Alright, i have been a bit lazy on actually writing an update about my game, so here we go!

“And Then There Was Silence” is a 3D first person world-puzzle game… What a sentence!

Basically you will have to interact with the environment to solve puzzles (activates switches, pressure plats, jump across stuf, etc).

The twist is that the character will have the ability to swap worlds, the “normal” world and the “dark” world.

Some things are different in those worlds. The dark world may have objects that the normal world doesn’t have, and vice versa. (Note that this is my playground level so textures and placement is absolutly just for testing purposes).

And then there is THAT thing…

Meet the Silence! I must admit i have not done much coding for this guy, but the idea is that in later levels, this friendly guy will chase you down and devour everything it comes in touch with.

I realized that i always aim for too much. I won’t be done in time for the comp, i’m certain about that. But i will try to get as much done as possible and hopefully still get a playable version in time.

Oh and yeah i am also livestreaming the whole process on www.twitch.tv/seriouscreeper. So come over and say hello! I am not always using my microphone but sometimes i do

More updates following!

Alright after 12 hours and a good 8 hour “nap”, i have some progress to post!

Again, i spent a lot of time on “artsy” stuff which is why i haven’t gotten much gameplay done, but it does keep me motivated and inspired for more things.

However i implemented my first enemy the Anti Virus Type 1. Right now it just hovers around and will move towards you when you get in range. It also changes it’s glow to red and becomes more active/faster so you know what’s up.

I really like this little bugger. But of course you need some way of defending yourself! So i worked on the visuals for guns. I implemented 2 so far, a normal straight forward laser, and homing lasers! That’s right. They are not locking a dynamic target yet but they look nice 😀

Basically when you shoot, lasers come out of all 8 corners and fly towards your target in a somewhat smooth transition

Lastly but not least, i added my first game element into the game, the “Node”. You, the virus, has to get to those nodes and infect them.

At first they are deactivated, but once you manage to infect them, you turn them on and let them help you by weakening defenses and gathering some data. With data you can then duplicate yourself and leave a mini virus behind that will farm data for you constantly over time from those nodes.

Offline state

Online state

Another thing i am proud of are my clouds. It’s a minor thing, but it adds to the atmosphere.

What i did is following, i created a very simple edgy polygon shape for the base cloud.

Then at runtime i create four on top of each other, each slightly bigger than the previous one.

At the beginning, i shift every vertex slightly to give it a little bit of variety to it’s previous clouds and then when the game is playing, i constantly move the vertices slowly using simplex noise.

This way it looks very soft and smooth and as if the clouds would spread out over time. They will always stay around their start position though so they can’t just drift off.

Again, the latest version can be found here:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1658875/Infected/WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html

Controls are the same as before with some additions:

1 – change to neutral mode (only visually right now)

2 – change to aggressive mode (only visually right now)

Left Mouse button – Shoot homing lasers

The tower becomes activate automatically right now after 3 seconds. I will add the “infecting” mechanic very soon!

This is my first time joining Ludum Dare. I won’t have all weekend long (sadly), but i’m sure i’ll enjoy every single second of it

I participated in two other game dev competitions before, both held in Germany called “Dusmania”. First time our team made the 2nd place, second time we made the 1st!

Winning didn’t really matter as the whole event was amazing.

Sadly i don’t have the whole weekend, so i will try to join the 72h Jam rather than the competition.

Tools i will be using:

• Unity Engine on Windows
• Unity Standard Package for Shaders and other quick artsy stuff
• MonoDevelop for my C# mess
• Photoshop for 2D art
• Cinema 4D for something that looks like models
• My Brain for stuff

I will most likely stream as much as i can on www.twitch.tv/seriouscreeper 

Good luck everyone, looking forward to everyone’s projects!