Iterative Mechanics - Lighting/Vision
I plan on covering the 6 core mechanics of Voiceless soon (I think it is legit how simple they are yet they all play into each other - woo emergent systems) - but for now, a short update on what once was our torch system and is now our full on lighting system.
As a thief, our main character can say ‘hello darkness my old friend’ and mean it (kinda like Batman). Originally and simply - darkness is meant to invoke nostalgia for Dragon Quest 1 (minus the mane crawling to light a torch) and to limit player vision to permit level design to go crazy with mazes, hidden areas, and smaller more intricate areas.
The original Torch and Night systems succeeded in this goal, but play testing exposed a fatal flaw - When you can’t see very much.... you can’t see very much. While hampering player vision permits for some fun puzzles, one must never impede the player’s ability to see enough to know where they have been before, and where they are going/need to go. The old darkness system saw too many testers not know where to go and often double back on areas they had already been - not good game design.
Thus... we needed an improvement.
Thus the lighting system was born! I wish VXace had better sprite/bitmap support (and shaders... love those things) - but overall, the new system is awesome. Voiceless has entered the modern era with a light system of its own (whilst staying nostalgic with those juicy pixels/grid). With this, level design can place light sources strategically - like, to show where the correct path is (the most light area), or where a secret might be hiding, or illuminating a landmark so the player knows which way is backtracking, or... to deceive the player into the wrong path ;)
Thus far, the system has given me days of enjoyment tweaking lights here and there - and I believe it makes the game look much better both in pure visuals and readability (testers thus far agree). But... its missing something...
Dithering! Yeah, that stuff. Crunchy pixels are good and all, but even back in the NES we knew and used dithering to do some cool stuff. The smoother edges even look like smoke/fog/or something. It almost feels like Courier of the Crypts now that I look at it objectively ;)
