Hello,
so, in the past I mentioned that quite a few things have changed in comparison to the previous game (RT3), but did never really show what that meant. That changes today.
I will go through the things that got changed/removed and how they are replaced/enhanced, one after another.
Just keep in mind: everything below is from an unfinished game, I often leave things in a visually unfinished state as long as it works from a technical point of view for a long time, since I dont need more to build stuff.
Important: None of these changes/additions are made to dumb down the game, this is just to get rid of duplicate things and unnecessary clutter. (If anything, the new things allow me to create even more complex things.)
Cubes:
Removed cubes (in comparison to all previous games, not just RT3):
- 3-way cube, since the same functionality can now be achieved by using two 2-way cubes
- 3-way-cube (switchable), because it never aligned well with the 2-way-cubes (switchable) in terms of switching between directions. There also is a better replacement now, more on that further down.)
- "portal cubes" (white in RT3), due to them causing way too many problems when rotatable etc. (might replace them with something static that has similar functionality, but have not yet done it.)
Changed cubes:
- all cubes with 2 lasers: can now redirect lasers into any direction, not limited to 90 degrees (45 to the left/right) anymore.
- "programmable cube" (the one where you can select where which color goes): Is a 2 laser cube now, was previously 3. The "splitting" now works subtractive, which means: The color you split away is not part of the leftover color anymore. (Example: You can not have Yellow on one Side and Magenta on the other anymore, it would be Yellow and Blue now.)
This is more logical than having a weird point in the puzzle where colors appear out of nowhere
So, these are the cubes that will be in the game (please ignore the hole in the wall, its just a random spot where I dropped the cube, that was unfinished.):
From left to right:
- Orange (same as it always has been, single laser redirector)
- Green (same as Orange, but can be switched on/off, replaces the numbers on top of yellow cubes from RT3)
- White (like orange cubes, but inverts the color it gets hit with. Example: Red -> Cyan, Yellow -> Blue.)
- Red (the usual "splitter/doubler" for lasers, but it can now point in any direction for each laser.)
- Blue (same as it always has been, a switchable red cube, can also be rotated in any direction independently)
- Magenta (2 lasers like the red cubes, independently rotatable, programmable in terms of how a laser will be split up. Example: Incoming Color: White -> Outgoing Color: Top: Blue, Bottom: Yellow.)
The cubes are pretty much controlled like they always were:
- single redirecting cubes are rotated by scrolling with the mousewheel (can obviously be changed.)
- double redirecting cubes rotate the top half with the mousewheel, and the bottom half with SHIFT+Mousewheel.
Yes, for People who are used to the previous games (especially the ones who played all of the games :P) this will be something to get used to, but after a while "it just works" - at least that was my experience when I had to get used to this change.
There will also be optional indicators that you can enable to make the directions of each half more visible, if the already asymmetrical cube design isnt enough.
"Targets":
Removed symbols:
- Circle
- Triangle
The additional Symbols only were there because of the switchable cubes, but I have a better replacement now, which means that they got obsoloete. Square and Cross are still there, since they make sense in a lot of puzzles and are useful during the tutorial.
Changes:
"Targets" can now be stacked, which means that the same spot in the puzzle can be occupied by two different colors/symbols at the same time.
This really helps with the puzzle size, since many of the previously needed targets are now combined, which on the other side makes things easier to understand/overlook.
In addition to this, solutions are not as "visible" at first glance anymore as previous, because the typical "rows of targets" are gone - mostly.
Example (this puzzle would have been a lot larger in previous games, but in the end just waste a lot of space.):
Additional Targets:
As I already said, I axed the 3-way switchable cubes and replaced them with something else.
But what is it?
A new target-type in combination with movable puzzle-parts, which are player-controlled like the switchable cubes.
What does it look like?
Like this (from an unfinished Puzzle! It also shows the independent rotation of cube-halves.):
As you can see in the above image, there are 4 different solutions at the same time, each of them being needed for something, just as the now removed symbols/cubes previously.
Even better, if a switchable Cube would be in such a puzzle, there would be 8 total solutions/options to solve, more than the 3-way switchable cubes ever could achieve.
These new Target-Tiles can (and are) also being used to move around puzzle-parts etc. since the pattern can also be used as some kind of "address" where something should go, and so on.
PS: Dont worry, you can control movable things with the press of a button on your keyboard, no more signs, like RT3 had them.
Other changes:
Obviously, I did not stop there with changes, which means that there is some more I want to show off now.
"Energy Fields":
All of the previous games had these "Energy Fields" to keep things in a puzzle (especially RTE-Games), but I always found it annoying that they were so visually prominent and usually came with a lot of glass-walls etc.
These "energy fields" are now just on the floor, which removes a lot of previously needed walls from puzzles and also allows me to morea easily seperate Puzzles into different parts. In addition to that, they are visually far less distracting than previous version, and there are also a lot less glass walls to run into :P
Puzzle-Layout
Obviously, cubes that are meant to be used in a puzzle have to be somewhere, so that they can be accessed by players.
In previous games, the cubes were just somewhere on the "grid" which also was used for the solution, I changed that for many of the puzzles - especially the more difficult ones.
Cubes are now (often, not always) in a seperate Area that is logically disconnected from the actual puzzle, so that there is a place where they can be stored without interfering with the unfinished solution.
Both of these changes currently look like this (just an example, game is still unfinished.):
Just some rambling:
With RT4, I wanted to look at the problems/issues that earlier games had in terms of control, puzzles, design etc. and improve on this. When playing RT1/2/3 again, I noticed a lot of things which I wanted to get rid of for this game, therefore all of these changes at once.
There are also things in the game which are completely new to the series (have not shown/explained these yet, but sometimes you can spot something unknown in a screenshot :P) and there are plenty of small/big experiments in the game itself, like some of the puzzles.
RT4 wont suddenly fix all issues, but it should be a big step into the right direction. (Even if there will be some hiccups.)
So, enough of me blah-blah-ing, lets end this with a random screenshot I took, just looking up somewhere:
