By Jim Rossignol on April 27th, 2009 at 10:51 am.
Another fascinating video from the GDC 2009 Experimental Gameplay Workshop has turned up over the weekend. Programmer and designer Scott Anderson (who is developing the idea with Steve Swink) demoed Shadow Physics, in which a shadow character interacted with the shadows of objects within a puzzle, thus moving the “real” objects to complete his objectives. There’s a podcast with Anderson over at IndieGamePod, and the video of the demonstration is below. Anderson reports that the game at least a year from completion, but the idea he’s working with looks clever indeed.
27/04/2009 at 11:02 Trip SkyWay says:
Wow, that looks great.
27/04/2009 at 11:09 tackle says:
The winner is you!
27/04/2009 at 11:13 Mihai says:
Great idea, shows a lot of promise. By chance, I stumbled upon a somehow similar Flash game earlier today: http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/Visible.html#game
Also, that interviewer must not be allowed to ever speak again. “Sure” “Tight” wtf?
27/04/2009 at 11:30 Ben Abraham says:
“That’s tight.” The interviewer rather liked saying that didn’t he. =P
It does look very interesting though. SYSTEMS! ZOMG!
27/04/2009 at 11:33 Björn says:
Yeah, tight!
Looks like an interesting base for a platform puzzle game, and I really hope they come up with some nice control scheme for everything (character, lights, camera).
27/04/2009 at 12:00 Ian says:
Well that looks neater than a very neat thing.
27/04/2009 at 12:31 Mort says:
Cool and complex stuff!
27/04/2009 at 12:33 Sephrilum says:
Wow, this game looks pretty cool. I mean, sure, it’s decently basic at current, but the ideas they are thinking about are innovative. I’m definately going to keep my eyes out for this game.
27/04/2009 at 13:16 Wedge says:
Will indie developers ever run out of crazy new ways to make platformers? Signs pointing to… no. Fine by me though.
27/04/2009 at 13:51 Nero says:
Wow, looks extremely interesting.
27/04/2009 at 15:15 Jake Roth says:
Definitely filing this under things to abuse myself with when I start to feel my brain melting from age.
27/04/2009 at 18:15 Doctor Doc says:
Sure. OK. Sure. Sure. Sure. OK. OK. That’s tight. Sure.
27/04/2009 at 18:25 Steve Swink says:
Man, we need to get a better video up for this. I wonder if our presentation from the Experimental Gameplay Sessions is up somewhere public?
We have four more levels to show that we made the morning before the presentation (the day after Scott did this demo.)
Also: hey, I worked on this too! :)
-Steve
27/04/2009 at 20:46 Bigfoot_King says:
that is one amazing idea
27/04/2009 at 20:59 Aubrey says:
Yeah! I thought it was Steve’s prototype, too! But I don’t know if you, alone, worked on it, steve? Just that you couldn’t do this one in unity?
27/04/2009 at 21:05 Steve Swink says:
Yeah, this one was a collaboration between Scott and I because it’s hard to write a collision system in the shadow buffer using Unity. And also because I’m a pretty crap programmer and Scott is not :).
27/04/2009 at 21:10 Jim Rossignol says:
Steve: I couldn’t find any other videos of it. (Also I added your name to text.)
27/04/2009 at 21:12 Steve Swink says:
Yeah, that’s our fault. We intended to have an official video online after GDC, but we’re still tinkering with the visuals. I’ll send along an updated link when we have a better vid :).
27/04/2009 at 21:44 v.dog says:
Looks kinda like Crayon Physics meets Echochrome with a twist. That is not a bad thing.
27/04/2009 at 22:40 Rei Onryou says:
Monkey Dung = best level name ever. Seriously, that’s some tight shit right there, home boy.
*cough*
Awesome video. Such a simple idea, but leads to so many cool ways to change platforming. The only thing I found odd was that the character appeared to be able to interact with the actual objects as well as the shadows (see 1:12). Is that intended, or was there a shadow I didn’t notice?
28/04/2009 at 00:15 Dan K says:
That looks awesome! It looks as though you may be able to move on the ceiling. Don’t know though, that could be difficult.
28/04/2009 at 01:01 Atalanta says:
@Rei Onryou — it looks to me like there’s a thin shadow cast by the red box onto the ceiling — you can see it clearest right after the little guy jumps down.
This looks pretty fantastic. I really like the idea of being able to white out shadows, too.
28/04/2009 at 01:17 Scott Anderson says:
Rei: The character still projects on objects, but this has no effect on the actual physics, its purely visual. We might change that before the game ships but right now its a minor concern.
Dan K: You can move on the ceiling and the floor. The game also supports angled walls and in theory other shapes. The EGS presentation is more comprehensive and shows some interactions and systems that I didn’t demonstrate in this interview.
Like Steve said, we should have an official site and videos up soon.
28/04/2009 at 02:02 Stuart Bloor says:
The game looks amazingly clever and awesome.
The interviewer was very terrible. Where did he learn the interviewing technique of saying “Okay.” and “Sure.” after every one of the cool talented programmer guy’s sentences. Sprinkle in a few “That’s tight, dude”s. What in God’s name was he thinking..
28/04/2009 at 05:54 Poita says:
Tight.
28/04/2009 at 09:45 Valentin Galea says:
“That’s pretty much the game”
“Cool”
How can anyone not be utterly amazed by this? The interviewer is dead inside:)
28/04/2009 at 10:33 Rei Onryou says:
@Scott: Thanks for clarifying that.
This looks like it has some serious potential, and I can’t wait to see the finished product. Roll on next year!
25/05/2009 at 16:20 Christine Bethea says:
WOW!!! Keep going!!!
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