly - the cloud layer is moderately broken at the moment Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland Post by: Xion on September 22, 2009, 12:01:57 AM :crazy:
This looks awesome as nuts, man. I love the trees. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: alspal on September 22, 2009, 03:58:40 AM whoa, looking fantastic amazing!
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: Shizin on September 22, 2009, 09:03:44 AM I think it looks wonderful too, especially the music.
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: Ivan on September 22, 2009, 09:25:00 AM This is really really great. I love the minimal style. Inspiring stuff!
I know that it's partially because it's a WIP, but I really like the bareness of it all. It made seeing those little huts an exciting event, as I'm sure it probably would be if I was wandering around there. Looks absolutely amazing, keep doing what you're doing! Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on September 22, 2009, 02:02:50 PM nyah thanks for the nice words!
I just wasted an evening playing Blood Bowl :yawn: ... not quite the whole evening though, as I had a suggestion for an effect to enhance the collage-y look. See this paper (http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/publikationen/2006/unsharp_masking/Luft%20et%20al.%20--%20Image%20Enhancement%20by%20Unsharp%20Masking%20the%20Depth%20Buffer.pdf). Figure 4(d) is the tl;dr bit. Ivan - depending on performance issues etc, it will probably look slightly more populated (with plants, other landscape stuff and wildlife) but hopefully it will still be special to discover a village or other (http://www.flickr.com/photos/93741227@N00/88826889/) interesting (http://lh3.ggpht.com/_j7O-IPmOyo4/SnYLFbb3uxI/AAAAAAAAAt8/8hMS-gdgkOk/s800/100_3410.JPG) location (http://lh3.ggpht.com/_j7O-IPmOyo4/SfRNX-_XpRI/AAAAAAAAAD0/lQs4lNbXyMc/s800/100_2742.JPG). Here's another nice quote from The Wild Places, quoted in turn from one Stephen Graham: Quote 'As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.' Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: TheCube on September 22, 2009, 02:33:42 PM This reminds me of the best part of Noctis IV: Exploring the unknown, finding things that (literally) nobody but you had ever seen. Except this has plants and stuff. Love it to death, just from the screenshots.
Soo...good luck and all that! Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on September 27, 2009, 01:04:03 PM Small update: Currently working on making the different regions totally data-driven, so you can have "dense pine forest" or "medium mixed forest". This will also pave the way to the terrain texturing being much improved (more like procedural painting than tile-based) although this is probably a little way off. This is also getting ready for graphically improved roads and special features like woodland clearings.
Also, I'm trying to think of a new semi-permanent name that reflects the "maybe-sentient wilderness" theme. Current candidates are
@TheCube - Thanks! Noctis is probably a good comparison, from what i've read, but sadly I never managed to work out how to play it. I used to play Frontier (Elite 2) in a very exploration-focused way, trying to find weird star systems and land on interesting moons. PS: Has anyone read The Willows by Algernon Blackwood (:gentleman:)? I discovered it fairly recently and it's in tune with some aspects of this, although a bit more malevolent. Wikipedia blurb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Willows_(story)), Project Gutenberg full text (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11438). It was a favorite of HP Lovecrafts, which might give you some big clues. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: DrDerekDoctors on September 27, 2009, 11:35:25 PM I like Widdershins, although it might give people Pratchetty preconceptions. :)
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: swordofkings128 on October 02, 2009, 06:16:25 PM ddude, I'm incredibley interested in this project :addicted:. if you need some music, holla at me.
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on October 04, 2009, 01:13:35 PM if you need some music, holla at me. Thanks! There are some long-distance plans for music, but I'll PM you... :handthumbsupR:--- Update time! Stuff that I've been doing today:
Pics: (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress12.png) (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress12b.png) (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress12c.png) (the lame placeholder flowers are still there) Names.... I think I'm going to leave it for a while. DrDD, you're right about the Prachettiness, hadn't thought of it like that but it's obvious now. Probably my favourite (relevent) name ever is "Where The Wild Things Are". Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: Inanimate on October 04, 2009, 01:33:34 PM Wildwards, definitely.
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: Alex May on October 04, 2009, 02:23:22 PM I want to shelter under a tree. That was one of my favourite things in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., hiding in a bus stop and waiting for the rain to pass. Brilliant. Very evocative screenshots too, I can just feel it. Great!
