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ratrogue
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« Reply #20 on: February 14, 2012, 07:50:59 AM »


Thanks, but unfortunately the whole design will change later. ;P
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ratrogue
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« Reply #21 on: February 15, 2012, 10:44:18 AM »

A quick, small video for the interested. It shows the gameplay mechanics implemented so far:




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Franklin's Ghost
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« Reply #22 on: February 15, 2012, 04:02:09 PM »

Wow  Shocked that video is looking awesome, love the mechanics behind it. Such a great and unique concept behind building the triangles to affect things. Really liking the gameplay so far. Always great to see FPS that think outside the box  Smiley
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« Reply #23 on: February 15, 2012, 05:32:35 PM »

I don't know what they taught you in sex ed, but sperm isn't supposed to be yellow like that. Cheesy

Definitely like the core mechanic of the game.
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« Reply #24 on: February 16, 2012, 04:17:16 AM »

Quote
unfortunately the whole design will change later. ;P
Change design without changing palette. It's easy to keep colors, and your colors are nice.
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small video for the interested. It shows the gameplay mechanics implemented so far
Okay, now I feel like I must go back to Unity and finish demo to overshoot you :D
Your gravity changing is better than mine! Cheers Wink
Maybe (just maybe) light rays will be unnecessary... I mean, "guiding" Kamis' through level could be much more fun that with rays.
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ratrogue
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« Reply #25 on: February 16, 2012, 06:11:06 AM »

@Franklins Ghost: Thank you very much!
@imaginationac: Haha, it looked like sperm before, I think it's not so crass anymore after I changed the shape. Good thing it's all test right now.

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unfortunately the whole design will change later. ;P
Change design without changing palette. It's easy to keep colors, and your colors are nice.

I'm not the artist of the project - don't have much say in this. ;)

Quote
Okay, now I feel like I must go back to Unity and finish demo to overshoot you :D
Your gravity changing is better than mine! Cheers ;)

Yes, you make that demo! NOW!
... the gravity changing mechanic isn't that special, I showed just the parts which work. ;)

Quote
Maybe (just maybe) light rays will be unnecessary... I mean, "guiding" Kamis' through level could be much more fun that with rays.

Yeah, but also much more confusing. I definitely want them both in the game, as the light rays provide fast feedback for the player (as they don't need to spawn constantly like the Kamis) and thus are super-easy to control.

Regards,
overhead
« Last Edit: February 16, 2012, 06:17:11 AM by overhead » Logged

ratrogue
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« Reply #26 on: March 05, 2012, 03:26:15 AM »

Devlog entry 5:

So, unfortunately, even after the long time since the last devlog, there is not so much to tell. I promised to implement a more interesting approach of using the tris as platforms, but this was already shown in the little gameplay trailer: gravity changing! We hope this allows cool ways to explore the levels, but of course there is the problem with it being too powerful. So these tris (which only change the player's gravity direction) probably can only be cast every now and then, bound to some kind of Mana, or it is only possible in certain regions. Time and testing will tell.

So all I can show now is the slow but steady transition to the new art style. My personal screenshots are a little bit too ... beige, but they demonstrate how a abandonment of (photorealistic) diffuse textures and the use of a global color gradient over the whole 3D meshes may look interesting:


I think the screenshots from my partner probably tell more about the real direction of where this is going. Of course, these are experiments, and WIP:


Right now I'm working on the first real playable level of the game, and as I didn't do that for quite some time I'm a bit slow. There also is still some kind of art direction missing in this regard; we invent and build reusable props (like tables, chairs, rocks, chests, etc.) along the way, together with the background story. So here is a small glimpse on the 3D level I'm creating:


BTW, some people didn't like that the video had no music; the reason for the lack of audio was that it wasn't meant for a broader audience. Well, hopefully this will change for the next one. Along with a new name for the game - our current favorite, after thinking about names like "Trinsane", "Trizarre" (thanks Cell), "Tri and Error", "The Third Eye", "Connect the dots", "Konstrukt", "Trigonomancer", "Trimancy", "Triception", "Triplex", "The Right Angle", "180 degrees", "From Point To Point", "neuTrino", ... we currently just want the original "Tri" together with a subtitle describing the story: "Tri - On the Verge of Memories" or something like this. We'll see, we'll see. Soon.

