Addressing the Key Challenges of the Mechanism
The main mechanism of the project is to reverse time. And I talked to some game makers this week on Twitter, who have made relevant functions. This is really a little difficult. Someone realizes it by recording the physical system of unity in advance, into an animation clip. Then play the corresponding animation through the timeline. The advantage of this is that the animation effect is more realistic. However, it can only be carried out according to the pre-set animation track, and can not let players actively control the mechanism. Meanwhile, if the animation duration is too long or the number of fragments is too large, the animation clip file will be huge.
I also saw other people implement time reversal with UE4, which is very similar to the function I want. He records a position every certain time, and then interpolates between these positions to obtain a smooth motion curve. I’m trying to do something similar.
Art Effect Selection
I tried to make demo levels with HDRP and URP respectively, but I found HDRP is more complicated and takes up more resources, and requires higher computer configuration, so I chose URP to make my project. I am using the URP renderer system to achieve good graphics, and I will keep going for it, then it will be updated next week.
Character Model and Animation
I looked for some character models, but they were hard to combine with other skeletal animations, so I chose to use Mixamo‘s free models.
Again, I used part of Mixamo’s skeletal animation, which will make my animation editing process much easier.
For the weapon, I found the model of the pistol on a free site online and animated it through unity.
https://free3d.com/3d-models/weapons
Case Study
Twelve Minutes
Twelve Minutes is an adventure game developed by Luís António and published by Annapurna Interactive. The game takes place almost exclusively in a small apartment suite and requires the player to repeatedly play through events of a 10-minute cycle to try to solve a mystery.
The game’s repetitive reincarnation of the plot to gain new clues to advance the gameplay is consistent with my game setting. But the problem with Twelve Minutes is that with its excellent voice acting, the script is limited and the pace of the game is too slow. Players are forced to repeat the same plot over and over again that they’ve played many times before, but they can’t skip the parts they’ve already experienced and directly choose a new plot.