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: DrDerekDoctors on October 05, 2009, 07:14:53 AM I love that you can see the canopy of the tree poking into the top of the view as you hide under it from the rain. Can you make the rain more blustry and windy at all and maybe shake the tree canopies in the process for storms? :)
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on October 05, 2009, 10:18:35 AM @Inanimate - vote registered ;D
@Alex - Bus stops and rain are a classic combo! (http://akebonovision.org/files/2009/08/totoro-bus.jpg) (http://akebonovision.org/files/2009/08/totoro-bus.jpg) Did the rain have an effect in STALKER? I can't remember... @DrDerek - Yeah definitely planning on doing that stuff, depending on how it works in practice. I think there'll be a variation of conditions so that sometimes it's blustery and sometimes calm. Windy conditions will of course make sheltering more challenging as the rain will blow in under the tree... I need to define the survival mechanics properly too, since I'm not exactly sure where this part is headed. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: Xion on October 05, 2009, 10:33:48 AM I, too, vote Wildwards.
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on October 05, 2009, 10:59:27 AM Thanks :) I should say it's not just between those two options, but Wildwards is starting to feel more like a real name....
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: JLJac on October 05, 2009, 11:24:16 AM I think the survival mechanics should be pretty simple, because the player can only have so many elements in his mind or it will just get confusing. Maybe it would be a good idea to state a short list of things that can kill you, and then try to sort all the dangerous stuff into one of those categorys. Like:
Mechanical damage(of course) Tempereature(Too cold and too hot will kill you) Starvation(you must eat to survive) Not being able to breath Then you simplify things a bit, for example is drinking counted into the same thing as eating, and you don't really separate being set on fire from being overheated in a desert, both are temperature kills. Rain makes you cold, and in combination with other things that makes you cold it could be dangerous. When the "foodInStomach"-variable is low or when you are under water one of the four warning icons show up in the corner of the screen, so you know what you're dying from. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on October 05, 2009, 02:31:40 PM Yeah man, absolutely. Needs to be as simple as possible but still convey the feeling of how it might be in that situation. This would fit with the graphical direction too. I was thinking that rain would be a kind of modifier to the cold variable, but that does seem unnecessarily subtle.
I would like to keep drinking separate from eating. Eating/drinking seems like it would be most prone to "exploits", e.g. surviving just on water. I'll make a chart of the variables and what affects them, and what happens when they're low... Maybe it will be possible to hide some complexity by only showing problems when near to "bad" states, so if you're not in a difficult situation and act fairly sensibly (eat/drink/sleep/make a fire), most of this stuff doesn't show up. Also it just occurred to me that maybe standing in the rain looking upward could count as (slowly) drinking. Might be pretty dramatic if you've been stuck without water for ages. :) Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: JLJac on October 05, 2009, 09:41:07 PM Yeah, that's what I thought about the warning icons. When something is bad they show up to tell you what's up.
Keeping drinking separate from eating is a good idea. Another interesting(not necessarily good) option to consider is having water and temeperature in the same meter. Hot places makes this meter go up, cold places and drinking makes it go down. If it's too high or too low it's lethal. Being in rain and drinking is the same thing, if you drink a lot when it's cold you will get even cooler. Problem is that you would never be thirsty in a cold places ;) Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: Alex May on October 06, 2009, 02:18:41 AM Yeah man, absolutely. Needs to be as simple as possible but still convey the feeling of how it might be in that situation. This would fit with the graphical direction too. I was thinking that rain would be a kind of modifier to the cold variable, but that does seem unnecessarily subtle. Eating can provide water though, e.g. polar bears get most of their water from the food they eat.I would like to keep drinking separate from eating. Eating/drinking seems like it would be most prone to "exploits", e.g. surviving just on water. I'll make a chart of the variables and what affects them, and what happens when they're low... Fuzzy logic?Maybe it will be possible to hide some complexity by only showing problems when near to "bad" states, so if you're not in a difficult situation and act fairly sensibly (eat/drink/sleep/make a fire), most of this stuff doesn't show up. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on October 06, 2009, 02:34:11 AM Quote Eating can provide water though, e.g. polar bears get most of their water from the food they eat. Sure, each item of food will provide X amount of "nourishment" and Y amount of water. Cucumber bush = useful :)Quote Fuzzy logic? I was just going to make something up ;DSomething like each value goes between 0-100 and below 50 you get a warning, and below 25 there's a chance of something bad happening, like stumbling or passing out. I guess this is a limited kind of fuzzy logic (IIRC) Did you have something in mind? Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: elib on October 11, 2009, 05:55:47 AM This project looks amazing! Totally digging the "painter" style generation. One of those screenshots looking down onto the trees near the village and clearings is seriously beautiful and evocative. Excellent style.
