Problem Machine

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About Problem Machine

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    Zombie Thumb

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    selbencoirlo
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    http://problemmachine.wordpress.com
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    http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197963287051/

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  1. [Release] Eight Seconds: Manipulated Through Time

    Basically the rules are: Level 1 - no reflection/echo Level 2 - 1 echo which repeats what you did 8 seconds ago Level 3 - 1 reflection which does everything you just did backwards every 8 seconds Level 4 - 2 and 3 combined. I think there may be some issues with this one, though. If something was in your hands at the start point of the reflection/echo, a copy of it is made for them to hold Unfortunately I don't think it really works as a puzzle game since it ends up being so difficult to wrap ones brain around and the easiest solution to the puzzles is usually just to wait for long enough that your reflections/echoes are static and can be used like blocks. I also wrote up some further thoughts on what I was trying to do with this project, and the ways it worked and failed to work, and posted them on my blog: https://problemmachine.wordpress.com/2020/02/01/eight-seconds-manipulated-through-time/ Thanks for playing!
  2. [Release] Eight Seconds: Manipulated Through Time

    And a release version is up! I'll probably spend a few more hours patching some bugs I noticed, but it's probably mostly done now. https://problemmachine.itch.io/eight-seconds-manipulated-through-time
  3. [Release] Eight Seconds: Manipulated Through Time

    Alright got portals working perfectly! Still not entirely sure what was going wrong with my approach, but I found an alternate approach which fits the rendertexture to its destination using shader logic rather than trying to match the UVs which was what I was trying to do. Honestly couldn't be happier with how they look now, though I also had to spend some time getting everything rendering in the right order -- it turned out using separate cameras to handle drawing different layers was key.
  4. [Full Release] Farewell, Video Games

    The movement looks really smooth and satisfying, and environments look great
  5. [Release] Eight Seconds: Manipulated Through Time

    Ahh good thought, I did make it make the mesh in code using the dimensions of a box collider, I'll fiddle with the triangulation and see what that does. For the reversal I end up recording the rotation and velocity relative to the character facing at each point in time, and then whenever it lands from falling I record the vertical velocity at the moment of impact and play that back like a jump in reverse. This means that if you pick up your reflection and move them around, their movement will continue relative to the new offset to their position. Unfortunately the backwards jumps don't always work -- if you walk off a platform, when your reflection goes to 'jump' back onto it it usually won't make it. I may just remove jumping as a mechanic.
  6. [Release] Eight Seconds: Manipulated Through Time

    Trying to get a portal system, as in the game Portal, and I'm having issues getting it to draw correctly. Anyone know how a render texture applied to a 4-point plane could end up with this bend in the middle?
  7. [Release] Eight Seconds: Manipulated Through Time

    Got doors and switches working and constructed a simple adaptive music system, which was surprisingly easy to do (though getting everything to sync up correctly at the start was a bit trickier). https://www.dropbox.com/s/00ovcxba2bgwuq8/MtT0003.mkv Physics are still not quite there, as you can see from the red (forward) reflection failing to make the jump I made. I'm a bit tempted to just get rid of jumping instead of fixing the issue.
  8. Edit: Released! There's still some bugs left to iron out, but overall I'm pretty happy with how this turned out -- even though I don't think it really works as a refined puzzle solver, the experience of repeatedly having a crate snatched out of your hands by yourself from 8 seconds ago is really dumb and good. https://problemmachine.itch.io/eight-seconds-manipulated-through-time I should have made this post a few days ago but it slipped my mind. My project for the final Wizard Jam is going to be a surreal first-person puzzle game based around time manipulation. Every eight seconds, a duplicate of you is created and plays the last eight seconds of your actions back in reverse. I have a few ideas for how to iterate on this mechanic, but at this moment relatively few for how to create interesting gameplay, ie puzzles, out of it. I'm hoping to have all the mechanical components complete within the next few days, though, so I should have a solid week or so to get the actual puzzles and levels made. Here's an earlier version of the time reversal mechanic, along with a demonstration of picking up the time reflection and letting it go: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9xvt3e36lf9949f/MtT0002.mp4?dl=0 Working right now on a more physically robust version where the reflection actually interacts with the environment in a meaningful way, which is a bit trickier. I think it's very achievable, though.
  9. Wizard Jam 9 *Team Seeking Thread*

    I originally was going to do a game for this but I decided that in the end I'd really rather just help other people out with their thing. I'd like to contribute to as many projects as possible! What I'm doing: Music! 2d art/animation! Game design! Unity/Flash/etc programming! I'm not great at 3d art but other than that have a pretty broad skill set. I'd particularly like to do music work though, so hit me up if you need any music for your game. Contact Info: PM me here, direct message on the Idle Thumbs Slack channel, or email at problem.machine at gmail Time Zone: Pacific, sleep schedule currently wildly fluctuating Portfolio: Games Music Writing ... And I'm noticing my 2d art portfolio is real out of date, so I probably want to update that before I share it.
  10. [Released] The Convergence Compulsion

    Yeah I spent almost all of my dev time building game elements, and then the last several days were a mad scramble of building, testing, and debugging levels
  11. [Released] The Convergence Compulsion

    I uploaded a 1.01 build tweaking level 6 based on this and jonbjohns' stream. This is the one level with the most specific solution, and I realized watching his stream that the note at the beginning could describe another solution which I wasn't thinking of and which the level wasn't scripted for. There should be more clarity now
  12. [Released] The Convergence Compulsion

    Hoo boy. Well, over the past week I've basically worked 8-12 hours every day trying to bring this thing to life. It's still not quite where I want it to be, but I hit most of my goals. However, to get this finished today I had to basically work for 14 hours, so I'm really looking forward to doing not this for a while. As of now, we're in 1.0, and the game has 7 levels and an epilogue. The puzzles range from elementary to fairly tricky, though the mechanics aren't quite refined enough to support really elegant puzzle design they do have an organic feel that seems a bit unusual to me. Anyway, here it is. I may decide to pick this back up in the future just to do another polish pass and maybe add another level or two if I get inspired, but right now I'm pretty proud I got it to where it is now over the course of 3 weeks and also feel like never opening unity again
  13. [Released] The Convergence Compulsion

    Alright, version 0.1 is up! Over the next few days, up until we hit February and I move onto another project, I'll be adding a few more levels and intro screens conveying the objectives. I may be adding in bits of behavior to the civilian and music and additional game elements if that's feasible -- most of those elements are actually already in, but don't work without a civilian who does things. https://problemmachine.itch.io/convergence-compulsion
  14. [Released] The Convergence Compulsion

    It took me a long time to figure it out, but I finally got the UI overlay working. It's technically not an overlay since it's in world space (which is technically probably not ideal), but it's fine for now, so at least I can move on to other things.
  15. [Released] The Convergence Compulsion

    I did some work on materials and pulled in some asset store prefabs to be game objects. These were listed as "sci-fi batteries", but they stand in quite well for generic machines. I've got placeholders for everything in now, and just need to make the machines and civilians actually functional -- probably fairly easy in the case of the machines, likely pretty tricky in the case of the civilians. I also need to create a bit more UI to give feedback on the state of the machines. Once I have that stuff done I'll start building levels (agh so little time), and can develop the objective stuff in parallel with that. I also need to add sound, which will probably be something I do in a mad dash on the last day. Anyway here's a soul-powered conveyer beam: It still doesn't convey, so I'll be tackling that tomorrow along with the other stuff I mentioned. The thing I'm happiest about from today is adding a normal map to the aggregator lens. I think the effect is pretty nice.