Yeah its super easy, we can just read/read from a text file, I imagine we are basically just tracking a couple of ints.
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Editor's Note:
We ended up needing to save some more complex data to track which particular NPCs died as their identy and the clues they "knew" became relevant to the bigger picture metagame that we dubbed the "overarching puzzle". We wanted to create a puzzle that could only be solved after solving the smaller puzzles required to rescue victims several times (by different players over the course of a longer event).
Ok. I'm going to make myself an issue on GitHub for it
6:30 PM
to me the bigger question is still how to do the overarching puzzle
6:31 PM
I think we need to think of something that becomes more clear over time, almost like wheel of fortune or hangman, but also something that isn't a deal breaker if someone fails to record one of the clues(edited)
6:31 PM
assuming we want to rely on people leaving notes
6:33 PM
or maybe battle ship
6:33 PM
or minesweeper
6:33 PM
just brainstorming
6:33 PM
Maybe when the person is saved
6:34 PM
we have some kind of news report sequence that about them being found somewhere with a sign with a letter hung around their neck
6:34 PM
or maybe we can visually depict that idk.
6:36 PM
maybe the code is generated dynamically
6:37 PM
like the victims have a number somewhere by them and it represents a character in their name, like if it's a 3 it's the third character
6:37 PM
and then the password can be however many digits we need
6:37 PM
but I guess if we did that you'd need a way to check a history of all the rescued people forever because if you miss one it would be impossible(edited)
Yeah it needs to be something that doesn't require a perfect answer, but can't be solved too fast either. SOmething like solve x out of 10 puzzles/victims info/whatevers would allow some slippage to happen
I asked them for 2 dates, one soon to help identify what to improve, one in early March to test new stuff
Editor's Note: Consignment Lounge is a neat bar that also sells vintage stuff. They have cool old TVs and a crowd, perfect for showing Channel: Death. We ran the game there for a few hours, which helped us remember what we wanted to improve and add. We also had some design discussions about priorities and the new "overarching puzzle" concept that constituted the principal addition we wanted to make.
Still need to nail down how revealing the clues should look / work
1:56 PM
Do we try to have the game tip players that they should write this down when a clue comes out?
1:56 PM
Or hope for organic discovery
Editor's Note:
Being a finalist for alt.ctrl.gdc comes with four GDC passes. There were three of us, so we decided to offer the fourth to one of my students, Mack. He ended up making a significant contribution to the project!
Hey so I am going to offer the extra ticket to one of my students Mack, who is a programmer / sound designer. I think he would be interested in helping on the project as well if that sounds OK, maybe doing a minigame. He's pretty capable, I have hired him for paid work in the past.
Hi Ian and Micheal! Hope you guys are both doing well. My name is Mack and I am David's student. He generously offered the opportunity to work on Channel Death and help show it off at GDC, super excited to be apart of the project!
Hey so I had a few ideas for an additional minigame. Narrowed it down to two. First one is a puzzle second one is golf game. Leaning more towards puzzle as I think it would work better over time as this game is supposed to be a group effort. However golf would probobly take less time to make. Curious if you guys have any input on which Idea I should pursue?(edited)
11:34 AM
let me know if I should clarify anything about the ideas as well.
Editor's Note:
Here is where we handed off the Friday the 13th tile based first person movement minigame concept to Mack, who really did a great job with it and took it in his own direction.
I had a wireframe mockup idea for the interface for the overaching puzzle. I wanted to make that today but I'm not sure I'll get this brain agents stuff done
11:51 AM
I thought it would be done on Monday and it's now Wednesday
Both ideas seems good to me. Agreed that I think logic puzzle might be too complicated, I think wandering around and maybe getting a jump scare or two and then finding something will feel exciting enough to players. Once we have the tech in imagine that having several different locations (ie hedge maze, asylum, etc) will be easy to do.
