All the pretty colours
Jul. 18th, 2002 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerYesterday I downloaded Tranquility, a mixture of old-school gameplay and intensely pretty swirling graphics.
The gameplay isn't just old-school in that it's very simple, it also harks back to the early days when games could be abstract. When you couldn't possibly simulate in a realistic way, so game designers didn't bother, they went for the more imaginative "anything goes" approach. And that's what Tranquility is - there's no real world anywhere within 50 feet of the game. There's just abstract swirly shapes of different kinds. They move up and down, follow each other in spiral patters, disappear when you're least expecting it and then pop up just when it's least convenient. Oh, and the Spinner, which is somewhere in the midst of the swirling realms of strangeness, waiting for you to thread your way through the shimmering pulsating maze of otherness until you can find it, and be transported to a different shimmering maze.
Yup, that's the other thing that's old-school - there's no real change in levels. I mean, sure, they look different, but looking at a few levels so far, there's no easy way to tell which one's harder than the next (although some of them definitely are). The graphics, however, despite their simplicity (most of the pieces are rectangles, or warped versions thereof) are incredibly pretty. I've seen everything from a sparse collection of squares, to 8 different towers, each moving seperately, interweaving with each other, while you weave and bob amongst them.
If you have a half-decent machine (PC or Mac) I firmly recommend you give it a go. And if you're one of my flatmates, you can find it in f:\tranquility.
The gameplay isn't just old-school in that it's very simple, it also harks back to the early days when games could be abstract. When you couldn't possibly simulate in a realistic way, so game designers didn't bother, they went for the more imaginative "anything goes" approach. And that's what Tranquility is - there's no real world anywhere within 50 feet of the game. There's just abstract swirly shapes of different kinds. They move up and down, follow each other in spiral patters, disappear when you're least expecting it and then pop up just when it's least convenient. Oh, and the Spinner, which is somewhere in the midst of the swirling realms of strangeness, waiting for you to thread your way through the shimmering pulsating maze of otherness until you can find it, and be transported to a different shimmering maze.
Yup, that's the other thing that's old-school - there's no real change in levels. I mean, sure, they look different, but looking at a few levels so far, there's no easy way to tell which one's harder than the next (although some of them definitely are). The graphics, however, despite their simplicity (most of the pieces are rectangles, or warped versions thereof) are incredibly pretty. I've seen everything from a sparse collection of squares, to 8 different towers, each moving seperately, interweaving with each other, while you weave and bob amongst them.
If you have a half-decent machine (PC or Mac) I firmly recommend you give it a go. And if you're one of my flatmates, you can find it in f:\tranquility.
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Yes... pretty... colors... yes... ummm... yes
Date: 2002-07-18 11:18 pm (UTC)We built the game to do things that other games were not doing. You'll note the game runs at any resolution, not the normal 300 x... instead of texture maps, we surround you with 10's of thousands of simultaneous moving platforms. Everything moves... you, the environment - the all.
Anyway... aloha and mahalo for your comments. Enjoy tranquility
no subject
Date: 2002-07-18 11:49 pm (UTC)Geeking: kind of wish the controls were customizable, and looking around were done better (it sure feels like the view is rotating around something other than the camera). Felt odd that it was done all in GLUT instead of as a native program, but I guess that makes it a breeze to port. I thought I saw it required DirectX, but it wouldn't need that for the graphics with GLUT--guess it uses it for managing the input devices? Would be nice if it grabbed the cursor then, since I kept bumping it out of the window.
Most interesting game I've looked at since Plasmaworm. Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2002-07-19 01:08 am (UTC)The view does rotate around the camera, and you're effectively flying a spaceship. Push forward to move faster, pull back to slow/move backwards, left and right to rotate, mousewheel allows you to look up/down and space makes you fall faster (so you can bounce higher). Very, very simple.
I'm running Windows, and it uses OpenGL as its graphics engine - oh and DirectSound for the sound. It's only 10MB, give it a go...
Blast!
Date: 2002-07-19 05:00 am (UTC)I *hate* my computer.
Re: Blast!
Date: 2002-07-19 05:05 am (UTC)Re: Blast!
Date: 2002-07-20 10:28 am (UTC)You can use the '?' (hit it twice) to take a look at whether or not your using the hardware renderer. Hit it a 3rd time (?) and it shows you your frame rate.
If it's not running fast enough, you can try a number of things to speed it up, all relate to lowering the amount of video ram it needs:
Unlike most video games, we play at any resolution and we have tens of thousands of objects always in constant motion, including yourself - thus even though the geometry appears fairly *simple*, we are doing much more than most games that merely paint a texture onto a square and let you *drive* around that arena.
no subject
Date: 2002-07-19 08:21 am (UTC)runs fine on my 800MHz G4 TiBook
zoom zoom zoom
About tranquility
Date: 2002-07-20 10:22 am (UTC)Actually, there is quite a change in levels if your playing the paid game.
For each REALM there are 7 RANKS. Each rank requires 3 successful game plays to move to the next rank. After the 7th rank, you move to the next realm.
We have assigned each realm (except the first) to have a *magic* attribute that significantly affects game play and the look/feel of the game. Some of the *magic* is subtle, others is quite dramatic. For example, once you get out of the first realm, the next one you encounter will be completely composed of POWER STACKS. You will see them do things you never saw in the first realm (for examlpe, hitting a platform as you ascend the power stack will cause the platform to be permanetly deleted... also, once you get above the power stack, and into the structures, after a certain *time* the powerstack will completely disappear meaning that if you fall of the structures you have no way to get back up except by *possibly* using the waterfall (if it's high enough) or requesting a new game).
Each realm has such a modifier (except the first realm, which is novice). The demo games that come pre-built-in with the download are selected from the various realms (but by no means all of them) so you *can* get a bit of a flavor for the different game play.
The ranks also change between the 7... you will see different geometry added depending on which rank you are in, and other factors such as number of platforms, etc... also change. These are constant for all the realms (e.g., the same modifiers for the 7 ranks are identical, for all the realms, but the realms magic can also affect that constant).
Aloha :)