Chris DelayĬD: The map is definitely there to help for a lot of different reasons, but part of it is just that it's such a nice way to visualize the location as well. really is all the points that you've created, it's definitely not faked. It was stunning to look back at the in-game map and think, "Those can't possibly be all the exact dots I placed, right?" But they are, and it makes the levels feel very personal. We started out using a particle system that stopped working after about 10,000 particles, and then ended up basically entirely from scratch just so that we could have enough particles on screen to make it look as dense as it does. All you can see is the cloud of points that you've created by walking around with this gadget. Mark described it as programmer art because you don't see any of the visuals that we've created. Scanner Sombre's map shows you every tiny dot you've placed, exactly as you left them. It's almost like you've painted the whole map yourself. And if you look behind you, everything you see is all the particles that you've created and scanned. And people have been saying, "Why on Earth do we have to have unlimited particles? Why can't we just cap it or something?" But a lot of effort behind-the-scenes has gone into making it possible to have this enormous particle cloud.
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I don't know how to describe it, it is just a giant particle system. It creates a very different feel, because you can't see anything but at the same time you can kind of see everything all around you, like everywhere you've been.įrom a technical standpoint, how'd you go about implementing the LIDAR effect? I imagine saving the position of all those teeny tiny dots and having what seems to be an infinite number of dots possible on the screen would be demanding.ĬD: Yeah, it is. I guess it's like exploring a strange place, you know? Exploring somewhere that not only you've never been to but also looks completely different, like the effect of just seeing it as a rainbow point cloud creates a feeling in you that is very different from just having like a small flashlight that has a really limited range. And I wouldn't quite want to say exactly what that feeling is, but it's certainly very different from the feeling of playing Prison Architect. We're trying to create a certain feeling in the player. The "shadow" behind this figure is just a product of it blocking LIDAR particles from that angle.
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I just wanted to be a little bit more like an atmospheric kind of a mood piece, so it would be uncomfortable and it would be unnerving but it wouldn't be full on horror. I really didn't want to do a 'jump scares in the dark' type game. And I'm very well aware that we could have done a lot more horror if we really wanted to. We do have a little bit of horror because the mystery of it and the atmosphere of it lends itself quite well to horror. What are you hoping people would get out of it?ĬD: Yeah, I think you're right. Scanner Sombre has suspenseful, almost horror-like moments, but it doesn't feel like that's really the point of the game-it doesn't seem like that's its genre.
Like why can't you just see the geometry around you? Why can't you see everything? Well the answer in this particular case is that you're so deep underground that there is no light. Because it seemed to me that you would naturally need to have a reason as to why there's absolutely no light. And that was the first time we had taken the concept of a world rendered in LIDAR or a world rendered as a point cloud and actually made a game out of it. And one of them was Scanner Sombre, and the other one was a bomb defusal game called Wrong Wire, and I think we prototyped Scanner Sombre in about eight days. Chris DelayĬD: During Prison Architect we were getting a little bit burned out, and so I took a month out from Prison Architect and I took Alistair, our audio guy, and Leander, another programmer, and we kind of just holed up in my house for like a month and made these two prototypes. We're trying to create a certain feeling in the player, and I wouldn't quite want to say exactly what that feeling is. How'd the structure around that mechanic come around then?