Dis Pontibus 2

Devlog

• Preparing for publishing
  May 20, 2022 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  4

  These days I'm working on the finishing touches to make the first release. Stay tuned!... Continue reading
• Modelling
  November 26, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  2

  These last weeks I've been learning a lot more about 3D modelling, while making some simple assets to make the game look more lively. I use Blender , because it's free and there are many online tutori... Continue reading
• Enemy mode?
  November 12, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  3

  During a playtest session recently, the idea came up of a "negative" mode for the game: one in which the player must reach the other shore, but leaving behind a non-traversable bridge, because the peo... Continue reading
• Locking puzzles
  October 30, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  3

  To provide a nice visual feedback when the player solves a puzzle and it becomes "frozen", I tried several possible effects. The latest one is this one: I think it's a nice addition to the game's visu... Continue reading
• On shapes
  October 08, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  3

  These days I'm revisiting the shape library (that is, the set of basic outlines for the puzzles, without considering how they're divided into platforms or what additional elements they contain). Somet... Continue reading

  
• Megaliths
  September 18, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  2

  I'm experimenting with several options for interesting objects to put in some special islands, one of which you can see in the video above. These megaliths are currently made with some twisty mathemat... Continue reading
• Input queues
  September 11, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  2

  I spent some days trying several techniques for making the input more responsive. The most important was input queuing, which basically involves letting the player press several keystrokes in rapid se... Continue reading
• Extending player freedom
  August 30, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  2

  Some days ago, thanks to feedback from one of the testers, I implemented something that increased the elegance and symmetry of the game: allowing the player to re-enter the puzzle at a different point... Continue reading
• Procedurally sculpted meshes
  August 16, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  I've been working on the island floors. Before, I simply constructed the islands instantiating multiple tiles; now, the floors consist of only one mesh, procedurally sculpted according to the spaces o... Continue reading

  
• Fog and less gated navigation
  August 07, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  2

  This week I worked on a "fog or war" feature, that reveals the map only in the zones the player has already visited. Also, in the spirit of reducing the gatekeeping of the game, I'm experimenting with... Continue reading
• Rocks galore
  July 24, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  3

  I'm learning a bit more about graphic shaders. They are enormously useful! Today I experimented with a simple system to make varied rocks and other decorative objects. All rocks in the video are reall... Continue reading
• Love, flowers and wind
  July 19, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  1

  I'm experimenting with some visual decorations. In this case, the love generated by the people's reunion allows flowers to grow in the islands. I added a little wind to animate the flowers. Perhaps th... Continue reading
• Some UI updates to show
  July 04, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  4

  Lately I'm working heavily on things that are difficult to show visually, like the level difficulty progression and the level curator; in addition, last week I was distracted making a small game for t... Continue reading
• No more "root" platforms?
  May 30, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  2

  Recently I had some tester feedback, in which they stated that it was unclear why some platforms fell to the water when they were still adjacent to the island; this suggests that the required connecti... Continue reading
• Animations
  May 17, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  2

  These days I'm learning a bit of 3D modelling and animation using Blender. It's very surprising that even with very simple shapes and animations the characters can convey so much to the human eyes. Ne... Continue reading
• Localization system
  May 04, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  1

  #localization, #unity, #development

  I began searching for options to implement localization for the game, and tested some Unity plugins; but all of them seemed too complex for the relatively small amount of text I plan to have in the ga... Continue reading

  
• Sacrificing sacrifices?
  April 20, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni#game design

  Until recently, the game allowed "sacrificing" platforms without losing (as long as the player was not on the disconnected platform). The problem with this is that the generator sometimes produced puz... Continue reading
• Helping the inhabitants
  April 10, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  2

  I had a cute idea for a change in the theme: helping the inhabitants of the islands by fixing their bridges. It's more empathetic than simply conquering the islands, and also helps to make the core me... Continue reading
• Avoiding cheats
  April 06, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  2

  I realized that clever players could do certain kind of cheating using the map to re-enter a puzzle while solving it, which allows pushing things from non intended positions. So I decided to record th... Continue reading

  
• The return of the pivots
  April 03, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  After some more playtesting with the specialized platforms, I decided to re-introduce the pivot actuators as a modifier to the default behavior (sliding). The new visual metaphor is this: they are now... Continue reading

  
• Specialized platforms
  March 26, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  I'm exploring more visual alternatives to indicate the capabilities the player will have to rotate or slide platforms, which are similar to the approach I used in the original game: specialized platfo... Continue reading

  
• Map with color-coding
  March 23, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  As a first pass of the zones visual representation, I've made a simple color-coding of the zones in the map. It's not pretty yet, but it serves its purpose for the time being. Next, I'll think about t... Continue reading
• Map optimization
  March 20, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  Now that the game will have different zones, the map acquires more importance and needs to be bigger. In order to be more friendly with low-spec machines, I'm doing a bit of optimization for the map m... Continue reading
• Some theming
  March 18, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  1

  These days I'm thinking of ways to make different "zones" in the game; each zone will contain puzzles with different gameplay styles. For this I came up with a facetious but effective metaphor: each z... Continue reading
• Avoiding claustrophobia
  March 13, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  After testing the game for some days, the problem arose that it was quite claustrophobic, in the sense that's mentioned on this article in the great site Electron Dance. So I started thinking about ho... Continue reading
• Red herrings
  March 07, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  Sometimes a game can contain elements that are not part of the gameplay. Usually they are decorative, but if the player can do things to/with them, they can distract the player from the normal or inte... Continue reading
• On mechanics, old and new
  March 03, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  I'm exploring some new mechanics for the game. For instance, in the video above you can see the deleter piece (the red icosahedron). I don't know yet if it will remain in the game, but it adds some in... Continue reading
• Working on the map
  March 01, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  1

  The game will have a "map" mode (like its predecessor), which allows fast travel between islands. At the moment it allows travel to any island, but I'll update it so it only allows going to already-so... Continue reading
• Updated prototype
  February 24, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  2

  I managed to update the basic prototype I had so it works in the newest version of Unity. The two basic mechanics are shown in the video: slider and rotator tools. Each one enables the platforms to ma... Continue reading
• Thawing the project
  February 23, 2021 by Marcos Donnantuoni

  5

  Some time ago I began to think about new mechanics for a Dis Pontibus sequel, but I did not advance much. I made a prototype for some of the mechanics but I abandoned it because of lack of time and mo... Continue reading