It have to be tempting when making a sequel to a puzzle recreation to start out the place you left off and easily stack up the issue. After all, ought to your second recreation not additional problem veterans of the primary?
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Developers Toxic Games have a distinct concept with Q.U.B.E. 2. The studio have refined and adjusted the unique’s block-placing puzzles by permitting you to generate new bins, moderately than being restricted to those already positioned within the degree. Granting higher freedom permits elevated creativity, and introduces a distinct method to fixing puzzles that isn’t restricted to cranking up the problem.
For their sequel, Toxic opted to leap from Unreal Engine three to Unreal Engine four, and the leap introduced with it a wide range of elements that helped the workforce ship on their new, extra artistic imaginative and prescient.
Keeping it clear
Like its puzzle stablemate Portal, Q.U.B.E 2 includes a clear, geometric artwork model. It makes a variety of sense: sturdy traces and daring colors don’t simply promote a visible id linked to logic, but in addition aids you when trying to fit options collectively.
“In the terms of the overall art style we decided early on in development to maintain the minimalist aesthetic and cube structures of the original game,” artwork director Harry Corr says. “In order to evolve the visual style we put a far greater emphasis on realistic, reflective materials and dramatic lighting to create a game world that evokes the original but also feels entirely new and unique.”
It is simple to suppose that minimalism is a straightforward model to good, however the aesthetic has posed a big problem to Toxic Games. “Almost every surface is constructed from uneven cubes that generate a lot of horizontal and vertical lines which, when combined with particles, reflections, textures, and atmospheric lighting, generates a lot of visual noise,” Corr explains. “This can be very frustrating in a puzzle game where the player needs to be able to easily understand the level layout and identify all of the puzzle elements.”
“There was no quick fix for this issue,” he reveals. “It was simply a case of iteratively balancing each element of the environment until it played as well as it looked.”
Building with out code
Not every little thing has been as difficult as balancing the artwork design. Unreal Engine’s much-lauded Blueprints allowed the workforce way more management over Q.U.B.E. 2’s design, though they solely have a single programmer.
“Most of the logic for the actors placed in a level and for the placeable cubes was handled in Blueprint. This was an effective way to implement new gameplay mechanics given my limited programming knowledge,” artistic director Dave Hall says. “Without Blueprint I would have been forced to design either a gameplay mechanic or feature on paper and then ask Jon to create it in code.”
With Jonathan Savery being Toxic’s solitary programmer, the prolonged back-and-forth between pen-and-paper concepts and coded prototypes might have value the studio a variety of time. Blueprints helped hold the venture shifting ahead with out the necessity for coaching a number of individuals in coding.
“Using Blueprint meant that I was able to prototype new ideas fast and then iterate until it worked. After testing I was then able to make alterations to physics behaviour or the way players interacted to get everything feeling right,” Hall says.
Constructing the cubes
Those Blueprints require a basis, in fact, and all that work lies within the arms of Savery. As technical director, it’s his job to make sure the core of Q.U.B.E. 2’s mechanics work flawlessly, which then permits the sport’s designers to create the puzzles. Naturally, for a recreation rooted in physics, this job presents its personal advanced challenges.
“The player is equipped with these amazing gloves that can throw different types of cubes around the environment,” Savery explains. “Each cube type has a different ability that affects the player and physical objects in the world in different ways. From a technical viewpoint, under the hood the gloves are actually very simple – it’s the cube types that they place into the world that are complex.”
“Each of the cubes was built with a C++ code foundation and layered on top with visual scripting (Blueprint). The C++ foundation is good to have so these object types are accessible anywhere in code, and many of the variables the cubes have are created in C++, and visible and editable in Blueprint for the puzzle designer to alter as they wish.”
“The layer of Blueprint visual scripting has been very convenient in editing the cube types quickly, especially regarding animation,” Savery provides.
In this sponsored sequence, we’re taking a look at how recreation builders are benefiting from Unreal Engine four to create a brand new technology of PC video games. With because of Epic Games and Toxic Games.
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