Regards,
overhead
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ratrogue
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« Reply #27 on: May 19, 2012, 11:21:48 AM »

Devlog entry 6:

Wow, time flies. Fast. What did we do since beginning of March?

We extended the game, of course. We planned levels, and worked more or less hard on one of them in order to be able to show *something* finally, for our Kickstarter campaign. The level we chose should have mainly the elements from the original TRI, creating triangles and reflecting light rays - you saw it in the last devlog entry. There would also be a small section with the Kami ghost thingies, so we could show them in the video.

And then, the Indie Buskers happened. Even though it was just a weekend-long game jam, earning us a little bit of money, we didn't have time for Tri 2 for pretty much three weeks, as the Indie Buskers thing demanded additional work before and afterwards. We had to do marketing, build some hype, feed the twitter account ... and after that special 48 hours there had to be bugfixes and updates. This robbed a lot of precious time. Of course we don't regret the game jam - what we regret (to some degree) is Tri 2.


Left: The Indie Buskers busking together
Right: Our game The Sun Is Deadly we made for the jam

Because when we finally started the "real work" again and also showed the weeks old prototype to a friend, who didn't have much positive things to say about it, we realized that the game wasn't much fun right now. It was neither much fun to play nor much fun to make, and not even much fun to show it around. Besides the obvious reasons (several features missing) it became clear that the level was just too big, and it became too much of life-draining work to plan it, model it, texture it and fill it with gameplay.


Yep, too much.

This why we decided to take a step back, and rethink our current way of doing things. Our main conclusion was: KISS. We, or at least myself, abandoned this principle far too early, with the far-too-big scope of the level and its visual storytelling.

What we try to do now is
a) recycling more content and trying to keep everything in a neat grid.
b) doing less stuff in 3dsmax ("only" the basic meshes for the level, and of course the prefabs), and more in Unity3D.
c) working on a demo for alpha funding instead of a trailer for Kickstarter.

The last point might seem strange, with all this Kickstarter craze nowadays, but one should not forget that still only the minority of game projects on this platform gets funded. You really need a fan base, a little hype, and/or something cool to show. And this is what we want to achieve now first, before risking the crowdfunding adventure.

For us, this means doing a smaller demo, with much more focused sublevels (one for movement tutorial, one for wallwalk, one for light rays), and trying to polish this within some weeks. And this also means that we will let testers get their hands on it pretty soon, instead of trying to generate attention just with a video. The advantage of our new course already showed: I added much more gameplay elements, like water and acid pits, which make the game instantly more complete, instead of still losing time with a fat level which would be complete in 2016.

And somehow, the KISS principle helped us to develop a cleaner style.


New textures with reduced complexity


Gameplay elements and physics

One question may remain: Why didn't we step back much sooner? Well, the reasons are numerous, but one of the main reasons might be the fact that we already did it before - we had a crazy story with a professor imprisoned in a mental home, drugged by evil rivals in order to get his unbelievable invention of a triangle generator ... Then we stepped back, looked at the story, and replaced it with one which would allow us to be more creative on the way. Yet, this wasn't the ultimate solution, as in this phase we only did the concept and didn't even start to work on real stuff.
Another reason for our blindness probably were the many distractions, like the Indie Buskers thing and the A MAZE. festival in Berlin. This way we saw the flaws in us, not in the general development of Tri 2. Only after a break it was possible for us to analyze it objectively.

And we're happy we did it. We still think the gameplay can be fun, so we didn't throw the whole project into the bin; instead we refined it a little bit and changed the setting. The new levels are more random (which might change after the demo) instead of "logical" structures, so we don't have to worry about things like "Would an old culture really place this specific statue at this corner, and why is it still looking so new?" - Yet we want to have some kind of background story, but for the demo a sandbox-y type of mission design is more than alright.

Also, there still is much to be done before we can give out our demo (it's going to be more like a "tech preview" really), but the TODO list becomes shorter every day. The character controller has to be redone, the triangles have once again to be re-designed, the Kami aren't implemented with the new system. But now we have a level change system which saves states, some kind of water/acid, doors and switches, teleporters, a new perspective, cooler textures and hopefully a bright future.

