Optimism Sprint 2

This week yielded progress in an unexpected manner. As I mentioned last week I worked on the puzzle for the first level. Since this is the player’s discovery of the device that broke the world, my plan was for the player to have to repair the shell of the machine that the vital components found in later levels would be added to. The player will be given several pieces and have to move them to correct positions with the mouse to reassemble the machine. This is very similar in functionality to a puzzle in a game that I worked on last year for Games 2, wherein players moved letters to correct positions to form a word. However, that game was made in Unity2D. Since I was unsure if a combination of 2D and 3D gameplay was possible I was looking into a method to create the puzzle in 3D, and in doing so stumbled upon a script that will be very useful for the third level’s puzzle.

While the first level takes place in a forest, the third level takes place in a canyon. At the end of the level, in front of a great chasm (think the Death Star trench but made of rock) the player will need to move oddly shaped rocks to construct a makeshift house, which upon completion will become an actual house through the magic of transdimensional weirdness. The script I happened upon allows for the dragging of rigidbodies with the mouse, which is exactly the sort of thing I needed for this puzzle. After I make a position checking script this puzzle will be essentially complete.

Meanwhile, Rebecca continued her work on the art side. This week she decided to focus on the environments for the game. As mentioned, the first level will be taking place in a forest in which Asher had set up his camp, and the third level will be taking place in a vast canyon that will feel very far from where the player started. The second level will take place in a fairly open plain between the two. Due to the transdimensional limbo in which Asher’s world resides, pieces of the old world will bleed through at times; the biggest example we will be showing is a junkyard that appears very out of place in the otherwise pristine green of the second level (the second level’s puzzle will take place there). Our goal is to have a small variety of natural environments that convey the beauty of Asher’s world, as it contains most of the natural features of the old world.

For next week, the puzzles for both the first and third levels will hopefully be in a good state to demo. From Rebecca, the environments will continue to be fleshed out. See you then!