Golf also seems solid as long as it is kept fairly straight forward. Be wary of any sort of timing stuff (I dont think there is any going from the description I read, but jic). There is variable amount of input lag from the hardware, so any timing windows need to be extremely generous and rapid fire button presses don't get registered super well.
cool thanks for the insight! Agree on timing stuff I tried to avoid thinking of games like that. I saw whoever did the jumping game had some code to try and offset input delay. I think golf would just be line up your shot and press a button lol.
Yeah, after our last playtest it was def obvious we need to make the jumping even easier, so I gotta mess around with that offset again ;P
12:44 PM
The hardware has def been a learning experience. When we were doing the jam we set up timings to register hold vs button releases.... and then David changed the batteries in the remote and it changed all the timings lol
Here is what I have so far. its more of a 3D walking sim. I dont think it should be overly fursturating on the remote. If u press 2 it goes forward untill you release, I feel like if there is delay it shouldnt be too frusturating, I think its fairly intutive to just let go a little bit before where you want to stop. but I could look into the code you have Ian for the jumping or maybe go full jason style and just make it completly tile based. I documented those hand and torch assets as well. Next ill probobly look into some distance fog. I am thinking I will make maze procedural so it isnt the same path every time.(edited)
Well, I mean like, you press it, you move forward a set amount
Editor's Note:
I wanted tile based movement, not just to add an homage to the NES Friday the 13th game, but because I think the awkward numberpad movement input on our remote control would become unweildy with more robust analog motion.
Interestingly, I think part of that genre is making your own map
7:13 PM
which would be something we could try to get people to write down on physical paper. But that's probably too complicated. We should def err on the side of simplicity / low difficulty
7:13 PM
if ppl get stuck or confused it will be less fun (typically).(edited)
sounds good. I was kinda thinking of having some creepy music play at the location of the number to help guide players, tho Im not sure how helpful it would be without headphones. Ill try to make it so some unique objects spawn around the maze to help with mental map. We can always make maze bigger or smaller easily since its procedural
Maybe just place potential spawn points and pick one at random
8:43 PM
Target someone exploring the space taking every wrong turn still finding it in like 3-5 min
8:44 PM
We can maybe make players write this answer clue down (the number at the end) rather than save it beat depending on difficulty
Editor's Note:
I knew the maze needed to be short, because 1) mazes suck (without some sort of gimmick / trick to make the player feel smart and not just brute force solve it) and 2) our in-person live event minigame format does better in shorter play sessions. I thought 3-5 minutes sounded short. This was a terrible estimate. It needed to be closer to 1 minute to avoid people getting lost and frustrated / bored, as we would discover. Eventually we got it to a pretty solid place after much playtesting!
also even if I dont actually put a monster in there maybe we should put some creepy writing on the wall like "Careful. They are searching." to add some tension
Mack
Also do people have local changes or would I be okay to push what Ive done? I can do on branch if thats better
Sounds good! Also could you remind me how the passcode will work with more than 4 mini games? Will it just choose 4 mini games to show? Or some mini games will have the same answer?(edited)
Editor's Note:
Key design move for the overarching puzzle here. 👇 There were a lot of parts swimming around and I just needed to pick a direction. I picked a quiz. The mockup helped shape it into something more tangible.
Sweet will look this over David. I think the maze minigame is also ready for playtesting and feedback as well if anyone gets a chance. Play it in the main scene
Sweet will look this over David. I think the maze minigame is also ready for playtesting and feedback as well if anyone gets a chance. Play it in the main scene
One thing playtesting has revealed is that ppl don't want to put the headphones on
Editor's Note:
We ended up using speakers for GDC and Day of the Devs! I was worried about it being too hard to hear them over the show noise and also annoying everyone else but it worked out well.
so I suggest we make a post processing volume just for this scene and maybe it can also ramp up or down (depending on the effects) based on proximity to the audio source?