Regards,
overhead
« Last Edit: May 19, 2012, 11:27:44 AM by overhead » Logged

DustyDrake
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« Reply #28 on: May 19, 2012, 01:27:40 PM »

This looks really cool.
I tried the original tri just a little bit ago, and I got to the point where there were the three lazers... and I had no clue what I was doing, so there were beams everywhere.

Tri 2 looks good though, however I've always had problems with Unity games, they've never felt quite right, too sensitive or too jittery to me.
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ratrogue
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« Reply #29 on: May 19, 2012, 02:31:02 PM »

Thanks! I think you had to direct the lasers to three boxes at the other side on the room in order to activate a door. :)

Regarding the mouse sensitivity, I hear ya. This always bugs me with Unity on other PCs ... I create and play the game on my computer and it works fine, but any other PC (especially Macs) seems to have problems - and often I'm too lazy to implement some options so you can adjust the sensitivity yourself. Of course, Tri 2 will have that. ;)
« Last Edit: May 20, 2012, 12:27:01 AM by overhead » Logged

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« Reply #30 on: May 19, 2012, 09:34:52 PM »

I understood I had to direct the beams to the blocks, but how I was supposed to do that was beyond me. I had the center beam reflecting like 7 or 9 different times before I accidentally hit one. Also, could Tri 2 possibly be a prequel? Perhaps the tri gun was an attempt to harness the magics in Tri 2?
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ratrogue
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« Reply #31 on: May 20, 2012, 12:34:26 AM »

I understood I had to direct the beams to the blocks, but how I was supposed to do that was beyond me. I had the center beam reflecting like 7 or 9 different times before I accidentally hit one.

IIRC I didn't have time to test this specific level. Wink

Quote
Also, could Tri 2 possibly be a prequel? Perhaps the tri gun was an attempt to harness the magics in Tri 2?

I don't think that we will connect TRI and Tri 2 in any story-relevant way, but we'll see.
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« Reply #32 on: May 20, 2012, 07:11:46 AM »

Wow, this looks great! Please add Penrose stairs... triangular penrose stairs =3...
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ratrogue
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« Reply #33 on: May 24, 2012, 05:36:34 AM »

Haha, if I find out how to actually build Penrose stairs in 3D, I might. Wink
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ratrogue
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« Reply #34 on: May 31, 2012, 02:36:01 PM »

Some screenshots of a 4-hour play-testing session with some friends. They tested the current state of our tech-demo / pre-alpha and basically told us that it's too hard. But nonetheless they seemed to have fun building some triangles! ;-)

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ratrogue
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« Reply #35 on: June 04, 2012, 09:20:29 AM »

Jana (Rat King's artist) wrote an article about our learnings because of our reset, might be worth a read. :)
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ratrogue
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« Reply #36 on: June 14, 2012, 02:47:56 PM »

New gameplay video, from the pre-alpha:






(Screenshot not from the video. :P)
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ratrogue
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« Reply #37 on: July 05, 2012, 07:02:14 AM »

I guess I need to write something about the technical stuff again soon. But for now, just some spam. Wink

Try the demo ...


... or watch the new

!



And yeah, you can now pre-order the game for $5 and get access to the pre-alpha. Coffee

Regards,
overhead
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« Reply #38 on: July 06, 2012, 01:34:04 AM »

Looking great & good fun already. Player movement feels pretty polished, which is great, especially in an indie production. (Camera shaking could use some improvement, though, plus default setting is probably too strong.)
Also, impressively long play time for a pre-alpha. Nice and pretty large-scale level design, might be just a little bit too non-linear for the average portal player in some places. ;-) Player guidance via script roles & tris is also nice. Awesome work overall, great to see such a solid 3D indie game, keep it up!

Oh, and I love the walking on walls and the tearing down of brittle walls and ceilings!
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ratrogue
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« Reply #39 on: July 09, 2012, 06:09:24 AM »

Thank you!
We're re-planning the level layout for the first part a little bit (especially the two "sublevels"), in order to have a more consistent progression for the player throughout the game, and also for story purposes. For example, we plan to move the light-reflecting part into the second or third level.
The non-linearity is a feature of the whole game, though, as we kinda liked that and would set TRI apart from most Portal-like games.

Regards,
overhead
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