Work Log

At some point in the week, I killed the maze I was happily getting stuck in. There's a lesson here about saving your work. But it's okay, I wasn't going to use it.

So - I have a featureless plain. You can wander with WASD and turn with the mouse (no looking up or down, I've decided). There are many cylinders, and a couple of cubes ( cylinders are better than cubes, I've decided, as the edges aren't as sharp. Sharp edges are hard to interpret.). One of the cubes plays "The Hangover Song" from Midsummer (a play with songs)*. If you have to listen to something repeatedly, it ought to be pleasurable in and of itself. You can wander this desolate videogame plain and try to find the musical cube, if you like. You can try to avoid the cylinders (though you'll eventually slide past if you walk into them long enough - another advantage). There's no failure and no success programmed in, but it's still a weird and engaging experience.

(Game idea : game set on a a featureless videogame plain. No idea what the gameplay would be. Maybe a distant, hard to spot hole to which you could plunge to your death. It's important this game has cool weapons.)

I set up the ability to pulse all the motors independently of the obstacles. This even works off an AnimationCurve so it is a sweet-fancy pulse. Next is to set the conversion between distance and intensity to use one (and - totes not an issue, but - don't repeat commands if they haven't changed). Tuning this I'm not quite sure how to do, but I'm sure hard work and guesswork will provide.

I've also made some decisions about the game. In it, you save a singing maiden, besieged by Gorgons. You can slay the Gorgons (with a bow and arrow?), they can kill you with their touch. You can hear them and sense them. You have to navigate through the maze and out again.

So : enemies, maiden, slaying and dying. And the game feeling vaugely okay.

* Gordon McIntyre, if you're reading this, triggered by an errant Google Alert, hello. You're a lovely man, and your songs often seem to express my own inner life better than I can. Anyone else - I recommend the play, Ballboy, him.

(The Hangover Song)