Eternal void by UglySwedishFish

[raw]
made by UglySwedishFish for Ludum Dare 47 (JAM)

You are stuck in a space station. You have no idea how you got here, or how you are meant to get out. The only help you have is a simple holographic space-ai, which is hardly of any use. You start walking, for what feels like days, but you don't seem to get anywhere. Or perhaps you do, it's just that every corridor looks the same.

ThumbNail.png

Eternal Void is a short experimental survival SCI-FI game, which heavily relies on the players own ability to figure things out. The game does not hold your hand in any way, and you are left by yourself to interpret the vague clues it gives you along the way.

Please do note that, for reasons unknown, Eternal Void does not run on intel integrated GPUs. Sorry about that!

For the more technical peoples in the audience, you may enjoy the fact that Eternal Voids lighting is using a hybrid ray-tracing/raster pipeline (just like RTX) however, it does not require a RTX capable GPU. It also features loads of other cool lighting elements, like physically correct direct lighting, physically correct volumetrics, pentagonal bokeh DoF and cool looking light flares!

please note, if you cannot run the executable, try removing OpenCL.dll from the directory. If the problem persists, let me know!

Full walkthrough is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDhbyD77ZTk

Ratings

Overall 744th 3.545⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1419th 2.726⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1147th 3⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Theme 445th 3.924⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 74th 4.485⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Humor 1054th 2.315⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Mood 208th 3.97⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Given 30🗳️ 40🗨️

Feedback

WatermelonAndMe
05. Oct 2020 · 22:58 UTC
Very detailed and atmospheric graphics. Gameplay is ok.

Please, check our game too
b0guslaw
05. Oct 2020 · 23:15 UTC
Captivating atmosphere, nice puzzle, exemplary graphical style. Loved it
Piers
06. Oct 2020 · 10:50 UTC
The game looks amazing you're very talented at graphics!
🎤 UglySwedishFish
06. Oct 2020 · 13:01 UTC
@watermelonandme Thanks! Yeah, gameplay could definitely use some work but I actually missed the original start and so I only had one day to actually completely the game :(
🎤 UglySwedishFish
06. Oct 2020 · 13:01 UTC
@piers Thanks so much!
Hank Ather
06. Oct 2020 · 16:55 UTC
The graphics are killer, I never thought my potato could do real time Ray-Tracing at playable framerates.
Kevin Meissner
06. Oct 2020 · 19:22 UTC
Really nice, love it
Will Isaacson
06. Oct 2020 · 19:23 UTC
wish I could have played it, just got a white screen after putting in my resolution that would crash after about 30 seconds :(
🎤 UglySwedishFish
06. Oct 2020 · 19:25 UTC
@will-isaacson Did you make sure to configure your OpenCL device properly? After actually typing the resolution, you still need to input some extra stuff into the console.
If you are unable to alt-tab from the white window you can try just the following:
Width Height Mode (i:e what you added now) 0 0
This should work (most of the time)
Will Isaacson
06. Oct 2020 · 19:39 UTC
@uglyswedishfish ah yes, how silly of me. Thank you for helping out with that lol. Really amazing graphics you have here, like really cool. Definitely the spotlight of the game. As someone who works on audio I will say the loop of music was a bit tedious after a while, and the growling that would happen occasionally was clipping really badly. Otherwise, you nailed the concept and made a beautiful looking game. Congrats!
TORT60091
06. Oct 2020 · 19:41 UTC
I really like the mood of this game

The idea is very interesting. To make it more interesting, I would recommend removing the corridors so that the player gets instant feedback from the selection.
If you really want to present information about the puzzle in the form of text, then it is better to make it more easily readable, on some kind of board, without movement.

In general, the gameplay would be much more interesting if we add colors to different rooms and corridors, so the player would be easier to navigate and would try to match the color with the text prompts to solve the puzzle
For example, red corridors lead to the dining room
And the blue to the workshop

The corridors are very beautiful, but still they should be used on rare occasions for better gameplay.

