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[oahda]

Oh that sounds really interesting! How open-ended will it be? Multiple ways to progres, or maybe something more linear?

Still pondering that~

[oahda]

4

Groundwork for time bubbles

Was planning on getting a bit further before posting about this, but I've been a bit distracted with other stuff lately and it might be another while before I get back on this, so here's a small update in the meantime.



The time travel mechanic isn't just going to be about either being in the past or the future, but rather about opening up pockets into the past that only partially cover town, serving as locks to find right keys to open. I decided to make these bubbles be made up of boxes and cylinders that for example can be used to, as seen above, unlock a circular patch of the town, while still retaining the lock on the interior of a house within that bubble.

This meant I had to come up with a shader for this addition and subtraction, which was easy enough to do in a binary fashion, but took me about three days of work to figure out in such a way that it would make all the edges blend nicely together!

Of course later on the NPC's aren't going to be visible at all outside the windows into the past, and the player character isn't going to turn white, but now that the shader is set up I can do anything I want on either side of the bubbles~



Above: outline of positive bubbles (into the past) in green, and of negative bubbles in red.

[Ordnas]

Wow, 3 days of work for the shader! You ar working really hard into this project. I like the game idea. Best of luck! 

[oahda]

Thanks! I'm in the process of moving right now (lots of packing!) but I'm looking forward to settling down and getting back to working on this!

[oahda]

5

Systems and interfaces

Got to our new apartment a couple of weeks ago, but we still haven't got an internet connection set up. Been doing some work in the meantime, and I have an opportunity to make a post today, so here goes! Been blocking out more of the game systems and working on GUI stuff, which wasn't in the engine before.

• Interactions indicated by an icon: looking at things, showing photos to people, and listening in on conversations.
  
  
• Inverted the time bubbles so that the default (including the sky and so on) is in the past, and the inaccessible pockets are more like literal memory gaps (the white patch in this GIF). NPC's are invisible in these pockets since they're not in the same time period.

[JobLeonard]

Oooh, how did I miss this devlog until now! Subbed!

[oahda]

Thanks!

[diegzumillo]

I've been seeing progress on this on twitter, I didn't know there was a devlog.

I love the idea! Not enough detective games around, IMO. And it seems you're expanding on that Batman Arkham games detective minigame which might be the most criminally under-explored concept in gaming.

[oahda]

Thanks for the encouragement! Not familiar with the Batman game—I’ll try to check it out!

[diegzumillo]

It has crime scene processing mini games that work by having you walk around a scene looking (through AR) at the reconstruction of a few seconds of the crime. You can rewind, pause, play etc. Of course, there it's just a game of finding the blinking object and clicking on it to resume the story, but it has potential to be more than that.

[oahda]

Ohh, that sounds right up my alley! Yep, I suppose that’s in here too, only it isn’t necessarily a crime scene, and it’s anywhere in town at any point in time, with as much winding back and forth as you want to.

[diegzumillo]

YES! I am super excited about this!

[oahda]

Thank you!!

[oahda]

6

Proto-prototype

This is so rough I wasn't sure whether to post yet, but I think this is a good time to make a pit stop to keep the log alive before I go ahead and spend another while on cleaning up all the code that makes this work and eventually move on to work on the next milestone.

So I've gotten enough into place to be able to block out a little test scenario. It looks very silly right now, but it represents a lot!



This still isn't really representative of how things like unlocking memories will actually work later on, but I needed to throw something in real quick just to test it out.

• Engine now supports scripting, and each NPC has a script that can be used to tailor its individual behaviour, actively communicating with others and making choices depending on what the player has been able to influence over the cycle. Iteration speed has skyrocketed!
  
  
• A system of "verbs" allows NPC's to see not just who is in a photograph, but what they're doing (such as hugging each other, or being dead). They can then react accordingly depending on what they are shown.
  
  
• These ridiculous-looking NPC models are there to test backwards animation and the possibility to use the same sets of animations for all characters to reduce work, since I'm going to have to create a lot of them all by myself—I'm thinking instead of procedural ways to still give each a distinct personality in their movements.

Bonus

Running the game on an Android phone with an Ouya controller!

[ChrisLSound]

Awesome! Even though so much of that gif is temporary/unfinished/etc, I can absolutely feel the spark of the design even now. The curiosity to learn more about a story that you wandered into, getting invested in the characters as you follow along, and the excitement when you finally unlock the missing pieces. I love it!

[oahda]

Thank you! Starting to get quite excited myself. Taking a little break after a very productive month right now but I’ll be back on it soon!

[Ordnas]

I am waiting to download it on Itchio! 

[oahda]

Will take a while.

[amasinton]

Wow! Quite a lot of progress!

I'm very impressed with that rough demo gif you posted.  There are a lot of interlocking systems working together there.  Looks like some compelling gameplay.

AND an engine you're building yourself AND it's running on Android.

I can't code myself out of a paper bag!

[oahda]

Thank you!

Thought it mightn't be very demonstrative at the moment since it's so lo-fi and temporary so it's nice to see that the functionality and intentions are visible through that after all.

Cross-platform is important to me so that's one of the first things I got working actually. c: Lots of helpful libraries out there to do most of the dirty work for me!