This week, Robin and I continued to refine our idea of how the game should come together and built out more details on the digital side of our game sequence. Robin has made more progress on the UI and systems side of the game, while I have clarified the techniques we will be using to display and manipulate the 3d elements of the game. By allowing two cameras to screen at the same time, different objects can be overlaid at different distances relative to each camera. This allows various moving objects on the screen to not interfere with each other or need to be parent/child with each other and to keep the physics of platforming isolated from other parts of the scene. The effect is that there is a cross-view of what's "inside" the mech, which is where the game is played and takes place. There are many affordances this technique allows, and though our time is limited I'm excited to see what we are able to do with it.
Throughout this week we have also discussed and revised project goals, set up our macro design, and continued to think about how all the sequences of our game come together. It's apparent that each sequence seeks to tell a specific story, but tethering them together in a meaningful way is the question that's been recurring. At the moment it's not obvious whether or not it's possible, but we continue to chunk out essential components, hoping some obvious pattern will emerge. So far, that I can tell, that pattern is exhaustion. We attack the player's stamina in many ways - organizational stamina, emotional stamina, problem-solving stamina; we are constantly trying to break the player down. We feel inclined not the belabor the theme so dramatically but to see where that takes us in playtests. This, also, I am excited to see the result of.
Those are the experiences and thoughts we've been having for the week - and I look forward to continuing the pre-production process.