4/19/2019
Clone is an earlier project, from last year, where you can copy and paste certain objects to “Trombagun your way to solutions” (as it says above, where you can try it yourself).
Introductions aside, Its 4weekjam time again in class. We decided to give clone another go. or perhaps a “Continuation” rather, since 4 weeks isn’t that long. Also a couple of adjustments: I wanted to switch up the artstyle. Following recent “success”, substance painter seems like a solid pick. It tends to take less time to get something you want, which is also a plus. We also wanted more humor in the game. I mean what did you expect, whose devlog are you reading? currently it has about two ‘Jokes’ which were mostly afterthoughts.
Might as well rethink the environment while we’re at it. had a gander at a couple of games for this: Black mesa (more specifically the new xen section), Morrowind, and the shivering isles expansion to oblivion. So clearly we want something weird and alien.
But you can’t have that kind of environment and slap on your bulk standard button. naw, that’s gotta be weird too. best way to do that is sit down and see where a pencil takes you:
Buttons and cube delivery services
Understanding my vague scribbles probably isn’t working out for you, so I’ll do a bit of explaining. When trying to come up with more interesting button ideas, I went straight back to cube one. What exactly is the function of a rubber duck button?
At the end of the day, All a button is doing is asking: ‘Is any cube in a specified area?’. This expands the concept of a button massively, since now we’re not restricted to something that is pushed when weight is applied. I could probably come up with a few more concepts, but were pretty happy with these two “button” ideas:
The first is a beam that reaches from floor to ceiling (or wall to wall). Any cube placed into it will hover there, and the button will be ‘active’. lets call this the beam button for now, so we all know what were talking about.
The second, is a cube dude. This little guy is suuuper happy to hold cubes for you, and gets sad when you take them away. we’ve thought of situations where they would run away with the cube you give them, or throw it out of bounds. Cube dudes are just tryna play catch and your ruining it for them D:
If you (or a cube dude) throws a cube out of bounds, you’re gonna need another cube eventually. Portal handles this by just dropping another cube in through tubes, so we can’t just steal that. we couldn’t settle on any of these ideas so decided to use multiple (or however many time allows for). This will keep an old gag from getting stale by… not using the old gag again.
Cubes could arrive via tentacle, which throws them into bounds. or similarly, a ‘slap platform’. Here various objects could slap the cube into area for you. Or perhaps its delivered by your friendly mouth alien… thing. That just spits it out, along with some comedic sound effects. Maybe you have to knock on a snecret hatch and ask that guy in there for another cube. He gets more annoyed each time you ask. you don’t see him though. its dark in there and he just chucks it out.
Bit of a text heavy post huh? Sorry about that, don’t have alot of visuals at this stage. We’ve got some WIP puzzle designs drawn out, but ill leave that for another post since this is already a giant wall of text.
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