Anyway great work :heart: =)
Kaonnull
06. Oct 2020 · 19:42 UTC
Wow I'm impressed the graphics looks amazing!

You really hit the perfect mood.
With more gameplay, I would definitely play it again.
🎤 UglySwedishFish
06. Oct 2020 · 21:06 UTC
@will-isaacson Yeah, I honestly would have liked some better audio but I didn't really have much time to look, so I kind of just had to make do with what I could find. For my next LD entry I'm probably going to reserve a bit more time to finding proper audio. But my primary focus really was on the visuals, so.
🎤 UglySwedishFish
06. Oct 2020 · 21:07 UTC
@kaonnull Thank you! I'm very happy people seem to be overall pleased with the visuals, because that is what I focused the most on. Gameplay wise I would have loved to do more, but I actually missed the fact that the jam had started so I started on sunday at ~8pm, so I didn't have much time to make anything fun. Hopefully it was still a decently good experience!
🎤 UglySwedishFish
06. Oct 2020 · 21:09 UTC
@tort60091 Yeah, I would have loved to have the corridors be more detailed, but I didn't really have the time to. Mostly because my focus was to make something hyperrealistic first, detailed second, which meant I had a very high standard in how everything had to be laid-out, it had to feel like a real space station, which is also why there were corridors in the first place. Thanks for the feedback!
Aless
07. Oct 2020 · 02:05 UTC
awesome spacial mystery atmosphere, one of my fav themes in the world. I enjoyed the puzzles, I'd play a more polished version of this again
Eugenik
07. Oct 2020 · 04:38 UTC
Great Art!
etrealjunior
07. Oct 2020 · 10:40 UTC
I liked your game my congratulations, I also did one if you want to know, and give me your feedback I am very grateful, this is the link https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/resurrection
🎤 UglySwedishFish
07. Oct 2020 · 14:39 UTC
@aless Thanks so much! Hopefully at some point (maybe even for next LD, who knows?) I will make this into something much nicer to play. The engine is at least mostly finalized now so thats great.
🎤 UglySwedishFish
07. Oct 2020 · 14:39 UTC
@eugenik Thank you!
Malte Hedenstrom
07. Oct 2020 · 16:16 UTC
You really captured a good atmosphere with this one, love the graphics and the sound. Although there was a little to much bloom for my liking, and maybe the DoF. But those are little things. overall VERY impressive!
Somogy
07. Oct 2020 · 23:22 UTC
Nice Job and idea! Congrats!
Eldelhas
08. Oct 2020 · 16:42 UTC
Subject is well used, graphics are really good and the puzzles can keep you busy for some time ! The texte could be more readable, but it's fine for me since you did it alone, it's already amazing ^^
nsadie
09. Oct 2020 · 18:12 UTC
Good fit for the theme! I enjoyed the mood and visuals, I felt the controller or viewpoint was a little bit too high (maybe I'm just used to being shorter!)
ashashza
12. Oct 2020 · 08:48 UTC
This is really pretty. The music and footsteps really sell a mood for me, which I liked.

I agree with others that because the text core to the puzzle, it could have been more easily readable.
VPhyre
13. Oct 2020 · 03:04 UTC
Your concept on the topic is very good. I really liked the graphics and the whole setting itself. I think your idea fits the theme concept well. I was a little confused on how to play in the beginning but I think I was able to enjoy the experience. Congratulations.
ANRQAngel
18. Oct 2020 · 17:41 UTC
Great art style, good concept, I actually loved it.. I just couldn't remember the co-ordinates to go to by the time I figured out how they work, but that's on me though.. Ambience fits the mood well.. I just wish I knew what to do/where to go after triggering the self-destruct.. but all in all a great game, good job!!
Miklo
22. Oct 2020 · 22:33 UTC
That's a nice looking corridor.
Copito
25. Oct 2020 · 12:27 UTC
The art was nice although I found the post fx wayyyy OTT for my taste and would have appreciated more nuance in their application. Nice to see more entries written in C++!