Deeper Trance by dhim
Enter the Deeper Trance
This game will led you into a deeper and deeper trance* as you descend deeper and deeper through the levels.! Let the music descend infinitely until you reach the deeper trance!
You loved magic images when you were a child where you could see 3D images hidden in seemingly random arrangement of dots! You wished that this 3d images could move and lead you into their world ? This game is made for you!
*no guarantee. Some subjects are immune to trance and/or autostereogram!
You should be able to read Deeper Trance in the above image.
What is it ?
The game use the autostereogram effect to make you see a 3d paddle that you can rotate to go through slit shaped holes at it fall deeper and deeper.
The game in itself is a classic agility/fall-deeper-and-deeper-through-holes game.
The music is a shepard tone to continuously go deeper and deeper in pitch
How to play
- Start the game, you should relax your eyes to see at a greater distance than your screen. You should enter the image and a 3d horizontal bar should appear.
- Rotate the bar with your left and right arrows.
- Planes will move toward you, there is a slanted slit. Orient the bar to go through
- Press space to take a break
The game starts slows so that you can take your time to see the effect. If you miss the slit, it starts over. You can see your deepest score in the menu (space bar)
Help I can't see anything but noise
The game is hidden in the noise, you have to let your eyes get lazy. I added two kinds of help 1. squint hint : display to dots that can help you uncross your eyes. You should first see them double, then align the red and blue in the middle to see : red dot, mixed/superposed dots, blue dot. 2. Cheat mode : you see the depth map. Not funny but it might help you see what is hidden
I still can't see anything: some people can't see autostereogram. I am deeply sorry, you can play in cheat mode, but it's not a fun game.
Tools and Acknowledgement
The idea of using autostereogram comes from some work I did a year ago with a my colleague William. All code was done on Unity, the game play is in C#. I used visual studio this year. the shader part is rewritten in HLSL from the things I did a year ago, inspired by some of the youtube tutorial from The Art of Code and its work on shadertoy. In particular the hash function is probably taken directly from there. The music theme is an old guitar riff I played for year to warm up. It was arranged on noteflight the score is on the github page
| Link | https://github.com/dhmmasson/deeperAndDeeper |
| Unity WebGl | https://dhmmasson.github.io/deeperAndDeeper/releases/compo |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/deeper-trance |
Ratings
| Overall | 382th | 3.549⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 692th | 2.92⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 15th | 4.432⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 236th | 3.903⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 479th | 3.397⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 344th | 3.333⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 553th | 2.148⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 204th | 3.669⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 91🗳️ | 140🗨️ |
I blink just above 1km ^^
Do the colors change over time? It seems like it...
Strained my eyes a bit on this one - interesting idea :thumbsup_tone1:
I hope you'll drop by mine and give it a spin :wink:
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
I will try again, but in the mean time, I must say it's a great concept, totally inovative! Great job! I will extend my comment soon, if I can reach the trance :)
I'd say better in full screen. Try close to the screen and get further away.
You might be immune to the effect. THank you very much for trying multiple times !
For the shepard tone I knew the effect going up, it was some *happy accident* to merge a descending theme I had with the concept and have an interesting result. I am the most please by the music!
okay ... this must be the craziest idea I have seen so far.
I am saving this for later.
@xlambein, source code is on github. I'll gladly help if you want to implement this kind of algorithm. I have better version and effect that I hadn't the time to implement in this LD
The music just stared playing while I am writing this. Love it!
Dude, this is sick. I started in fullscreen and I never really had issues with seeing these things. But it took me about 30 seconds I think. I don't know how far I've come because the timer resets so quickly and I was still in trance mode. Would be great to have a "high score" that showed the best score at all times.
Really love the idea. I didn't know this worked on screens as well. Sick!
Edit: Oh I didn't see my score in the esc menu. Damn. This could probably be more intuitive if the high score is near the current score.
@pookipoot, cool that you liked the **deeper trance**
@famicon80 good luck, really relax your eyes like seeing far away.
But I just love the idea, this is the creative kind of stuff I like to see from gamejams.
Also nice work with the audio-illusion.
@hypp, sorry you could not experienced it in full. Thank you for playing it anyway!
@occasoftware thank you for playing it!
@hutchings90 Thank you!, You are right, I could have added a slider to adjust the disparity, that controls the unfocused effect. But that would have added a level of unwanted fiddling in a Jam for most people instead of playing the game. For a production game, definitively!
@andreia The shader is on the github. I'd be happy to help if you want to use such an effect.
@colombo Thank you!
Really cool to see this effect in a game though. Nice job!
@keithswanger, ah yes, I tend to not see cross-eyed one... So I didn't think of adding the feature! Though the fact that is was a wall eyed autostereogram cross my mind when I made the squint helper and looked at my familly from behind the screen... Thank you for the suggestion, it would be quite easy to implement as well...
I would have wanted to tell everyone how deep I got, but I really couldn't read the score cross-eyed :laughing:
While playing in cheat mode, I didn't get a sense of depth as to where my paddle was in relation to the hole so I had no idea when I would collide. I often felt like I didn't have enough time to rotate into place.
This seems like a cool idea. I wish I could play it as it was intended.
At first I've put myself veeeeery close from the screen. Then I pulled back and.. WOW.
Literally first time I see this kind of experiment, "real" 3D, that's awesome. Crazy concept, I really went on a deep journey over there, thanks making me discovering autostereogram.
I love your choice of using an ever-descending musical illusion to fit the theme (fantastic), and the dependence on autostereograms to fit the theme too. I've never seen those things done in a game before! :grin: Well done!
It's funny that if somebody happened across a person playing this game without first seeing the tutorial, they'd wonder what the heck was happening, and how the player knows what they're doing.
@zimny11 Glad it clicked! thank you for playing
I think the effect lands itself well for simple things in the center of the screen. I tried to add more complex shapes like text, but it's quite hard to read or get. Moving around the screen also tends to break the concentration.
My GF told me it made her think of 2+2=5 by radiohead.
I was disappointed I couldn't see the stereogram, but I really enjoyed the high-concept of what you were trying to do both with that and with the audio.
@vanleiden thank you for the nice comment!
The gameplay itself is very simple but it works pretty well, I think just increasing the speed over time to make the game harder and harder would help to keep the interest of players a bit longer.
Great idea and great execution. The subtle change/distortions as you go deeper really emphasizes the mood. Not sure if it is that or something else, but I want to continue playing it even though my eyes got tired after a couple of delves of more than 1km. Will keep the tab open to play more another day.
Also noticed it is much more difficult to see the effect during the day when sunlight is reflecting off the screen. If someone has trouble seeing it they might have better chances after sunset.
I was going to check your games, but I already did! I liked it :)