BGMC 16 | Tesseract

May I present my entry for BGMC 16:


Original Download (See bug fixed version at bottom):

Whew! This was one of those projects that you just run out of steam towards the end, but still gotta submit something. Not as finished as I would have liked, but it will do.

Also, sorry for no video, just don’t have time to make one.

WASD move
SPACE jump, swim
LEFT, RIGHT MOUSE control Tesseract

EDIT:
The standalone player appears to be broken, so you may have to run within Blender.

EDIT 2:
Ok, I think I fixed the standalone player. It was just a little coding mistake; typical.
Here’s the patched version:

I think this game feels really complete, and despite it’s minimal design it feels really cared for and thought out. The power of shadow use really come out here. It’s only shortcoming is the lack of a checkpoint between obstacles, but on the whole, Awesome!

I’ve been really amazed by the high standard of the games in this BGMC, and this one is no exception. It’s a great game, It could really do with a checkpoint system though, playing through the same difficult areas over and over again, especially where you have to wait for the light to cycle is a real pain. I haven’t finished it yet, but I will try more, because I want to get to the end. :slight_smile:

I had a problem a couple of times where the player object would get moved out of line, so I couldn’t drop in to water or do other things. The player objects started casting shadows too…

If I was going to give it a perfect score in any area, it’d be for the music. Great choice.

I have a problem - the Lift D place - I can’t figure out what to do as placing tesseract on the target behind wall doesn’t place the wall away!

When I run the game in blenderplayer, I just see the scene with TEXT TEXT TEXT, the music plays and the hypercube does it’s little animation. The mouse cursor doesn’t react to mouse movement.
Command line output: http://codepad.org/0PgYNAx0 Might be lower/uppercase issues (I’m on Linux).
http://i.imgur.com/AGhGV3D.jpg

It works when running from inside Blender though:

Nice! Of course the level reset is annoying :slight_smile:

Thanks for playing guys! Yeah, checkpoints were on the to do list, but didn’t get to them. However, (Cheat alert) you can fake checkpoints by moving the little green box (It’s right above the player cube at the beginning, I think it’s called enemy.002) anywhere on the map and you will spawn there. It sometimes glitches if it is put in water, though.

@adriansnetlis, are you sure you’re pushing the correct button? :wink:

@qubodup, Love the video! And it looks like you found some glitches that I didn’t!

Got stuck there too.

Also, the water was pretty jacked up:

Most likely a problem with my PC - couldn’t swim in it either, as shown in that video ^
Had to skip past this part by moving the player in the game engine.

Great looking game though, the light gimmick was nice and very well done.


My PC really didn’t like this one. I also had the same problem as qudop not being able to play the game through the external player, so playing through the internal player is a real frame rate killer. I can average about 10-12 fps normally, but it just tanks as soon as I get to this part here, then the screen fades to orange and it’s game over (the orange light never shows, just some Vertex Shader Errors).

@RandomPickle: Looks like your graphics card (or integrated graphics) doesn’t like the shader. Same thing happens on my other laptop.

@Nines: Sorry about the frame rate!! It sounds like your computer doesn’t like my light system… I don’t know what the vertex shader problem is, unless it’s the same as RandomPickle; as the water is the only custom glsl shader.

I think I fixed the external player bug.

I am using Linux, stable, very stable 60 FPS in internal Blender Game Engine! Appears to work fine, but… I’ll make video to explain it!

Video:

I mean this all about non-patched version before EDIT 2!

I like it a lot , also nice music

@adrian Try looking through the ceiling above you :eyebrowlift:

This one was gold man! Really great concept and I generally love the concept of having someone telling you what to do (like in portal).
The game was very polished, and the music was great, also the shadow effects are just amazing with this minimalist style.
Two things:
I didn´t really know what to do with the water at first and respawn points would be great.
So you don´t have to do everything again once you fail, which happens often!
Would love to see some more work put into this project, more levels and such.

I love the feeling of Tesseract, it’s one of those games which is easy to get into but tricky to figure out some of the puzzles. There were some bugs in it, at times when you hold jump you were more or less flying at the sealing, the 2d-water filter didn’t work for everyone (me either), the end trigger didn’t always trigger. The way you’re being hunted of the orange light always makes my pulse go up and just want to get away, the problem was that is wasn’t clear when the light saw you, sometimes when your character is in the orange light, “the monster” doesn’t notice you. This look away some of the panic. Overall Tesseract is a really smart game!

Here’s a suggestion (except for add checkpoints):
-This game is based a lot of light and not being seen. When you move tesseract around he creates some big shadows. It would be really cool if you at some puzzles had to move tesseract to different places to create shadowplaces. These would be safe zones where the player could be without being discover. Think this would work especially well under water since you go in all 360 degrees directions.

Great game :slight_smile: i found that when you need to find a place to hice, if you stay close to the wall where you come from, the orange light will reach you but you will not be seen.