BGMC 16 | Tesseract

Game Engine Works in Progress and Game Demos
#1

A side scroller/platformer in which you are a square who must save the world from destruction at the hands of the blinding orange lights! (Or something like that…) Sneak through a pitch black labyrinth while avoiding the light, using only your Tesseract companion to see. Since the world is all in 2D, the n-th dimensional Tesseract can go through walls and explore that which you cannot see, unlocking secret paths and the way forward to safety.

I’ve decided to take an extremely limited approach to this and hold to a very stylized and minimalist graphics style, using only a few textures and models and leaving all my coloring to lighting.

Day 2 Screenshot:

Tesseract 1.png1079×616 101 KB

Finished so far:
-Player controls
-Enemy AI
-Tesseract AI
-Swimming/Water physics
-Death-beam rays

Still to do:
-Make the level(s)
-Add sounds/music
-Make a custom light handler
-Dialogue for story? (We’ll see)
-Write a few custom filters/shaders

Good luck everyone!

#2

I’m surprised (and happy) at the level of creativity people are allowing themselves with this theme!

This looks like a solid start. A cool idea, and small enough in scope that it’s conceivable to finish within the time limit.

#3

Couldn’t upload yesterday so here’s two days worth of updates.

Yesterday’s pic:

Tesseract 2.png1079×616 55.2 KB


Note the object at the top right is a button that only the Tesseract can get to. You can see it now because it is active, but before that it was totally concealed and had to be found. This is thanks to my new light handler, that automatically removes and adds lights as you move around, working around Blender’s lamp instancing limits.

Todays Pic:

Tesseract 3.png1079×616 107 KB


Water shader finished, complete with (fake) reflected caustics. Started adding extra greeble and doodads to the level to make it more interesting. Don’t know how big the level will be yet, as I’m finding it is a very iterative and time intensive process. Not so much that it takes a while to physically construct the level, but more of planning and layout and puzzle design. The Tesseract code so far allows for a great deal of variety when it comes to puzzles; if you have time to think and lay them out. However I’m not sure how much I’ll have time to implement. Right now I’m focusing level design on avoiding enemies (Stealth is the theme after all).

I still want to build a crude dialogue system, so that the Tesseract can give you hints (like Navi, but less annoying) and build the foundations of a story. And there is still no sound… or an end to the game yet…

#4

Oh, and I implemented a custom mouse cursor too!

#5

Looking nice!