Devlog: Ágonos Temple

Since I still can't get any semblance of stability, I've modeled some more. Eventually, I'll be allowed to program too.

Feb 10

I started modeling level 5, Ágonos Temple. The first area is a 3D puzzle that must be explored while triggering rotations of individual sections. It took me a while to understand my own blueprints until I remembered that the main point of the puzzle is that some sections need to be triggered more than once.

Ágonos Temple, exterior

 This level can be solved in more than one way too, provided that you have hired the rogue ally to stealth her way in. The rotating sections took a lot of work to make them fit correctly, since all of them have to block or create new paths depending on their configuration.

Feb 11

The inside of the temple will work as some sort of hypercube: every wall is a room of its own and they're all interconnected.

Ágonos Temple, interior

 Obviously these won't be the final colors, those are just the normal vectors so each surface is easier to see. I can't really convey the feeling of walking through six overlapping rooms at once with a still image.

However, I want the teleport gates between rooms to be continuous, but the geometry makes it impossible. It's time to learn how to do camera tricks and show rooms that don't exist. I learned how to do that easily on OpenGL, I will learn how to do it on Godot.

Feb 12

I improved the Y-rotation stair blocks of the temple exterior, I wasn't satisfied with how they looked. The way I designed them, they could only be built out of two separate pieces, making them a single object was simply impossible. I will now model the last important bit of the temple: the non-euclidean library, which will be a square with six sides. Or eight, depending on how you count them.

Feb 13

 I have modeled all quadrants of the library, but I have no idea how to program it. It was easy on OpenGL and I've seen videos of people doing it in Godot, so it is possible. I just have to learn. I won't show any images because, well... it's a four-dimensional structure. It can only be understood if you're inside it, walking through it.

Feb 14

My plan was to just hide a quadrant when out of view and replacing it with a different one, but there are angles from which two overlapping segments can be seen at once, so that won't work. Unless I find a crazier geometric way to manage that, I will have to use dual camera trickery again. But that is something I really should learn anyway.

As you might know, my engineer thesis was about how to model 3D mirrors, back when the 90s technology was all I had. To replicate it in Godot, I need to be able to:

• Select the drawing order of objects,

• Reset the depth buffer, and

• Overwrite the depth buffer.

So here's the plan: instead of having six quadrants, I make three halves, two of which overlap. If the player is in the first or last halves, no trickery is needed, as halves 1 and 3 can never be seen from one another.

If the player is in the middle half, we do some magic: you can get to half 1 from the right side of half 2, and to half 3 from the left side of half 2, but halves 1 and 3 occupy the same space. So, in OpenGL, I would:

• Draw the odd half that is harder to reach,

• Reset the depth buffer - that makes that half a phantom image with no volume to it,

• Add a transparent quad on the side of the room where the player isn't, to fix the image in place as if it was printed on a canvas,

• Draw everything else - the clear quad will lock the depth buffer only on one side of the room, so the rest will be erased and the opposite half will be visible only on that side.

This should work. But I need to figure out how to do all that in Godot. I can't just draw something with no depth, because it won't look right, so I'm missing step 2, but I already know how to do everything else. And I think 2 can be done with shaders. It isn't as clean as in OpenGL, but it should be simple enough.

The game code itself would be very easy: discard one half if the player's occupying the opposite one, figure out how to set the drawing order in Godot, add fixing overlay and reset overlay, boom, done. But how? Time to research.

The next level is more boring, since it's just some village, but I still have to do it. Well, it's mostly villages from now on. And then, the Castle. Oh boy. The Castle is going to be intense. The whole level is made of chaotic architecture and visual tricks. It's specifically designed to be scary and confusing. But the villages go first.