Mechanisms

Hey everyone! I wanted to post an update on our puzzle gameplay mechanics, specifically our mechanism system.

Large interconnected mechanisms exist in our world just below the surface of the earth. As pieces of land rise these mechanisms are revealed, allowing the player to tinker with them. Figuring out how the level pieces connect and how to manipulate them will be a core puzzle feature in Memories. Our hope is that the physical nature of mechanical movements will be interesting to manipulate and easy to understand.

A key inspiration for many of our mechanisms will come from the website: http://507movements.com/

Here is a quick example setup of some large gears:

The goal is to create a system that works almost completely independent of designer or artist setup. A few things will always need to be manually connected, but the rest should function just as the mechanical movement intends. This enables faster iteration on our puzzles and levels as well as the possibility of emergent game play.

We started by creating a parent class for all mechanisms and a blueprint interface to control any mechanisms that fall outside of this parent class. This actor doesn't do much, but contains the core setup code for connecting mechanisms together and communicating on the fly.

Our first test case was the large gears shown in the video. When a gear overlaps another it connects to it, forming a chain of mechanisms feeding into one another. Although this isn't perfectly realistic, it forms a simple rule for players to learn and exploit for puzzles.

Now that the base setup is completed, we will begin to create more mechanisms and continue stress testing the core code by setting up new and interesting combinations and puzzles.