And Miyazaki game mechanics?? It's like a dream. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on October 11, 2009, 01:47:08 PM Thanks, it's been almost literally giving me headaches this weekend.
I've been messing about putting a load more biomes in, which mostly just means more badly drawn flowers and wonky trees. The tree code needs some work to allow more variation of the shape of the canopy and of the size/height of the whole tree. I've also been doing some work on the survival stuff. Now you can stand in the rain and get cold: (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress13.png) (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/nodelandprogress13.png) (The "HUD" is just debug, but those are my choice of core stats, working in the way described in the previous post. There may be other ones that play a temporary role.) I did some setting up for the planned "non realistic" lighting system although mostly all it did was break stuff. Apart from anything else I might need to replace the terrain renderer as it doesn't seem to be possible to mess with the vertex colours in the way I'd like to. (This is because the vertex density is adaptive based on the contours of the terrain) Toyed with the idea of placing biomes differently, i.e. not in the underlying region system but based on conditions at each tile. Decided this was a bit of a dangerous road to go down for now. --- For anyone interested, a while back I posted a rough summary of the terrain generation method here (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8072.msg256869#msg256869) Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: LeFishy on October 11, 2009, 04:36:50 PM Oh wow I am totally going to try to use that terrain generation systemy type thing you described. That is super cool.
Please release something moving again soon. Watching the videos is just infinitely cool. I am a huge lover of procedurally generated stuff so this makes me so very happy... in the pants. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on October 12, 2009, 01:29:28 PM Good luck! OK, so now I have some motivation to finish implementing the system before you :D
I'll make another video when there is something nice to see... maybe day/night cycle or something? I'd make another public build, but I think instead I'll wait til I have something I need some first impressions of and then request guinea pigs. I think I read this in someone's development lecture once. I can't release anything anyway right now as it's in a bit of mess... need to revert some failed experiments :) Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: Ivan on February 10, 2010, 03:09:20 PM What happened to this?
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: knight on February 10, 2010, 06:37:59 PM Really I loved the demo.
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on February 11, 2010, 01:19:45 AM What happened to this? Well.... The good news is that it's definitely not abandoned. I haven't run out of motivation or inspiration or any other of the ations... except maybe articulation. The bad news is that I have a recurring wrist injury which means I've hardly got anything done in the past 6 months or so. Anyway hopefully it'll be fixed soon. The general plan is to get it into the shape of a reasonably compelling exploration game and release that. I have a few ideas for iterations after that, for example being able to nurture the world in some way or having an infinite fixed-seed archipelago to explore. I'm being very strict in not letting it mushroom into some infinite-scope Elder Scrolls game or something like that. Here's a little morsel: the current tasklist (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lh/photo/RpBToXsltYeuDYrCkwK2Fw?feat=directlink) hanging on my wall. NB Not the tasklist for the first releasable version. Have fun trying to read my writing! Thanks for asking :) I might try and scrape together a new build or something else before too long Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: godatplay on February 12, 2010, 03:28:39 PM I'm excited for this, too. ;D
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: Absurdist on February 12, 2010, 07:51:05 PM The terrain reminds me of Daggerfall.
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on April 11, 2010, 08:02:06 AM Just thought I'd post to say that stuff is happening again with this :)
We're working on an interactive music system to support the atmospheric exploration. More news and maybe a video with amazing non-copyright-infringing soundtrack soon... Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: godatplay on April 12, 2010, 07:55:37 AM Interactive music system?! You have my attention :)
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: Derek on April 12, 2010, 03:34:23 PM Looks great! Take care of your wrists, though!
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on April 12, 2010, 11:14:55 PM Thanks! The music system (and content!) is progressing well, hope to have something publicly visible/audible in a few days.
(and my wrists are holding up well so far thank you!) Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on June 12, 2010, 03:48:43 AM There isn't much (=any) development news posted on it yet, but I started a tumblr blog to provide updates and random related stuff on this project.
It's here: http://twistedtreegames.tumblr.com/ Progress has been good, we're slowly getting more of an idea of what the game will be like: "not really a game" as it turns out, but hopefully an interesting and satisfying exploration experience. Currently working on an upgrade to the rain/clouds, linking up some sounds to in-game objects and prototyping ambient wildlife and ghosts and stuff. Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on July 11, 2010, 01:06:19 PM Should I update this more often.... probably... anyway!
