Schrödinger's Levels - Legacy Devlog #27

=== Wishlist Astortion on Steam ===
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=== Support the Channel ===
/ aarthificial
=== Livestreams on the Second Channel ===
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=== Tools I'm using ===
JetBrains Rider
Unity
Motion Canvas
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=== Music from Epidemic Sound ===
www.epidemicsound.com/referra...
ENIGMANIC - What Do You Know
#MadeWithMotionCanvas

[@Skymen75019]

What happens in your example if the player chooses the left path, then backtracks and chooses the right path? From what you're saying, both would then load the up to down version and stick with it, creating the undesireable behavior you mentionned.

[@aarthificial]

We discussed this on Discord but I'll also answer here in case anyone is wondering: I'm okay with a situation like this because it's the player who decided to backtrack. The same could happen even if there were no puzzles in both of these levels.

[@timothymclean]

Oh no, they have to go solve the other fun puzzle. Tragic.

[@swalscha]

Sorry, I just saw that I repeated the question you asked 😅

[@silenceplease6069]

@@aarthificial You could make a chain decision, so if the player chooses to go to the right, your system chooses the correct path not only on the right, but also, at the same time, on the left

[@V_A_Kamas]

then you can get Wave Function Collapse or Spooky Action Over Great Distance

[@RugbugRedfern]

I am once again amazed at how well-designed your editor tools are! How did you learn to make Editor UIs like that?

[@aarthificial]

Thanks! I mostly look at the source code of other packages like Localization and Shader Graph. The graph editor is based on GraphView so it was really easy to implement

[@gigabytemmx]

@@aarthificial is there a chance of you releasing it? id love to mess with this software and combine it with my existing adobe premiere skills!

[@gigabytemmx]

@@red13emerald looks like I'm paying for for a patreon subscription, I've been wanting to support this guy for a while anyway.

[@jengal]

@@aarthificial I would love to have a tutorial or architecture overview about how you did Typewriter, criteria and Cartographer. They are amazing.

[@Weckacore]

Typewriter and Cartographer are just so incredible.

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

are they custom tools? The names are a bit generic so searching didn't help much : p

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

Nevermind, reading the other comments shows they are

[@dayf722]

Honestly I LOVE coming across a door that "doesn't open from this side." There's this rush of wonder, like ohhh I'm going to be coming back through here later but I won't know when. And then when you open a door and realize, oh, I remember this! It's magic. I feel like if you smooth that over, you wind up with something like the dungeons in Skyrim, where they all start feeling the same. You come to expect that easy flow where you clear everything out and, oh of course there's a path that conveniently loops back to the entrance. You also run into a problem where you can't make one puzzle more advanced than another because you don't know what order your player will encounter them in. So instead of having two puzzles in sequence that get more interesting and build upon knowledge gained from the previous ones, you have two basic puzzles. I think there's an impulse to smooth out a game's flow for a better experience, but the fun in games comes from a designed set of challenges. If you don't have just the right amount of grit in there, you risk losing form and challenge and fun. Now, if you used this tech to make sure the player always went the *wrong* way first, that would be absolutely hilarious.

[@doltramir]

Well, as I can see, nothing stops him from making chains of levels, that can be traversed both ways. Or level with only one direction (the regular one). But Cartographer is a really awesome tool.

[@TheEpicGalaxy21]

I mean, I'm sure he can use this in ways other than just to make sure the player is always going the right direction so to speak. The levels that need to be smooth can be smoothed and the levels that need to be blocked or whatever can be blocked. So hopefully not EVERY thing is smoothed over.

[@Pcat0]

I think you are missing the point, as he shows at 0:38 there still can be "door that don't open from this side" and linearish progression though the world where levels get harder as they go on. Not every directional level needs to be a schrödinger level. The point of this is that some non linearity is fun and bidirectional puzzles are hard to design so this allows for directional puzzles to be placed in non linear parts of the game.

