"Invert" Development log 01: Core Gameplay Design

As mentioned above, the core gameplay of this game is based on the first unity game I did, the name is called "Invert", and now it can be found on the application treasure. But the game is not my original, it's play design from a github on the Open Source project (https://github.com/gorried/inverter), then I was in the training course, it was a class I practice. At that time was mainly to familiarize themselves with the game from the production to the release of the process, so almost completely imitated the original project design, even the color of the box has not changed (because I think that color is pretty good, but also deliberately use Photoshop to take someone else's color value).

But now looking back, this design is in fact debatable. Two days ago saw an article on the Indieace (http://www.indieace.com/topic/137), feeling quite deep. Admittedly, the flattening of the wind is now big, the minimalist style of the game audience is also more and more, but this can only show that the user more and more adapt to this design, and does not prove that it should be the case. We stopped to think about, excluding man-made objects, which in nature is made up of solid colored squares neatly arranged? I can't think of it anyway. I can even make a bold assumption: Today everything around us is boxy, presumably due to the inertia of thought formed by early human production activities.

When our civilization was just entering the farming age, we planted crops using "slash and burn" practices. And because of the physiological basis of the human body, we tend to take a straight line rather than a curve in the case of weight bearing, which forms our initial goodwill towards the straight line. Then we used wood as building materials, because most of the trunk is straight, the built house naturally boxy, we began to use straight lines and rectangles. With the development of handicraft industry, it is easy to find the straight cut is the simplest process, and the square material is the most convenient to use, so you will find that the Egyptian pyramid is made of cube. There is not much difference between building pyramids with Egyptian pharaohs today, we live in cubic houses because the steel bars of the house are straight-line, and we hold a rectangular cell phone because the rectangular molds are easier to make and mass-produce ... Even in the world of computers, the friend who knows a little bit of graphics should know that all the pictures in the computer are rectangles, so-called circular pictures are just the corners of the pixel with an alpha value of 0.

Let's see how this game is played:

Players click on the red callout area to get feedback. Excluding man-made items, what tasks in nature do we need to click on a face with our fingers? I can think of is the keyboard and switch, but they are all artificial. The reason behind our discussion same strain, the early industrial revolution, in order to operate conveniently invented the switch, so the design of the switch has continued to this day. But the video game is not industrial production, the rectangle and the switch can not save much cost, no realistic implication of the design is likely to reduce the player's game experience. So I wanted to make a change like this:

Although the click Operation, but the interactive area from the surface transfer to point, the change of points affect the line changes, the changes in the line affect the surface changes. In fact, mathematically, these two designs are completely equivalent. However, the linkage of dots, lines and polygons is more likely to lead to the association of the real world, but also to increase the level of the performance of the game. The first thing I think of is farmland and irrigation, although the actual agricultural production is certainly not the case, but can be mapped to the real world of things, is always more acceptable than simple thinking games.

This is the game's core play, plainly speaking is actually a plane geometry field of mathematics game. I always tend to avoid turning the game into a tool for confrontation between people, the main reason is that such a strong network game requires a lot of server-side work, not suitable for independent development, more importantly, I always miss the original single-machine era of the game experience, I always feel that the video game should be the author of thinking and emotion of the present, Players through the game play, plot, screen, music and the author formed the idea of resonance, the final completion of personalized interpretation and understanding. It's like a song, a book, a good movie.

This concludes the core gameplay design, which will then determine the overall performance style of the game ...

"Invert" Development log 01: Core Gameplay Design