I've been working on day-night cycles for this, and a pleasingly ancient model of the heavens, about which I wrote some nonsense earlier: http://twistedtreegames.tumblr.com/post/797521853/the-celestial-sphere Initial super-buggy screenshots of it almost working: (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/Proteus-2010-07-11-0003.jpg) (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/Proteus-2010-07-11-0004.jpg) We have some exciting ideas for events and music tied to the day-night cycle, will post a video when they're implemented :) Oh, and there's an slightly old video showing some other ideas and the dynamic soundtrack in action: here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0_NO7qyv0s&feature=player_embedded) Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: agj on July 11, 2010, 02:52:48 PM Ooh, night. Very nice. :)
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on July 12, 2010, 01:46:51 PM Thanks! I got the whole celestial sphere business sorted out today, and fixed all the problems with latitude being interpreted wrongly, the sky turning the wrong way, etc. Was hoping to post some screenshots but there are some bugs with the palette that I think I'll try and fix first..
Title: Re: Proteus/Nodeland (with added video) Post by: shrimp on February 13, 2011, 03:49:53 AM Proteus is not dead, just sleeping! We're hoping to have it ready for GDC, and then downloadable shortly after. Just posted this for #screenshotsaturday: (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/proteusx4.png) (http://s294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/?action=view¤t=proteusx4.png) Warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days. Unless you're sure you want to reply, please consider starting a new topic. ...This is one of those "achievement" thingies, right? :-[ Title: Re: Proteus Post by: superflat on February 13, 2011, 03:56:19 AM Fantastic, this has been on my 'can't wait' list for ages...
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Helmeted on February 13, 2011, 09:23:57 AM Really love the aesthetic here.
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: tsameti on February 13, 2011, 09:57:20 AM Did you say early on that you were thinking about a context-less grammar system?
There are so many things I'd want to learn from your project. How big of a team is working with you? Or are you the principal? Are there resources you draw from to help you design procedural landscape algorithms, or are you figuring things out by yourself? I feel like I'm drowning in pastel, and it's zen. Enjoy GDC. Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on February 13, 2011, 10:18:17 AM Thanks for the nice words!
@tsameti there's not really a team! It's just me doing the code + graphics and David (http://davidkanaga.blogspot.com/) Kanaga (http://davidkanaga.bandcamp.com/) doing the music. The context-free grammar thing from a while ago was a little experiment to generate place names, but the game doesn't use it. As for terrain algorithms, this is a custom system for this project... I think I wrote a rough tutorial somewhere in this thread, I'll try and find it. (Edit: here http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8072.msg256869#msg256869 Maybe I'll do more thorough version if you're interested and when I have time to write it up nicely) I should probably say that the "gameplay" is very minimalistic - purely exploration, finding "portals", creatures - so don't expect too much ;) Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Pishtaco on February 13, 2011, 10:40:26 AM It's great to know this is still being worked on. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: HarrisonJK on February 13, 2011, 11:31:59 AM What the what! I completely forgot about this and now I am so excited again!
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Raku on February 14, 2011, 01:47:57 AM This looks wonderful!
I love how you can travel above the cloud line! Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on February 16, 2011, 12:05:22 AM That's a timely reminder to occasionally bring back the solid cloud layer from the first video - currently it just has isolated rain showers. I just had one of those great (but inconvenient) moments last night, almost asleep and then had to scramble to get a pen and paper to write down an idea to tweak the landscape to enhance that particular effect. Gonna code it and see if it works...
[Edit: Bah. It's possible, but not as simple to implement as I thought. Anyway, the idea is to find all mountain regions that are near or at the cloud height and then push (a fraction of them) them above it, giving more "islands in the sky" and less wandering about in zero visibility] Watch this space for some seasonal music preview MP3s and a new video :) Title: Re: Proteus Post by: dkanaga on February 17, 2011, 08:13:15 PM Hello! I'm David, and am doing the music for this project. Here's an mp3 with 20-30 seconds of music from each season--it starts with spring and ends with winter. It's all slightly reactive in game, so you can imagine instruments mixing in and out as you walk around :)
http://www.davidkanaga.com/miscmusic/proteus_seasons.mp3 Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on February 18, 2011, 02:23:52 PM Yes! Also you can wander around in each season for as long as you like, so not only do you get more than 20 seconds worth, you also get various dynamic mixing effects associated with the dusk-night-dawn-day cycle :)
Also: if anyone reading this knows OpenGL and is feeling helpful... Got any idea about this problem? (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17962.0) Thanks!! Title: Re: Proteus Post by: knight on February 20, 2011, 07:36:04 PM Oh you've picked up on this again! Can't wait for download man!