[@jarbarsi]

Could you imagine if he made the shortcut room example into a schrodinger level that always goes the wrong way first? That would be hilarious in speedruns, "ah shit, I forgot to enter the fucking shortcut room earlier and now I have to walk all the way back around, AGAIN >:/"

[@korok2619]

i love the idea of these schrodinger levels making you backtrack everytime x)

[@redundantqwail9088]

What an elegant solution to a problem that's become so routine we hardly notice it anymore! I hope to see other games implement similar measures! Also, I imagine this gets rather convoluted when rooms have 2+ entrances/exits

[@niofer7247]

This somewhat reminds me of wave function collapse for level creation. Also for left and right entrances do you need a different variant or could you just mirror the level.

[@aarthificial]

You could just mirror it

[@timothymclean]

I imagine vertical variants would be a more interesting/frustrating design challenge...

[@calpolman5791]

@@timothymclean with astortion it could be easier, because of how the game's centered around gravity control. They could just make the up-down levels rotate gravity and become left-right levels

[@PotatoClips]

The problem with mirroring the level is if the exits are not level, there could be a disconnect in map navigation flow. For example, you could have a series of rooms that all slope down from left to right in a '\' formation, but then you decide to go around and solve the second half of rooms right to left. now, instead of traversing down into a lower area, you are traveling down and back up in a 'V' formation, where the lowest point is in the middle.

[@Beru-qs3nc]

I've been here since the start of these dev logs, I've never commented but now I just want to take some time to apricate this mans genius at game design. He creates his own tools that look like teams are behind them, and he come up with solutions that have never been used before. Im truly convinced this man is a once a generation genius. As someone who want to be a game designer one day, It would be an honor just to meet you.

[@3than3rickson]

Ikr

[@commenturthegreat2915]

Thankfully he isn't the only one! This is the kind of genius every game developer / designer has to come up with on a daily basis. This is just a peak of what's happening behind the scenes - and I hope it helps people appreciate the hard work all developers are putting into their games. Think about it - if it weren't for these dev blogs, you never would've guessed that this complexity was going on every time you enter a room! That's the kind of game design that's nearly invisible, but oh so brilliant - which makes up the vast majority of a game designer's work. And I'm sure that if you study and become a game designer as well, you'll be solving problems like these every day as well!

[@meme_me]

I actually known what he was gonna do the moment He started the thing (the idea ofc not the code, Im not a game dev but I have a way to find solutions to things )

[@namordeihai6616]

Wow, your UI for Cartgrapher is really nice. This is actually strange to see so how quality animations in the devlog

[@HappyKatze]

I subbed after Next-Gen Pixel Art, and it is crazy to see how fast time flies by. Your narrative and videos are of excellent quality, and I've learned much from your problem-solving skills. Thank you for the devlogs!

[@David-ng9qh]

Lowkey best devlogs I've ever seen.

[@GaIaxysWitch]

I feel like thia system would be really interesting to use in a long path of single rooms in order to reach a dead end, and when you get what you're supposed to do at the last room, the rooms going back change slightly as to make new puzzles or perhaps some kind of escape sequence, if you turned on the area's power system, for example. Great stuff.

[@lachlanmccormick3486]

I feel like this very quickly falls apart if the player wants to make _informed_ decisions on where they go, they check both paths, thus setting the direction of the room, and then chooses one, missing out on the other one entirely because it's now completely irrelevant. So we're back to the original problem of irrelevant rooms.

[@pkslush]

Exactly, surveying both paths also means that the player didn't choose to backtrack and do the other puzzle. Additionally, if a player already has an easy, solved path to get from A to B, why would they go through a puzzle to get to where they already were. Even if they don't decide to backtrack, it doesn't feel very good to solve a puzzle that results in zero progress. The solution would be making it so that those circular puzzles aren't backtrackable, but then you can't have the player survey both rooms..

[@RenderingUser]

​@@pkslushin that case, insert an additional hallway room between the normal room and the schrodinger's room. And make the hallway, a one way path.

