It has been some time since I'd last uploaded a blog post. These past few months we have been working on developing the game around a crucial game mechanic suggested by my younger brother, Liam over the Christmas holidays. Since the game's concept is so personal to me, it is also inherently intertwined with my brother's as we shared a childhood, in which we have always been very close. Therefore, I have been bouncing many ideas off of him and presenting him the walls I've hit conceptualising this project so that he can help me brainstorm solutions. Sometimes this process has felt like presenting an AI program with a prompt and letting it do it's thing.
And sometimes this AI generates its response at one in the morning and stands over your bed going "Rylie, wake up, I figured out your game."
So he sat down and presented my notebook with 2 pages of his own jotted down notes and diagrams and stated explaining his ideas. However, since I was half-asleep and barely processing, I put on a voice memo to record it for later:
Things he referenced:
Earlier that evening he had been attempting to recreate the effect of this song with his guitar and looping pedal. It required him to record each layer of the song individually so they would play at the right time overtop the other layers. This process became inspiration for how the soundtrack might work in game: each level beat/key found will present a layer of a whole song.
In our childhood, we played Skylanders and recalled this specific level that was downloadable content. The gameplay was centred around the ability to switch into the ghost world which would toggle whether some gates were opened or enemies were around. The switch mechanic would have a similar effect where some things would be visible to younger me and older me so you would have to work together between the versions to collect keys.
There was a similar mechanic in the puzzle game, Viewfinder, that Stanley and I played where you could step through portals that changed the "filter" over the world so you could walk through different gates.
Later, I had calls with Liam to discuss how these things could work.
Notes brainstorming how to program switch mechanic and moving between levels of the house
And since it took me the entire semester to finish writing this blog post, Stanley has long since programmed this into the game and refined it over time:
As you can see, not only do the characters switch (skin, height, perspective, etc.) but so does the filter over their vision and the items visible and tangible to them. The younger version sees the environment with specific objects and a soft focus, brighter filter to appear more dreamy and warm, whereas the older version sees boxes as if the house is packed up (due to add dust sheets over furniture later) and darker, duller, more realistic (even the frame rate is higher). This is all triggered simply by pressing the 'E' key.
He has also included a key collection system that carries across floors:
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