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on February 21, 2011, 11:48:21 PM Pre-preview test build coming soon!
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: deathtotheweird on March 10, 2011, 12:34:15 AM just saw someone link the Proteus build on twitter and I played it. Really lovely atmosphere and music. I wasn't too sold on the graphics when I saw screenshots but in-game it actually looks quite nice.
I would really want to see more of this. I do love exploration games (one of my favorite parts of Shadow of the Colossus was just running around on my horse) and this looks like it could be really great. :beer: Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on March 10, 2011, 01:20:58 AM Hi, thanks! My, um, "release strategy" is all over the place at the moment. Anyway, I might as well post it here too, as that was what I was intending before GDC scrambled my brain (in a good way):
Pre-GDC version download (http://twistedtreegames.tumblr.com/post/3560799661/pre-gdc-oh-go-on-then-proteus-build) The plan is to add a load of new content (creatures, magical locations, regions, music, [CLASSIFIED]) and release this year. My personal plan is to go fulltime indie/freelance so that I actually have time to do this! I might be doing some pre-order/crowdfunding scheme to help get it off the ground. Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Xion on March 10, 2011, 01:41:50 AM hooray!
oh my shit this is too damn nice :-* It's like I'm exploring a sound made of places. Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Nugsy on March 10, 2011, 06:49:16 AM I saw this on screenshot saturday a while back and wondered what it was! SO downloading this right now. ;D
Edit: This is exactly how i imagined it to be! The ambience is brilliant, i love the fact that the weather effects actually come from the clouds. I spent some time just staring off out to sea when snow was falling. Beautiful! The effect for speeding up time is great too, i enjoyed watching rainclouds speed past on their merry way. The only thing that confused me a bit was changing seasons, are the things you stand next to graves? :epileptic: Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Ben_Hurr on March 10, 2011, 08:26:13 AM Oooo, very atmospheric.
I'm a little disappoint that the cat avatar was taken out though. :concerned: Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Hangedman on March 10, 2011, 08:56:56 AM Very atmospheric. Loved experimenting with standing in different areas and just listening.
Found a few lone fireflies, a few of the nervous little horn players, a couple of glowing stones and a house that was the only thing that disappointed me by being hollow and unsolid :-\ Also, I just kept exploring but the seasons never changed, and it only rained once right before I touched a stone and it faded away. But I spent a lot of time just walking all the way around the island. Very cool stuff. Can't wait to see what else appears. :) Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on March 10, 2011, 03:24:50 PM Xion - thanks, and thanks for the boxquote :)
Nugsy - cool, glad you liked it! The stones are meant to be this sort of thing (http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=a312&file=index&do=showpic&pid=8135). Ben Hurr - sorry about the lack of cat! He's originally from a different (unfinished) game, and was temporarily in an early iteration of this game, and his artist is a busy guy! Maybe some kind of cameo could be arranged.. Hangedman - nice, i like hearing what people did! Sorry about the house, i need to fix my collision code. If there's time, I want to make it so you can visit the inside of houses; nice in a cold winter. It sounds like you did find the season change... when you touch the "active" stone and it fades out, that's done it. Overwhelming feedback from this version is that the season change is very easy to miss, in several ways. If you keep wandering after the fade-to-black and get to daytime it's more obvious, and even more so in the third/fourth season. It's better on the current version, but it's currently not in a good state as I'm in the middle of chucking some experimental stuff in. ---- [Oh, I downgraded the progress bar a bit to reflect the slight growth in scope after chats during GDC] Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Sakar on March 10, 2011, 05:45:26 PM Very nice atmosphere. Really looking forward to see what else you add to this.
Noticed something weird on the season with the colorful trees (autumn?), I saw semi-faded stars above what looked like a giant screen-facing quad with a gradient on it. I was right on the edge of rainy clouds if it helps. Can't seem to reproduce it though Title: Re: Proteus Post by: deathtotheweird on March 10, 2011, 05:56:50 PM ya I thought they were gravestones as well.
