Nappi

[Released] Palpable Dreams

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It is released: https://ktomi.itch.io/palpable-dreams

 

I considered not taking part in the jam this time because I was out of ideas. Then I found a cool flocking code for Unity, and decided to play around with it.

 

I'm yet to figure out the gameplay, but my current idea is to hide some invisible attractors and repulsors in the play area and make the player find them based on the movement of the swarm.

 

swarm_test_sphere.gif.37657445f1a9fd720893988e8d4203cb.gif

(It actually runs much smoother than the gif)

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I made some progress, and I feel like this might yet turn into some sort of a game. I added camera rotation and zooming, and an invisible repulsor that moves on the surface of the (again invisible) planet. It might not be immediately clear from the video, but I'm looking for the repulsor and clicking on it to explode the scene.

 

 

I hate what Youtube does to the video. It actually looks pretty crisp and runs quite smoothly.

 

swarm_test_3.gif.d6bc0fd93bd10f6380ffcf1846597948.gif

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It already looks pretty darn smooth, can't wait to see what 'more smooth' looks like! I love the abstract nature of it,  like an artwork you can play. Looking forward to getting mesmerised by this one!

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@Nappi once again your use of colour is just amazing! Gameplay too, I've done boids and swarm stuff at uni but never anything spherical like that it's crazy!

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Thanks!

 

I suffered from a slight lack of inspiration and motivation prior to the jam, but now that things seem to work okay, I'm pretty excited to keep on going. The gameplay may be a bit barebones, but hopefully the game will at least serve as a relaxing visual thing.

 

Mythalore: Fiddling with the visual style and colors is definitely one of my favorite things in these projects, so I'm really happy to hear that it comes across.

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Today, I focused on the most essential part of any game: the title screen. I also started experimenting with different color schemes. I think I will utilize negative space a lot in this game.

 

Oh and I also tweaked the title a bit.

 

palpable_dreams_title3.gif.0189fe28c9bca8f542cbf6aad73cf33a.gif

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Tutorial screen. I will get to the gameplay at some point, probably.

 

 

 

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Today I worked on scene transitions. The first level after the title and "tutorial" screens is still very much work in progress, but the idea is to find an anomaly by guiding the swarm with your mouse.

 

Please, try to ignore the Youtube compression. I sure can't. :/

 

 

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I have been working on some back-end stuff and toyed with level transitions.

 

palpable_dreams_transition.gif.8af3eb379c0e7b67327956ec8342631d.gif

 

Next up, more levels..

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Thank you all!

 

Playing with level concepts.

 

palpable_dreams_toroid.gif.c52bd069debc80f3e02aac5b4808f223.gif

 

I need to do a lot of work this weekend to get things together.

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Version 1.0 released: https://ktomi.itch.io/palpable-dreams


All in all, I'm very happy how the game turned out to be. It is very short, but quite atmospheric and relaxing in my opinion. My main worry is that it might be quite GPU intensive because of the thousands of objects on the screen. I hope it works. There are still some things I would like to improve, but I'm too exhausted to continue right now.

 

Huge thumbs up to Atlantic for the music! It is absolutely beautiful!

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This is super mellow and cool. I got through the first couple stages, but on the "Catch the Attractor" stage, my mouse cursor kept getting hidden, so I couldn't see what I was pointing at. Then the cursor focus got lost from the game window and I couldn't get it back. I tried replaying in windowed mode, but that stage had the same cursor focus issue, so I had to give up 

 

Very cool. Minimal shapes/colors worked well and great audio! :)

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Thanks!

 

The cursor gets hidden for 2 second if you miss the target, to prevent people from just clicking all over the screen until they get. I can see how it can become confusing, though. I'm guessing you slightly missed the attractor when you tried clicking on it.

 

I don't know what causes the cursor focus issue, unfortunately.

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Aha, okay that makes more sense.

 

I think if you add Cursor.lockState = CursorLockMode.Locked; to an object's awake() or start() functions, it will prevent the cursor from leaving the game window

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Great work as usual Nappi. Slick presentation and really mesmerizing gameplay.

 

Now I kinda wanna try to make something like this in VR. A thing where you shape the flow of particles drifting through the air by waving your hands around could be suuuuuuuper trippy.

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Here's the music I made for Palpable Dreams. I provided Nappi with individual layers so that are unmuted as you progress. This is the simplest and quickest way to do an adaptive soundtrack and I think it worked out quite well here.

 

This version just has all of the instruments from the beginning:

 

 
And here's a version that fades in the instruments over time, to simulate how it works in-game:
 

 

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9 hours ago, Henke said:

Now I kinda wanna try to make something like this in VR. A thing where you shape the flow of particles drifting through the air by waving your hands around could be suuuuuuuper trippy.

 

This would be something. Sort of floating in particle soup.

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Yeah! Damn I wish I had VR.

 

Thanks Henke! Glad you liked it!

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Searching for a 'hole' is a great gameplay concept to utilize particle flocking concept. The subsequent challenges also do a good job of introducing the game concepts gradually. When it moves into 3D the effect is kind of breathtaking. I felt the music really helped to keep it from being frustrating when I couldn't easily figure out what to do. Great work.

 

On 1/30/2019 at 8:38 PM, Henke said:

Now I kinda wanna try to make something like this in VR. A thing where you shape the flow of particles drifting through the air by waving your hands around could be suuuuuuuper trippy.

Cosmic sugar VR is kind of like this, if I remember correctly. https://store.steampowered.com/app/559010/Cosmic_Sugar_VR/

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Thank you!

 

 

I made some adjustments based on the comments and Nick's playthrough of the game. The mouse cursor no longer hides after the player misses the target, as it was not only confusing but caused the mouse to lose focus in some cases (probably in multi display setups). I also added hint texts to some of the levels, to make it clearer whether the players are supposed to be looking for an attractor/repulsor or a "hole":

https://ktomi.itch.io/palpable-dreams/devlog/66328/version-v11-released

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