[RELEASED] The Boots, The Obelisk And The Eye - a devlog

[hedgefield]

TLDR download link

 

After a successful jam last year, I figured I'd join again this year. Gives me something to do over Christmas break

 

I've always been more of a 2D adventure game type developer, but I've done two 3D first-person games now, and I can't get enough of that vibe. So this year I'm doing something even more bold: I'm throwing some physics into the mix and taking a stab at the immersive sim genre with

 

The Boots, The Obelisk And The Eye

 

I mainly chose that title because I want to do something with upgradeable rocket boots  and it gives me a location and a macguffin for free.

 

So far, I've identified these features of the boots:

- jump really high

- run really fast

- move quietly

- kick stuff pretty hard

 

Maybe I want to allow switching between these 'modes', just like Crysis had the stealth mode, combat mode, jump mode etc.

 

I considered making it a grappling hook gauntlet instead of boots, if only to have something cool to show on screen, but I feel like those mechanics would really give me a headache.

 

For the setting, I really want to do something with the brutalist architecture from Blade Runner 2049, specifically the wallace corporation building, with the fake sunlight and caustics and long shadows. That look would fit in with the Egyptian-themed Obelisk as a location, some sort of crazy tower complex. And I guess you.. climb it? To steal..... The Eye??

[Zirrrus]

Oooh, rocket boots, I love it already.

[Nappi]

Yeah, those features make the gameplay sound really satisfying already.

[watermelon]

the brutalist environment sounds really appealing.

[hedgefield]

So far so good, with a lot of trial and error I've gotten the ledge climb system working, and for fun I set up some lighting and a stock sprite hand for the idea.

 

The purple trigger checks whether the player is jumping when entering the trigger volume, and moves them up onto the ledge surface. Some optimization can be done there, it literally just moves them up and forward by 1, I want to make it check the player position first and calculate the difference needed to get to the target position. And eventually animate the camera and all. But even with that basic implementation, it already feels pretty cool when jumping from one platform to the other and scrambling up by the skin of your teeth.

 

Next I want to make another trigger to slide over low obstacles, and charging up the jump height by holding down space.

 

[infamous space turtle]

Sounds really cool. I've had my own fantasies about making something about traversing bladerunnerish cities. Excited to see how this goes. 

[hedgefield]

2 hours ago, infamous space turtle said:

Sounds really cool. I've had my own fantasies about making something about traversing bladerunnerish cities. Excited to see how this goes. 

 

Thanks! What were these ideas you had? I haven't thought out much of the gameplay, so maybe I can incorporate some of your ideas!

Are you on the Idle Thumbs slack?

[Mythalore]

woah hedgefield that hand is so real...

 

great idea, looking forward to the results! 

 

One question tho, how are you planning to incorporate the core mechanic of the immersive sim, crate stacking?

[phill]

Looking good, this could be the Mirror's Edge killer of 2017!

[hedgefield]

Ha, don't hold your breath! I'm not leaning into parkour too hard, but maybe I'll work in a wallrun mechanic at least

 

I've switched to using raycasting for the climbing, there were too many little quirks with the trigger volume method. It took me a full frustrating day of shuffling code around, but it works much better now, and the benefit is that I don't have to do any environment markup anymore to enable climbing, it just works. So I'm moving on to building an initial environment. Here's the seed of a Blade Runner-esque alley. From here you'll make your way to the Obelisk and look for a way in. It will be the testing ground for the other features: NPCs, dialogue, XP points.

 

[infamous space turtle]

Looks dope! I don't really have any solid mechanical ideas, just tonal-ishy mushy ones haha.Cant wait to see more. 

[brendonsmall]

Wow, this is really coming together nicely already! I love the saturated orange colors

[hedgefield]

The workweek has started again, so my jamming will be confined to the evenings. Yesterday I was greyboxing an environment, but I didn't like the layout and I couldn't get the lighting right, so I started again tonight with a new starting point: the subway station. You can catch a glimpse of the Obelisk in the background upon exiting.