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Nugsy on March 10, 2011, 06:04:22 PM I sent this to my cousin earlier and he said that he could only collide with objects when he sprinted. Thought this might help you debug. :handthumbsupL:
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on March 11, 2011, 12:57:33 AM Sakar - That sounds weird... if you feel like reproducing it, you can use F9 to take a screenshot (and screenshots before/after would be good too) and either post here or email me (ed1key [@t] gmail [d.ot] com). That would be really useful! :)
allen - I don't mind if people think they're gravestones. The type of stone I designed them as is fairly obscure! I will probably improve them a bit though, we'll see. Nugsy - thanks! That is kind of the oppositre of what I expected... It's a bit weird, I think I just need to rewrite the collision, it's totally random whether ot not it works :( Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Bremze on March 15, 2011, 05:01:51 AM This thing is still a thing! :-*
A bit of criticism: I think that the draw distance is too short, It feels like I should see more of the island when standing on a hill. Also the detail pop-in is really noticeable. Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on March 15, 2011, 12:50:49 PM A thing indeed :P Thanks!
I will try and take a look at expanding the draw distance once some more content and features have gone in. "Optimisation and LODing" is a task on my list, so once that is done it should be safe to increase the view distance. In fact, in the final version I should probably make it a setting on an options screen. Title: Re: Proteus Post by: EchoP on March 17, 2011, 10:40:28 PM Hi Ed,
I have been quite pumped about Proteus for a long time now, and I absolutely love what you just released. The atmosphere and the music of it are amazing, really awesome stuff. The LOD and pop in are a bit rough, and the mouse movements feel very unnatural to me, but definitely weighed out by the positives of it, great work! Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on March 18, 2011, 12:29:43 AM The LOD and pop in are a bit rough, and the mouse movements feel very unnatural to me, but definitely weighed out by the positives of it, great work! Hi, glad you enjoyed it! Could you go into some more detail about the mouse movements? Too quick? Too smoothed-out and laggy? What system are you running it on? And with the LOD/pop-up, do you mean the actual terrain-popping or the flowers appearing and/or anything else? (Those are the 2 obvious ones I can think of) Haven't posted a screenshot here for a while, so here's a couple of non-standard WIP pics of the abstract cities and roads: City by the beach: (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/Proteus%20game%20pics/Proteus-2011-03-13-seed1291140083-0001.png) (The red block is a temporary way of indicating which city it is from a distance, it will be more subtle :)) A bug with signs/road-routing (http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/tigshrimp/Proteus%20game%20pics/signbug2.png) (The signs are generated from the roads, but in this pic it has gone a bit mad...) By the way, if you just want to relax on a totally uncivilised island, the option will be there... either on the title screen or by travelling to another island, if I can get that to work someday. Edit: Just recieved some city music tracks from David, it's awesome stuff! Title: Re: Proteus Post by: EchoP on March 19, 2011, 04:21:58 PM Hi, glad you enjoyed it! Could you go into some more detail about the mouse movements? Too quick? Too smoothed-out and laggy? What system are you running it on? Sure. The mouse movements felt way too sensitive to me, even a small mouse movement would result in a large turn. My computer is running at 1920x1080, W7. And with the LOD/pop-up, do you mean the actual terrain-popping or the flowers appearing and/or anything else? (Those are the 2 obvious ones I can think of) My main issue with the pop in was trees. If you are standing below/near a tree and looking up, trees will often pop in and out of the view if they are in a corner of the screen. Again, might be to do with the resolution? I also had no collision unless I was sprinting. But I am still discovering new stuff in the world, and still having fun, so no real complaints here. Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on March 20, 2011, 02:35:20 AM You have a better PC or a more sensitive mouse than me :)
The mouse look is supposed to be quite smoothed out, so I probably need to add a mouse sensitivity setting AND make sure my mouse-smoothing is framerate indpendant, which it probably isn't. The tree problem might be an error with object culling, but I can't reproduce it so far.. Collision is one of those jobs that I'm putting off for as long as possible, as I really hate that code for some reason! Thanks again for the testing+feedback! Title: Re: Proteus Post by: HarrisonJK on March 20, 2011, 12:28:22 PM This game is beautiful.
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: nihilocrat on March 20, 2011, 07:32:15 PM This is pretty awesome, I like where you are going, the weather and the will-o-wisps are really nice touches. It was fun to just wander around and find stuff, go up to the rocks with the orange dots flying towards them and figure out what they did.
