Yo ! Day 5 (more like Night but yeah)
I really wanted to get rid of these nasty keyboard controls for rotations and interactions, so here we are !
Basically, the player can now interact with the mechanisms using the mouse left button. GUI appears when the center of the screen (the invisible mouse) goes above an interactive element.
And then you just have to click to push/rotate/pull. The controls are a lot more comfortable this way, the only thing is that it's now annoying to have to move the mouse on each on these things. I'll first tweak a bit the totem, but then do you have ideas on how I could improve it ? I also have a bit of inertia on the player camera movements that I'd like to keep even though it worsen the thing.
Also notice how cool it is that the GUI actually immediatly teach the player that these abtract symbols actually mean "left","right" and "push".
About OBS basic design layout now :
I wanted the game to focus on concentric circles patterns as I'm fascinated by the design that comes out and how absolute it feels. Everything in the game need to be linked in a way to this. Searching a bit, I came with a lot of concepts around it : from circles, rotations to sky and planets, armillary spheres, crop circles, sephirotic tree...
On the more gameish side, I wanted to have a simple system of "combinations opening doors". To fit the intentions, all these combinations needs to involve a circular movement.
Discussing with a game designer from the company where I'm having my internship now, I realized there's 3 key elements.
1- The way you tell the solution : In other words, how you'll make the player understand something like "oh so the combination is left-right-right-right !", hiding the answer in some original way everytime.
2- The way the answer itself is expressed. For now I have found that my left-right combinations could be expressed by simply telling the rotation of each input (like left or right), or by having a more abstract position wich is inputs adding on top of each other (if X is facing me and that I rotate two times left 90° it will then be considered facing the opposite side).
3- The medium of the interaction : Now there's the totem, but some others are planned. Plus it's also interesting as I said the first day to break the rules you established with your basic medium, reusing it another way.
These 3 elements can be combined in a lot of ways leading to endless possibilities. I never thought I could come out with something that dense with a simple totem rotation when clicking on its sides.
Taking the example of this door of the observatory : The way to tell the solution is litteraly written (
HD picture here to see it), the way the answer is expressed is simple inputs, and the medium is the totem (that need to be changed).
Ok that's probably enough for today I think. Tomorrow I'll probably speak of the day and night cycle. I also need to talk one day about all the world part and how it is designed around the concentric circles.