8:41 PM
so that there is a visual analogy for the music in case they aren't listening
hm we could, what kindof effect did u have in mind? I also dont know if its necessary to have a hotter/colder hint but it can help, otherwise u can just solve the maze. I almost think just placing a few more creepy objects around the maze could help guide and act as reference points and achieve a similar effect. The music part isn't necessary to solve maze but it can help.
i dont think we should do static like slenderman or anything, ill look at screen border effect
Editor's Note:
This is the corridor / maze game with post processing added. 👇 I guess we didn't have a video of Mack's current progress and instead I was just playing on my own. Videos are better for posterity and for saving me time when I can't just open the game in Unity!
@David made some updates to the UI based on feedback, brightened up the symbols and made a more dominant channel version, also added scan and zoom the the camera mini-game
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Mike
@David made some updates to the UI based on feedback, brightened up the symbols and made a more dominant channel version, also added scan and zoom the the camera mini-game
Just to chime in, planning on starting work on a red light/green light style game using the sleep button tonight, should hopefully be a quick one to make.
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Ian
Just to chime in, planning on starting work on a red light/green light style game using the sleep button tonight, should hopefully be a quick one to make.
Did you get a chance to look at that mockup I made and read the little bit in the doc?
6:53 PM
Also, how did echeese go?
Editor's Note:
Ian was going to run the eCheeze Zone game at a superbowl party. This was one of the closest references for what we were making that we could find (collaboratively play over an extended period with an in-person group). I actually have never played it and didn't know much about it, but there are clear similarities, in retrospect.
6:54 PM
I'm happy to start working on implementing the overarching puzzle channel if it seems like that plan will work
Think everything looks solid, couple thoughts on things.
Think wrong answers should lock the player out of guessing for x time and not save progress (encourages players to write answer and stops brute forcing things). It we also want to do lives I feel like they would need to be really bad, basically lose the game (redraw the questions from pool so basically all written progress is lost).
I think we should stay away from binary questions like the "rescued or killed"
Like the idea of rule clues, even multiple rules for the same clue could be interesting.
Are clues smart or dumb? ie do we track how far the player has made it in the guessing and tailor clues for it or do we just randomize them all (I feel like tracking is better)
I just worry that it get a little too easy if we are specifally telling the players what information or whatever is wrong. I do think if we have smart clues we can be repeating the same information. I'm fine seeing how playtesting goes. Also hearts could be unlocked for figuring out other things which could be cool?
In my mind we would have different pools of clues that are tied to questions. If player succesfully answer a questsion we know we dont need to display those clues anymore, while if they fail a question we know we need to focus on those clues.
I guess it depends on how fast things are getting completed. if 1 clue beats 1 question and we have a total of 10 questions, people could beat it pretty quick. However if clues are only partial solutions things take longer.
9:24 PM
if 1-1 is important, I guess we could always just have more questions too
9:24 PM
The whole thing really just depends on how long we want the average solve to take I guess(edited)
The times I was there it was pretty busy, so I think steady stream at least durring the majority of the day is safe. I guess it gets weird if we "finish" the game at like 4 and then people playing it afterwards? Is it worth saving their progress for the next day?
I feel like the game finishes around twice a day makes sense to me, 3.5 hour long fail timer with the thought that beating it could be as fast as 2 or so?
9:37 PM
All the voting happens wednesday so we def dont want to hold back on the good stuff lol
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9:38 PM
echeese was design to take multiple days to beat, with audiences failing multiple times and leaving not for the next play session. Was thking some about that, but doesnt seem like the right direction for this.
9:41 PM
Hmm yeah, if it is 12 mins per clue, 10 clues would be 2 hours. So it seems we are closer to the 1 to 1 system.
Yeah something to drive home player purpose and increase tension. We could even just have a channel with it the timer counting down. I don't think we want to have the player hit it so we make it long (or secretly slow it down when they aint looking)
I don't think they are giant TVs, I think it will be very similar to what we have used in the past
10:02 PM
oh, another random thing I was thinking about, we could use bean bags or like an air lounger thing in lieu of couch if we wanted to create a bit of a fake living room
10:03 PM
and then get like an end table and a lamp and or some kind of coffee table and put the tv guide and remote on it
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I agree these will translate nicely to tv remote
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