The framerate drops a bit when I take a look at dense cloud formations. The mouselook felt a bit weird then, which might have to do with the mouse smoothing code you talk about. For collision I would either suggest putting in middleware (Bullet, ODE, PhysX, etc.) or use a bag of clever tricks. Because the terrain is pretty amorphous to begin with it is probably easy to just do sphere checks with trees or stones, made even easier by the fact that they are static so you can just build a quadtree and check only trees near a moving object. Buildings will be harder, if you don't want to actually model sphere->polygon collisions you can use big blobs of AABBs for super quick and easy, yet blocky and weird collisions if the buildings themselves are not blocky and axis-aligned. It's even easier to find cheats if you don't want the player to jump or be able to collide with a building from above. I understand why you are putting it off though, so far the game isn't very tactile, you kind of DO want to feel like you are floating around, observing. Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on March 21, 2011, 12:59:27 AM Thanks!
Good idea about the middleware, it might be the most effective way to do it. Because the world is tile-based there is implicit spatial partitioning, so don't *think* I need to worry about quadtrees. Currently there are no plans to let the player jump or fly or otherwise get on top of things (except maybe bridges, one day) so even a 2D physics system might be fine. Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Kit on March 22, 2011, 06:20:48 AM Darn, jumping was going to be one suggestion I would have made. The style reminds me slightly (key word being slightly) of Love, only pixel and far easier to see where one is going.
This would make for a neat Daggerfall style fantasy game, maybe even some form of mmo :) Title: Re: Proteus Post by: eobet on May 28, 2011, 06:40:34 AM I just played the build from your blog now, and holy crap when the dark clouds and rain rolled in... I don't think I've felt anything like in in a video game since the night time air raid in the first Crysis... and there's an ever so slight gap between the graphical assets in those two games, so Proteus is doing something right!
Now, the most important question: Will there be a Mac version? Imo, this is good enough so I hope that some day it will be turned into an engine, just like Crytek, Source, Unreal, etc. etc... Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on May 29, 2011, 09:44:25 PM Well thanks! Currently working on a version for Indiecade... after that we'll see about a new public release in some form.
Mac build should be possible, I just need to figure out how to package it properly. It is "kind of" an engine already. Most content is built from Lua script ini files.Once I have a bit of breathing room I can tidy these up, extend them and set up a wiki or something Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on June 12, 2011, 12:07:03 PM :addicted: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/12/ambient-works-proteus-ep/
Sorry this thread has been a bit quiet... things have been moving along steadily. I'm just very bad at blogging progress, even on the "official" devblog. Looking forward to posting in announcements before too long! Title: Re: Proteus Post by: OneSwitch.org.uk on June 14, 2011, 11:21:34 PM What a wonderful thing!
Accessibility wise, I've been testing out with a few standard and not-so standard accessibility devices. I've posted a review here: http://www.gamebase.info/members/profile/14/blog-view/591 Here's my accessibility wish-list... 1. Start up screen. If you're reliant upon a pointer-based device alone (e.g. eye-gaze technology), being forced full screen, then having the SPACE bar as your only way to progress, leaves you reliant upon someone else to get you going. Similarly, if you're using reduced controls (e.g. two-switches), SPACE is also an additional button that you never need again, which may be one button too far. Would be great to allow W, UP or a left-click as well as SPACE enabling Porteus to get going. 2. Would be nice to have a way to select full-screen/windowed and to choose the game world size using your main in-game world controls (e.g. something to click on). 3. Allowing for an additional control mode where your mouse pointer is visible and not-locked into the Proteus window will allow a user to quit the game who might be otherwise unable to access the ESCAPE key. 4. A pure one-switch mode would be the icing on the cake, as there's only one other game I'm aware of that can do this, called Portem: http://switchgaming.blogspot.com/2011/02/portem.html - And that's a bit invasion of the body snatchers in atmosphere. Aside from this, there's so much in this making it accessible from the off. The collision system works brilliantly for people using reduced controls, the control system allows for a lot of versatility in using alternative set-ups, the windowed mode at the start allows you to freely set-up a dwell-clicker. Brilliant stuff! Barrie Title: Re: Proteus Post by: OneSwitch.org.uk on June 15, 2011, 02:39:47 AM Bill over at the Accessible GameBase (www.gamebase.info) has just tried it out with Eye-Gaze technology. Turns out it's not possible to play it as as soon as you move the camera spins round like mad.
