Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby Eketel » 08 Oct 2019, 13:49

Orthot III: A 3D puzzle in the "Excessive Internal Complexity" genre.

Playable in a Web Browser at: https://eketek.github.io/orthot/

Project Page: https://github.com/Eketek/orthot

Platform: HTML/JavaScript/WebGL

License: MIT (All project assets)

Project Status: Most parts of the game are implemented and I think it is advanced enough to move beyond a casual mention, but code quality is quite lacking (it's a hastily assembled pile of JavaScript). It is also dependent upon a level editor from the previous version (for which I have released the binaries for free, but have decided to scrap it instead of open-sourcing it).

Roadmap: On the agenda right now is a in-game tips/tutorials and a few known errors. Then comes the puzzle editor (though I do think it would be a good idea to consider appropriating someone else's voxel-based 3d editor if it has the right capabilities), then sound. Depending on what sort of interest there is, my attention might end up going toward a proper asset pipeline. At some point, I might even think about preparing a standalone-ish build for distribution outside of Web Browsers.

As of 8 October 2019, It looks a bit like this:
o3_ss_8oct2019.png


This is Version 3 of my 3D puzzle game. For the time being, it is a direct rewrite of version 2 (which is an unsuccessful commercial project), from which it also re-uses the assets. The main concept is manipulating interactive puzzle elements to reach a goal. It is similar in concept to Sokoban and Chip's Challenge, but is properly 3-dimensional and has a lot more internal complexity. Orthot effectively encapsulates a variety of related genres (Mostly based on which game mechanics each puzzle makes use of), and this can easily become a very wide variety if the project gets a lot of attention and contributions.
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby Wuzzy » 08 Oct 2019, 14:58

Doesn't work in my browser. Even after enabling all scripting.
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby Eketel » 08 Oct 2019, 15:26

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:Doesn't work in my browser. Even after enabling all scripting.


If you had other things disabled along with Javascript, it also uses Canvas and WebGL. Does it give you any error messages on the Javascript console?

EDIT: The other likely problem I can think of (if you downloaded a copy of the repository and are trying to run it locally) is that Mozilla recently pushed a Firefox update that disabled local file access (version 68) over security issues -- which can be worked around [without simply disabling the security fix] by accessing it through local HTTP server and pointing your browser at a localhost address.
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby acme_pjz » 09 Oct 2019, 15:13

Thanks for your hard work!

I confirm that it works in Firefox 68 Win64.
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby GunChleoc » 09 Oct 2019, 16:45

Works in Firefox 69.1 on my Linux too :)
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby Wuzzy » 09 Oct 2019, 17:25

Honestly I have no idea what I do wrong nor do I care enough to investigate. Sorry.
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby Eketel » 12 Oct 2019, 15:59

I completed a lot of short-term goals for the game and was able to put in the descriptive text-based animated dialog boxes for the early part of the game (everything up to the first progress-blocking gate).

EDIT: I looked at a past design goal, noticed that one of the motivations behind writing my own framework was to be able to get rid of the computationally expensive main loop that typically comes with frameworks. So, I tossed in a lightweight execution mode (reduces rendering to an absolute minimum - once per tick if things are moving and once per frame in which the camera moves under User input).
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby Eketel » 15 Oct 2019, 06:25

All of the regular puzzles in the game have proper "InfoBoxes" to display and should work (though most in the final area have not been re-tested for the new implementation). One of them even has a new solution which differs greatly from the originally intended solution (but the new solution is also non-trivial) -- on account of new mechanics.

A couple specialized puzzles have not yet been implemented been (3D maze generator at the end and a semi-hidden one that uses a cellular automaton).
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby Eketel » 06 Nov 2019, 09:21

For the past several weeks, I've been off in the dev branch putting together stuff for the puzzle editor. Due to the unusual requirements, I decided that I was unlikely to find a suitable tool (I can find volumetric modelling, but no solution that [naturally] includes orientable non-volumetric objects, but still outputs data which is primarily volumetric), so I decided to write my own and to make it generic enough that it can be spun off from the project and repurposed.

I also worked out a significant improvement in "mouse-ray" picking over the previous version. Previous version I had to restrict it to clicks only, because click & drag tended to only make long chains objects [pointed at the camera position]. The new version I decided that all it really had to do was ignore a few of the most recently placed objects.

If you want to get a preview, here is a link to the volumetric modelling tool I have under development:
https://eketek.github.io/orthot/orthotEd.html

EDIT: In my rush, I forgot to mention anything about controls. In general, it uses mouse buttons, wheel, movement, and arrow/wasd keys. It displays a 3d cursor at the picked position. Left mouse button performs an operation (based on active tool) at the picked position. Middle and right mouse button are for altering the view. Mouse wheel is used for zooming in and out. The exact response to mouse movement depends on which picking mode is active (which may be selected with the UI buttons in the upper-left area). The "XZ", "XY", and "YZ" buttons activate planar pickmode for the corresponding plane. In planar pick mode, points are picked by projecting the current mouse position onto a picking plane (using the camera position/transform). The picking plane may be offset along its normal vector (perpendicular direction) by using arrow/wasd keys. The "MRAY" button activates "mouse-ray" pick mode, which causes it to pick positions by raycasting against volumetric data.
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby acme_pjz » 07 Nov 2019, 06:28

I also worked out a significant improvement in "mouse-ray" picking over the previous version. Previous version I had to restrict it to clicks only, because click & drag tended to only make long chains objects [pointed at the camera position]. The new version I decided that all it really had to do was ignore a few of the most recently placed objects.


Maybe it's better to ignore all the newly added objects when click & drag until the user releases mouse button?
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby Eketel » 07 Nov 2019, 11:00

acme_pjz {l Wrote}:
I also worked out a significant improvement in "mouse-ray" picking over the previous version. Previous version I had to restrict it to clicks only, because click & drag tended to only make long chains objects [pointed at the camera position]. The new version I decided that all it really had to do was ignore a few of the most recently placed objects.


Maybe it's better to ignore all the newly added objects when click & drag until the user releases mouse button?


The editor will get a setting to allow that (and/or to control how many recent objects to bypass in the raycast check)
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby Eketel » 17 Nov 2019, 02:38

I pushed through another large piece of my modelling tool. Workflow/interactivity is pretty much what I want from it. It also exposed some of the terrain-mesh generator features which were put in place early on, but couldn't make much use of with Orthot-2 data (terrain specified per-side instead of per-voxel, multi-texturing, and more control over where borders appear).

ekvxed_16nov2019.png
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby Eketel » 13 Dec 2019, 00:18

The new puzzle editor is now up and running, and has been merged into the main branch. Some aspects of it are a bit underdeveloped. As usual, the most recent parts of it have only been lightly tested (mainly the editor configuration file and data import to Orthot), but it seems to be in order. The editor is linked from the Orthot interface (though the above link has not been changed). Instructions and a few hints about puzzle element customization are accessible in-editor.

The project is no longer dependent upon the previous version (though I'll still need to take a look at data package handling before I add it to the file loader).
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Re: Orthot III [Puzzle Game]

Postby Eketel » 28 Dec 2019, 22:45

I merged in a big update to Orthot today: I have background music now.

For music, I went with the WebAudio version of Csound + algorithmic music generation. The fairly simple algorithm I started with is also working far better than I was expecting it to.
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