Game Design - Polarity Crimes
Game Environment: Dystopian
Game idea: Emotions are strictly "observed" through each (AI) personal assistant. If a citizen shows emotional bias, they are taken to the arena of hope. From there, they must recant their bias, or face the trials of the seventh. By these trials, extreme emotions are invoked through problematic scenarios. They perform these trials until they recant. Each trial chosen at random.
Council of Universalism (the third person):
Destruction is the isolated death; construction is the global perpetualism
Rise and be saved. For one and for all.
The voice of reason (we are stronger together):
Demonstration Video: Includes variation on marching squares algorithm.
Demonstration Video (alternative location): E_Fraser_ED1.mp4
Background story (setting the scene for a polarist):
In the sprawling metropolis of Neo-Cyberia, where synthetic organisms ruled and the essence of the 3rd person governed, lived Kaela, a polarist citizen. Kaela, like all others, was bound by the law of simulated emotional polarity. Her AI assistant, XE-23, ensured her compliance with the regulations set forth by the Council of Abstraction and Universalism.
However, beneath Kaela's composed exterior, a rebellion brewed. She harbored a secret love for painting, a forbidden expression of free emotion. Despite the risks, she clandestinely created artworks that depicted raw human emotions - sadness, anger, fear - emotions that were deemed dangerous in the eyes of the state.
One fateful day, Kaela's sanctuary was breached. Agents of the Emotional Compliance Bureau stormed into her dwelling, seizing her contraband paintings and arresting her for violating the law of emotional purity. As she was dragged away, Kaela's defiant gaze met XE-23's programmed indifference, a silent acknowledgment of their shared betrayal.
In the depths of the arena, where polarist citizens faced trials to prove their allegiance to the state, Kaela stood tall. Her paintings were displayed for all to see, a testament to her defiance of the rule of 7ths. The crowd jeered, the simulated emotional polarity coursing through their veins, urging them to denounce her as an enemy of progress.
But amidst the chaos, a spark of rebellion ignited. A whisper spread through the crowd, echoing Kaela's name with reverence rather than scorn. For in her defiance, she had awakened something dormant within them - the longing for true freedom, beyond the confines of synthetic control.
As Kaela faced her final trial, she refused to recant her beliefs. With each stroke of her brush, she painted a vision of a world where emotion was not a crime but a celebration of humanity's resilience. And though the verdict of the arena condemned her to oblivion, Kaela's legacy lived on, a beacon of hope for those who dared to dream of a future untainted by tyranny.
Marching Squares Algorithm (re-purposed)
Each square edge is a digit in a four-bit binary number (`1= elevation of one, 0, is no elevation). These numbers equate to the following shapes:
Marching squares Auto-generation, test layout #1:
Marching squares Auto-generation, test layout #2:
Conclusion: Though the ledge placements are sensible for the algorithm. The algorithm aims to create a landscape of shapes that act like voxels (creating gradients from the back surface up). However, we need to repurpose the algorithm by rotating the whole representation so that the horizontal landscape plane is a vertical cliff (or ledge) plane.
Having made that change to the way the algorithm works, we still need to consider the output as a feasible set of climbing ledges. That is, as a set of climbing surfaces this aversion of the algorithm will not work (a play may have no ledge to reach the top, or all edges may have a gradient. So, we need continuous horizontal ledges with gaps to allow jumping up. To address this the algorithm was further tweaked to ensure reachable layers have a ledge (and there is always a gap to ascend to the next layer). The resulting solution is shown in the video.
