The warping in the tech demo is definitely more distracting than a simple dividing line, but it's exciting to see the potential for genuinely seamless transitions between single and split screen gameplay!<p>In what might be a bit of a cursed, uninformed thought - but I'd like to see what happens if each player's perspective could be altered individually. Would it be possible for players to have unique camera perspectives when split, and then reorient to the same perspective when within a given distance to transition to single screen?<p>From memory (as I have been unable to find a demo video), the LEGO series had some interesting approaches to dealing with this. IIRC LEGO Marvel Super Heroes gave players control of their camera when in the open world, so in Dynamic Splitscreen mode there was a little fade transition when recombining cameras to single screen. Pretty sure there was a little delay too so it wouldn't recombine unnecessarily, and it was typically a more annoying point of the splitscreen as the dividing line would pivot more dramatically - something the raytraced approach would definitely improve!
I love the sound in that short video of the game. I want to buy it, but I can't find it. I tried doing a Google search for "Sphere Spectacle video game 2019", but nothing. Is the game released? Is Google just completely failing here (quite remarkable if so)?
This is dope as heck.<p>A cool game mechanic would be, when the screen warps the players near eachother if they could exchange items, or attack the other - or <i>kite</i> a monster through the warp at the other player... especially cool if you had to travel far away on the map from the other player to grab the monster to fling at your opponent (without being killed by monster) (or maybe you have to get to a BFG first and frag 'em... through running in opposite directions to your bfg base, ang fighting monsters, and flinging then through the warp until you reach the bfg, which is the only thing which can shoot through the warp...<p>your side arm is a gun and a tractor whip with a heavy cool down to entangle a monster to throw through the warp, so use it strategically. whomever gets to their bfg firt - now play it on a large square screen, with four players, one per quadrant running to the bfg and flinging monsters through the warps - the center picks a player at random when flung into.
I like the analysis of the different options.<p>But seeing their demo of their proposed idea - well, I think I'd much rather just have a hard split between them. The oozy-woozy compression of space just feels a bit...gross, without any particular benefit.<p>And ultimately, it's still just a split-screen - just one where each of the screens is smaller.<p>There is also one more option I think I have seen, which is that when the two players are far apart, the camera zooms out. And you can also limit the players in how far apart from each other they can be.
Instead of the warping effect, I'd like to see the game extract the pathways and overlay them with one another. I think that could be the USP for a game like this, that is only based on simple geometry, using an isometric camera. The green pill could see their floor tiles outlined/highlighted in green, and the red pill could see theirs in red. Once they're close enough again, the geometry and colors would merge again.
I think you could accomplish a similar effect by adjusting the MVP matrix for objects farther from the player. It looks like fairly normal ortho projection near the sphere. Gradually zoom out as you render squares farther away.<p>Vaguely related, if you haven't seen it: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqUv2JO2BCs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqUv2JO2BCs</a>
GTA:SA had an interesting take on two-player perspective: it would keep the two players always in the same screen up to a limit, and then it would just follow one player.<p>The cool part was that when the two players were within the range limit, the camera automatically adjusted its pitch to try to keep the players in the same perspective. It was surprisingly smooth.
Can someone explain what is special about this? Author gave some history then started telling about new technique and only says this for explanation<p>> Rather than having entirely distinct and clearly delineated perspectives for each player, dynamically adjust the camera(s) at a pixel level.<p>> The most interesting part is what happens in the “no-man’s land” between, where space appears squished as the camera parameters are interpolated.<p>What does it mean by adjusting camera at pixel level? What is happening in the wrapped area and what does that effect have to do with raytracing? Does this technique bring any performance improvements now that two camera views are being rendered.
I think you could do this simpler in screen-space. I don't think the effect communicates the interpolation of the actual camera parameters very well. Then there's the question: does it add or reduce from the gameplay? I think the latter in this case - a clearer way could be simply finding a screen-space line and using that as the split in 2D.
The Adventures of Cookie & Cream had dynamic splitscreen based on progress through the level, and that was released in 2000.<p>Plus I believe there was an (uncommon?) feature where two players could share a single controller to control each character (two shoulder buttons and an analog stick).<p>(Even with an Action Replay I remember that game being frustrating as hell.)
It’s a neat idea. I think I’d prefer the effect if it transitioned more gradually rather than quickly changing to “split mode”.<p>For the right kind of game I could definitely see this working. In fact you could make a whole game based around this kind of effect, with space being squashed and stretched in different areas etc.
Looks cool. That game looks exactly like Marble Madness: <a href="https://youtu.be/CvlbZwoWMgA?si=hvMw32fsfOB2lNht" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/CvlbZwoWMgA?si=hvMw32fsfOB2lNht</a>.
How does it look if the vision is not a 360 degree circle but rather cone shaped? I wonder if dynamic or mutating perspective "shapes" could also make for a more natural use case as well.
This may work in a small visually simple level like this, but imagine this in a complex 3D world like Renegade Ops, with a bit more distance you'd get a horrid distracting pixel soup.