By Andrew Smee on July 1st, 2011 at 4:21 pm.
Oh goodness, I think I need a cup of tea, a quick lie down and someone to tell me everything will be okay. I’ve just played a gameplay prototype of Torsion, a “space warp gameplay prototype.” Like Narbacular Drop and TAG: The Power of Paint before it, Torsion is a simple demo made by a brainy computer engineering student and showcases a simple mechanic in a First-Person puzzler that quietly breaks your mind. There’s some footage doing painful things to your sense of spatial reasoning below.
Startling, hey? How about that bit where physics and gravity were being affected by the shifts as well? You can download and play it here, though you’ll need the latest PhysX runtime, DirectX runtime and VC++ 2005 CRT as stated in the readme. There are handy links to their download locations in the readme as well. It’s actually not all that bad to play, once you get the hang of the shifts in perspectives, floaty movement and the feeling of your brain dribbling out your ears. It is extremely experimental though, so don’t go in expecting a fully polished proof of concept.
It’s currently in “on and off” development by Tobias Zirr, a student at KIT, graphics programmer and one of those 64k challenge techno-wizards. Intimidatingly, it’s running on Breeze, an engine of his own creation. Unfortunately however, Mr Zirr says on his website that:
This is a gameplay prototype that I’ve been working on for several weeks about one year ago.
Steady on, newshounds: the actual video/prototype was only posted this week. Hopefully Mr Zirr will resume development of his idea some day soon, as it’s not often you see something this original.
Guess what features the next Portal is going to have! :) Dunno how it would be integrated though.
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Yea, it seems just the sort of thing like the original portals and paint games… but it looks like most of the puzzles shown could be solved using portals as well… sort of counter-productive to include both (and an overabundance of “non-portal surfaces” would probably ruin the original Portal feeling).
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indeed, there is a real portal-ish feeling in this gameplay, and i guess it was more or less in this thing’s creator’s mind because there is the same concept of “a weapon firing two… things ? distorting space, one blue and one red” and the design of buttons really reminds Portal.
on a side note, it’s nice to see some non-euclidian geometry in a game. I’ve been wondering why there was so few games in which our appreciation of the world in 3 dimensions is imitated, as video game is a good way to escape from these rules ; game creators should try to escape those 3 dimensional constraints in clever ways like in this and maybe one could say (in a somewhat lesser importance) in Portal, not trying to recreate these constraints. Escape the unique 3 dimensional space, like in dreams.
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For some reason talking about non-euclidian geometry in games and watching that video makes me want another Psychonauts game. Too bad it doesn’t really need a sequel. :\
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Vivio, I agree with you, but remember we are all trained to think in 3 dimension in the euclidean system, so getting people to actually do/use something different is probably a lot more difficult.
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Reminds me of:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/06/21/new-folder-faultline/
Heh, I wonder if this is any similar to the F-Stop mechanic Valve were working on. It would certainly fit the name.
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My thoughts exactly. Regardless, it is very nice.
Probably some crazy math going on behind the scenes!
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That’s what it made me think of, yeah.
And it hurt when he inevitably started attaching it to moving surfaces. Ebrberbr.
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Given an “f-stop” refers to aperture size in photography, I’m inclined to think there’re multiple “holy shit” game mechanics still awaiting actual…uh…games…for their use.
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So, how do I rebind the keys on this to support my AZERTY keyboard? Alt-Shifting didn’t work.
Also, this game reminds me of a flash game I played not too long ago.
EDIT: oh, I just read the comment above me. The game was Faultline.
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Make attempts to get rid of your spergers and use a normal keyboard like everybody else I guess?
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…or maybe he’s just using a French computer.
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I live in Belgium, AZERTY is standard here.
Usually, I just alt+shift to switch to QWERTY layout, but for some reason that doesn’t work with this game. Making it quite difficult to move fluently.
EDIT: Btw, what does “spergers” mean? I Googled it but the only thing I can conclude is you misspelled “aspergers”. That probably isn’t it though, or do some people use them as keyboards? I guess it qualifies for the ‘green’ label…EDIT 2: Nevermind, got it now. Oh, and sir, that was completely uncalled for. Are you perhaps American?report
I’ve been playing too much TF2. That top screenshot instantly reminded me of that map with that thing in it.
y’know, the thing, with the cart
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Those demoscene guys never cease to amaze me. Reminds me to go check out new demos on scene.org.
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I’d like to play it, but any time I hear the word “torsion,” I think of a testicular torsion and find that my legs involuntarily cross themselves in discomfort.
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Yeah testicular torsion is scary stuff, I saw the title and I was worried the game was going to be about death by nads entanglement.
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Well, I’d like to play that game.
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I haven’t played it, but the video didn’t answer this question: what’s to stop you from simply putting a blob at your feet, a blob on the final platform and pulling them together? Are there unblobbable surfaces like in Portal?
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It has a distance limit. Makes sense really.
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Well that seems reasonable.
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Video’s never play well off that site for me :(
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If you mean the embedded video won’t start playing, click on the “vimeo” name. That will take you to the vimeo page for the video, and you may be able to play it there. For some reason, I have that problem with embedded vimeo videos.
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This sort of space distortion creeps me out. Someone could make an effective horror game around this. Imagine if you were talking to someone and they started stretching. And then some guy comes along and shoots a red ball on your head and a blue one on your foot. You look down at them, then look up, making eye contact – for a beat – before the unthinkable happens.
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well, that gives me a few ideas. I’ll shut up now.
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The scariest monster of all:
ManPhysics.report
The video actually made me go “holy shit” at the part with the rotating space compressor.
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Doesn’t seem that mind-bending to me, but that’s probably because I’ve played CRUSH on the PSP, which is about three times more brain splatter.
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Also, Echochrome is quite baffling at first.
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This would be an interesting game to play under the influence of LSD.
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Not really, the effects mostly just cancel each other out.
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Would be a proper mindfuck if played in 3D.
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I was perfectly fine with this, right up until the part with the rotating bar.
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As great as that is for puzzles…
Call me when it’s multiplayer!
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Goddamnit just in time, yersterday i finished a book about Einstein and relativity. Spacetime warping!
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Huh. It looks really interesting but it wasn’t especially mind bending to me. I still want to play it though.
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please make a clay something-shader for the graphics, call doug tennapel to do it (forget the redneckyness for a moment, please) and ill buy it in a heartbeat.
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Not really space warping, it looks like it literally drags the two objects closer and warps them, with added funky view effect. Still looks great.
Won’t run :(
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Nope, that’s definitely warping of space coordinates.
I didn’t watch the video but played the demo to the end, it’s really great.
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Looks pretty funktacular. I’m looking forward to giving this a whirl.
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Looks interesting. I’ll have to give this a try.
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Is Andrew Smee the mysterious new full time RPS writer?
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Change the setting to an urban sprawl, add in combat/wall running… I really just want a psychedelic Mirror’s Edge clone. PLEASE. PLEEEAASE.
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In the latest innovation to mass transit technology, you don’t travel to your destination, destination travels to you!
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http://i.imgur.com/PHfOR.png
Well that was fun.
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That trailer… Not too bad, I was thinking, up until the end bit, where he held the two parts of a spinning whatchamajig together, causing the rest of existence to bend around it.
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That was brain breakingly awesome.
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