Glossolalia Listen Prototyping

Glossolalia is a new project I’m working on with some talented folks.

It’s in a very early stage - right now we’re exploring mechanic ideas.

I enjoyed hacking this ‘Listen’ feature together, and adding some bells and whistles along the way.

I’m including timestamps b/c I’m obsessed with time tracking and want to reflect on it - could I have gotten away with less time spent? Should I invest more? How long does it take to do things?

I was heads down on this from noon to five or so - usually I try to break work sessions up with pomodoros, but I did not do that here.

I’d be cool to intersperse commits here as well!

—

1pm: A basic listen prototype!

We see the camera zooming out when we hold L on the keyboard.

—

2pm: enemies <> listen area proof of concept.

The enemies fade in and out based on whether they intersect an invisible growing circle around the player.

—

2:15: a basic light scale along with the zoom out.

Scaling the light on the player along with the listen area’s size.

—

2:45: dropped in a blur shader

You can see EVERYTHING is blurred, which is not ideal.

—

3pm: Now blurring around the edges.

It’s not super easy to see, but the ‘clear’ (read: not blurry) area grows along with the light + listen areas.

—

3:20: Experimenting with slow mo

Maybe we want to include some slow-motion while listening? I ended up removing this later.

—

4pm: Yell capture (with screenshake!)

Another mechanic we’re considering along with ‘Listen’.

I’m particularly happy with this one because this screenshake is an old algorithm of mine refactored to work with Phantom Camera.

—

5pm: Listen reveals coins, and a more realistic ‘Gym’

Now showing the features in a new space to see how they feel.

I like the way I’m getting surprised by the enemy when I’m impatient here - something about this seems to be working!

—

That’s it for this devlog! Thanks for checking it out!