Photos in photos in photos. This game is coming along great!
Game developer and student Matt Stark has come up with a simple idea that is expanding day by day into a really cool, conceptually mind-bending game.
At its core, the idea is that each picture you take with your camera contains a world within it. You can then place the photograph within your view… and step right into that world!
No ordinary camera #madewithunity #shaders #gamedev #polaroid pic.twitter.com/b9YHboryME
— Matt Stark (@mattstark256) November 11, 2019
Mark tweeted a brief summary of what’s going down behind the scenes in his own words:
When the player takes a photo I duplicate the environment, make it greyscale and slice the meshes to remove anything outside the photo. When they place it into the world I slice the environment’s meshes to make a hole for the photo.
Matt has been sharing more and more details over the past couple of months as the idea itself has been growing into more and more of a game.
Here's what happens when you photograph half a crate... pic.twitter.com/azXcaq8tVz
— Matt Stark (@mattstark256) January 3, 2020
Something super neat to notice in this example is how the crates that are cut in half have internal textures! For those who are familiar with 3D development, generally each edge of an object has its own texture, but nothing on the inside. When something is cut in half in Matt’s demo, the volumetric shader makes sure the inside won’t be empty!
Working on a volumetric texture shader so objects in the camera game can have interesting cross sections #madewithunity #shaders #gamedev pic.twitter.com/PbIZo4C4Xw
— Matt Stark (@mattstark256) January 18, 2020
These are the dibs and dabs of detail that make a game captivating and truly enjoyable.
Conceptually, it’s been wonderful to see the ideas expand upon each other as Matt shares his experiments on Twitter.
Seeing this example of recursion really opens up the world that this game is creating!
The polaroid game now has a working title: Viewfinder #madewithunity #gamedev #polaroid pic.twitter.com/B6ArM6Ezn1
— Matt Stark (@mattstark256) February 4, 2020
And this latest tweet is starting to show how you can use your magical camera to solve problems!
I'm going to #GDC to show off Viewfinder at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop!!! pic.twitter.com/3nHBjKMZB7
— Matt Stark (@mattstark256) February 20, 2020
The game, now given the title Viewfinder, has a bright future! It’s well worth following Matt and keeping up with the progress!