 

I've also started thinking about quests in this area. I think for Wizjam I'll stick to the area outside the Obelisk, having the player find a way in. If anyone has good suggestions for small errands in a futuristic market district or ways to sneak into a building, post them below!

[fabian]

I like those colors! Already comes close to the screenshot you posted in your first post. How far are you going in terms of modeling and details?

[Zirrrus]

I love the contrast between the cool blue shadow and the really warm light. Looking very cool!

[Nappi]

I like the lighting a lot! Good job!

[hedgefield]

Thanks all!

 

@fabian I'm not going in too deep with modeling, the NPCs will probably be sprites and I'll do some basic set dressing with combined primitives and sprites. I like the aesthetics of minimalism, and luckily brutalism/blade runner have those qualities too.

 

I've come up with three paths for the 'get inside the obelisk' quest that the wizjam version will focus on, being:

 

- Buy a ticket. The ground floor has a public art exhibit area, so that'll be a bit like Hitman, blend in and wander around to find a way into the restricted area.

- Get a keycard. One of the merchants will have on for making a delivery to the food court or something.

- Climb in. A path of stacked crates and upgraded jump height can get you in through the vents.

 

And some assorted tiny fetch quests and exploration rewards that get you enough points to make those upgrades.

[z_bill]

Looking forward to this! 

 

The orange actually put me in mind of Campo Santo's games. Maybe orange has infected Jake thru Orange Box, then Campo's games, and now on to us!

[GammaBit]

That lighting is 

[hedgefield]

Guess I'm locked into an orange palette now

 

I've finally settled on a location layout that I like. I was too hung up on the deus ex hong kong scifi market street vibe that the grandeur of the obelisk got lost in the process. I greyboxed a few streets but nothing felt right, until I just embraced it and built an opulent plaza around the obelisk, complete with a star shape around the point of the obelisk that is formed by the buildings if you look up when exiting the metro station...

 

Time to get back to some actual gameplay features next! I find the idea of building a save system, inventory, dialogue, and other assorted UI from scratch quite intimidating, so I'm going to try and hook Adventure Creator into this project so I can get started on the quest.

[hedgefield]

Well, hello from the other side. I spent about a day and a half getting Adventure Creator working with my existing custom character controller bullshit, and it's an uneasy marriage, but hell it works. Then Christmas came barreling through, and it almost put me off of working on the game, the PS4 beckoning me from the other room with many new games.

 

But I showed up again this morning and got some nice work in.

 

For starters, I sketched out the interiors for the buildings around the Obelisk square. There's a restaurant, a supermarket, two residential blocks and a tourism/souvenir office, with some alleys and loading docks around that filled with backdoors into places and stacked boxes and fire escapes (in theory). I greyboxed a few of the larger spaces, and it immediately makes the space more interesting.

 

Then I worked on the upgrades for the boots. I made a very placeholder menu with skill unlock buttons and an XP counter, and as a test, I had one of the NPCs give you enough XP to unlock the jump height upgrade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next I'll be working on a more formal quest with item pickups, some XP triggers in hard-to-reach places and a working skill unlock system. I think I'll settle for one quest for the wizjam version and expand on it afterwards. I'd like to have some time to enjoy my PS4 and my christmas break too

[hedgefield]

Woof, I was very sick with the flu the past few days, so I couldn't make much progress. But today I felt better and managed to implement all the necessary things to prove the concept in a basic way, so the game (or prototype, rather) is playable.

 

And that means: DOWNLOAD LINK!

 

Last jam I busted my ass to deliver something that was feature complete, which this one isn't, but I'm still pleased with the result, all the basic mechanics are in there in some form or another, and this game is based way more on mechanics than my other games. You can't deliver a narrative game with half the story, but you can deliver an immersive sim with only one quest, one upgrade unlocked and one level to mess around in.

[infamous space turtle]

👍 great work. Will DL when I can.  

[Nappi]

I like the look of this game, and especially the lighting, a lot. The title treatment is very nice too. I would like to see more of this game in the future.