http://www.nullpointer.co.uk/content/in-ruins/Long time lurker here, poking head above parapet to risk posting up a game experiment.
I’ve finally managed to complete a playable build of ‘In Ruins’. It’s not as completely polished as I’d have liked and theres a lot of ways I would expand the concept if I had more time to devote to the project.. ‘In Ruins’ is an experimental, ambient game examining the procedural construction of space. It’s part of an ongoing Phd research project to investigate ideas that connect games, permutation and the sublime. It’s part of a series of games inspired by artistic interpretations of the sublime, in this case the work of Romantic landscape painters (Thomas Cole, Caspar David Friedrich etc). Its also heavily influenced by Fumito Uedas Ico series.
The player is deposited on the edge of a procedurally generated island. The island consists of overgrown pathways ruined spires and broken ramparts. A central tower looms above the island beckoning the player towards it.
The world is generated procedurally each time the game is run, after the initial cycle is completed the player can access the generation parameters to play with. Although its not directly connected to Sir You are Being Hunted it shares some of the world generation techniques and might give some people a taster of the sort of tech we are messing with at Big Robot (Although ‘Sir…’ represents a much more detailed and advanced generation engine).
The audio is a generative mix of material by Jonny Pilcher. The text extracts are from a 1st century BC didactic poem “On The Nature of Things” by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius. The project was made in Unity. You can grab the executables below. You can find more information about the development process in some previous posts on my blog
http://www.nullpointer.co.uk/. It’s reasonably bug free, and runs on a range of machines, if you have any questions or problems you can contact me on twitter @tomnullpointer.
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