A Town Called Happenstance - Update #8
"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans" - or so they say.
Oh hi! It's been a while. Sorry about that. You know how it is.
So anyway, work continues on the game, don't worry! After hitting a few stumbling blocks, and almost giving up on the project, I decided to take a slightly different approach.
What we see here is the makings of the 'prologue' level. It'll serve as the demo, and an introduction to the gameplay mechanics, and some of the characters. It'll be a great little introduction into the world we're creating.
The idea is this - This level is essentially one room. I'm calling it the Miss Marple, or the Poirot level. As the world's greatest detective, you're there to solve a murder. In the room I will assemble a group of suspects, and, by pointing and clicking and talking, and generally, figuring things out, you'll deduce the murderer, and hopefully decide that this is a world you'd like to stay in for a little while.
This video showcases some more of the technical issues I've had, but have now found a solution to! If you have a fully 3D world, then you are going to need a method of viewing that world, usually through some kind of player camera. But what if your fully 3D world is designed to be viewed by a camera that can only move along 2 axis, and then only in a limited fashion? Objects get in the way. That's what happens. Previously, I'd tried using some clever(ish) level design to get around that problem, but as the game progressed, I realised that there are times when objects are just going to get in the way. It is... INEVITABLE.
So the solution is this - we can make items disappear (not my favourite way at all), or we can make them invisible to the cursor, and allow the player to click through as if they're not there.
So here we're trying both. I'm not entirely convinced on the pillars vanishing as they do, but it works. I've tried them with only the click though method, and it's almost unplayable at times. I'm guessing that's why nobody uses a fixed camera like this...
But I'm very happy with the result - we have an unobtrusive method of flying the camera through objects, and still being able to create an organic looking world, with objects in places they should be... or shouldn't be. It is a Point and Click adventure, after all.