If you did fancy making this eye-gaze compatible too, Proteus would need... A. The facility to open up in a window. B. A way to turn off the mouse "look" controls, but keep an on-screen pointer, and replicate the original mouse functions to key presses. We recon then we could use the new utility "Alt-Controller" http://www.gamebase.info/magazine/read/introducing-alt-controller_554.html to make the game playable with eye-gaze alone. A lot to ask though, we realise. Cheers Barrie www.SpecialEffect R&D and OneSwitch.org.uk Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Cunnah on June 15, 2011, 05:10:45 AM Sorry I'm bit late on the old band wagon but I just have to say I really like this. One thing I hope you never lose is the surreal feeling this game gives me!
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on June 15, 2011, 10:20:03 PM Barrie - Thanks for all the info on this, I'm sure I can get it to work nicely with those systems! I've emailed you at the "info" address on your site.
Cunnah - Thanks :) I can pretty much promise the surreal feeling will stay... if it disappears, let me know! Title: Re: Proteus Post by: oahda on June 25, 2011, 09:07:10 AM Nice idea with the signs. I like it.
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: farcodev on June 26, 2011, 09:47:53 AM cool design, i hope that you'll expand this game
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on October 25, 2011, 02:50:07 PM Argh! I let this devlog die a bit, sorry!
Anyway, bump to say that there's now a basic site for the game, and a mailing list if you are interested in getting news on the release date, which should hopefully be in 2-3 months at this rate. www.visitproteus.com]http://www.visitproteus.com/]www.visitproteus.com (http://www.visitproteus.com/) If anyone is at GameCity in Nottingham this thursday, it'll be playable on one of the big screens in the tent. Going to try and make an updated demo soon (without giving too much away). In the meantime, an image: (http://www.visitproteus.com/summermeadow.png) Title: Re: Proteus Post by: deathtotheweird on October 25, 2011, 03:00:53 PM awesome. :gentleman:
is the demo going to actually be the EP or just a demo of the EP? and then the LP much later? sorry, little confused on the wording and how it would apply to indie games...or something. Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on October 25, 2011, 03:06:14 PM is the demo going to actually be the EP or just a demo of the EP? and then the LP much later? Ah yes, I should clarify that... too many suffixes. Proteus EP is *probably-don't-quote-me-on-this* going to be $5 or something The demo will be free of course, so yes, a demo of the EP (preview track? maybe need to continue the music format metaphor) The LP is a later thing (a sequel really) that may happen late 2012, expanding the concept some more. Thanks! Title: Re: Proteus Post by: deathtotheweird on October 26, 2011, 12:30:43 PM ah ok. that makes sense. thanks for the clarification.
Title: Re: Proteus Post by: Dom2D on March 19, 2012, 09:28:33 PM On March 7th, after 3 days at GDC, I had a panic attack, anxiety attack, call it what you will, but let's just say I was freaking out about my life. Thousands of miles away from home, alone in my hotel room, I felt like I had to re-arrange my life, right there and then. It's a terrible idea to do that while overwhelmed by a gigantic ball of inspiration, stress, anxiety, motivation and confusion.
I had promised I'd go to the Venus Patrol/Wild Rumpus party that night, so I packed all my worries and plans in my brain and went there in a haze. My friends had not arrived yet, so I walked around the venue and found a relatively quiet room with 6 or 7 chairs/sofas, a controller and a projector showing a game I had never played before on a wall. A guy had just finished setting it up, I think - he turned to me and said "You can sit and play if you want". I did. I don't even know how long I played, really. A guy next to me asked me something about the game's goal, and I offered him my controller, hoping he'd say no so that I could stay in Proteus forever. He took my spot and I had to move on. Turned out I was 1 min away from the conclusion, but that's fine - the game had given me exactly what I needed. Through Proteus, I calmed down. I enjoyed a great night with amazing people, fantastic music and awesome games. I returned from GDC in a positive state of mind, and I gotta thank everyone who made Proteus for a good part of that. I did thank Ed Key that night, but I have to thank him again with this very long post. So yeah, a million thanks for Proteus. :gentleman: Title: Re: Proteus Post by: shrimp on March 23, 2012, 02:17:39 AM Maaaann.... thanks for telling me all that (at the party). I was really touched. Glad I made something that was of some use to someone!
(I think it was probably George that you spoke to first... or maybe Dick... one of the Wild Rumpus guys anyway) Title: Re: Proteus Post by: hryx on April 22, 2012, 02:49:05 AM Touching anecdote, Dom2D. Proper respect for getting out and trying to keep yourself afloat in such a state. Proteus really does have mystical mood-settling abilities!
By the way, I think I may have been the person who handed you the controller. :> |