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Project Monarch: Mechanics
These are the prototype game mechanics for Project Monarch, a first person puzzle game inspired by the likes of Portal.
Signals are the backbone of the project, less of a player mechanic and more of a way for me to have a generalized event trigger with some basic logic gates. These are attachable to any object and create an easy way for me to have actions of other objects linked to one another without the need to explicitly script their interaction.
Hands are the way the player interacts with the world. With one bound to each mouse button / trigger, the player's hands can interact with objects such as buttons. The hands are also able to pull in nearby orbs and grab hold of them, allowing the player to walk around with the orb. The orbs can be dropped into sockets which will trigger a signal when done so. The orbs and also simply be dropped and are destroyed when they hit the ground.
Gateways are similar to portals from the game Portal. They allow the player to traverse between two points in space by moving and rotating the player from the location of the gateway walked into to the location of the sister gateway. The visuals were done by having a second camera render what would be seen through a sister gateway and pasting that onto a material for the initial gateway.
Unlike portals, gateways will also shift the gravity of anything that passes through them. The gravity of the object (such as a player or orb) that passes though a gateway will be relative to the orientation of the sister gateway. This means there will never be any strange camera rotations when passing through a gateway as from the player's perspective, their gravity will always be the same as their local down.
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