Last month we were developing a game around the idea of underwater exploration. Shea rocked out a fish flocking system and we were preparing to start investigating the game further when we heard about the Oculus Rift Game Jam.  A Rift had happened upon our doorstep a few days before so we decided to throw in our hat and jam.  We hooked the Rift into our underwater demo and…

*poot*

Two things immediately stood out when viewing the world through the Rift.

The fish, which can swim right past the player, was intriguing.

The game induced nausea and was too much of an issue for us to resolve in a month.

I hope to address both of these issues in later posts. For now I will skip over them to get into what we are currently working on for the jam. Hopefully this gives context to all subsequent dev posts for the jam.

In our game, tentatively titled The Fisherman, you play a fisherman who has lived their life on a tiny planet devoid of life. One day a fishing rod lands on your planet. You cast your line into space and realize you can catch the cosmos.  You begin to bring the cosmos to your little planet because, well, your planet is boring.

So how did we get to this point?

After days of wrestling with the Rift/Underwater conundrum, we decided to switch directions and develop another experience for the jam.  The idea of using The Little Prince as inspiration for a game has been gnawing about in my head for awhile so we decided to knock out a quick prototype using Mario Galaxy style physics. I wish I could find the blog I read a few months back to give a shout out but I can’t for the life of me find it.  The article discussed creating gravity based on polygon normals.

I started brainstorming ideas for a protagonist on a lone planet.  The thought was to create a procedural narrative, where the player moves from planet to planet.  With the prototype up I began running about the planet and looking around, looking for interesting qualities or new experiences the Rift created.  What struck me was the interesting weight and presence of the other planets orbiting about the players little world.  This led to contemplating a game where the player is a god, creating a solar system around them. I mulled this god game idea over in my head for about a day and then pitched both ideas to the team.

John, Shea, Justin and I brainstormed which direction to take. We decided on a small scale for the player, meaning the first idea of the protagonist on a small planet was our starting point.  Everyone wanted to keep the creation aspect though, and everyone agreed the idea of a lonely character on a barren world was an interesting starting point.  Somewhere in the discussion the idea surfaced that the player interacts with the cosmos around them with a fishing rod and out of this the idea of a fisherman fishing to bring objects to their world to eliminate their loneliness was born.

So here we are a week and a half in.  We have a little planet growing, a few forms of vegetation, some precursor to our galaxy, and a fishing mechanic starting to shape up nicely.

Here is a screenshot of our world as it was on Friday.  Note the epic fishing rod in the foreground :p

I hope to make a quick post tomorrow about how we did gravity and player orientation.

Thanks for reading! 2nd post about Jam and game here