[@maxmuller445]

Very cool idea, but it falls apart for players that have a similar playstyle to me: peek into every optional way and then decide where to go. In that case it would still feel linear but now you allways have to backtrack to you first peek, which might be very annoying

[@GreatestPossibleGood]

The condition for locking the room result could be on winning the puzzle, rather than on entering the room.

[@rogercruz1547]

The idea of changing a part depending on any fact is also a good one... you can open doors in other rooms, even though it's not intuitive. Like restoring power from several places to a central one, and other story wide puzzle arcs...

[@Wrincewind.]

pretty neat! Though I figure the inconsistencies of level design will make walkthroughs a bit more challenging to write. 'here's how you solve this room, unless you came in through this door, in which case, do this instead...'

[@sirwhatnot5899]

It's a neat idea but I'll have to see it in execution. From what I understand at the moment it sounds like making the player think they're making a choice without the choice actually mattering in the end by making both choices have the same outcome.

[@beans7747]

i love your videos and as an aspiring game dev i reallyenjoy the fact you explain the actual concepts and how you did it

[@leodesaintsalvy6948]

The level of polish in your videos and tools is just incredible. They're by far the best devlogs I've ever come across, keep up the amazing work

[@TheGeekRex]

I'll be honest, if I were playing a game with two paths to get somewhere, there's no chance I'd leave the other path unexplored. I feel this is a bit of an over engineered solution to something that isn't even really a huge issue in the first place, cause players are either gonna meticulously explore every place in the map, or not care if they miss small areas like that. Not to mention you're greatly increasing the workload with the variation system, having to create multiple versions of every area, which you'll have to test and keep changes synchronized between if/when you find an error in one. Personally I'd just give the player a reason to want to check out everything. Maybe put money or items in areas. That's just my two cents. I think the system is really cool and could be put to good use, but for what you're describing, it seems like a complex solution to a minor issue, and introduces its own set of issues.

[@aarthificial]

"over engineered" You must be new to this channel lmao

[@ArceusShaymin]

I believe it's less a completionist issue and more of a choice and replayability issue. If you're making a game in which you have multiple paths and want the player to choose whatever path they want without having to worry about softlocks or other similar problems, this is a pretty good solution that also happens to increase replayability on the side. The higher the complexity of the level design the more difficult it becomes to implement, but in a 2d platformer with directional puzzles it doesn't seem like exactly a Sisyphean task.

[@some-user]

when you enter one of the two paths, I think you will exit through the other path, thereby allowing you to recognise that the two paths are just a single tunnel that you've already explored.

[@Favmir]

Might be over engineered solution if it's just a small level. What if this solution was applied to a huge area?

[@codex4046]

My first thought for the scenario at 1:23 would be just making one level for going down and one level for going up. And the player always gets the level for going down first (but mirrored). The advantage of this would be that you don't have to create 4 levels, but just 2. Though if the scenery is flowing into the other levels that wouldn't be a possibility.

[@kanishkachakraborty]

I spent the the day binging the entire Astortion devlog playlist and I am simply amazed by your work. Needless to say, I've subscribed and turned on notifs. Love the humour, and the educational value is simply icing on the cake. Can't wait to buy the game! :D

[@utoherozv]

I adore your content. It keeps me hooked through sheer ingenuity. Just brilliant!!

[@TheKikolito]

Everytime I see another devlog from you I get inspiration to keep learing unity! Started from pretty much zero but have been learning the basics gradually over the last few weeks. Love the videos and can't wait to see the finish product, keep it up!

[@AlphaLul]

This is a really interesting system. It seems like it would be pretty time-consuming creating multiple variants of many of the rooms though. I just want to remind you that it's okay to have players go the wrong way. Metroidvanias are built off of exploration and going the wrong way fairly often. It is a somewhat different situation with this game though, since you have to do the puzzles from the right direction to traverse the room, and it might not immediately be apparent that you're starting the puzzle from the wrong side. Anyways, very cool system and editor window👍

[@qwendolyn5421]

This is a truly amazing solution to this problem. Hats off to you!

[@antydagames]

Super awesome! Love including ideas like this to keep things fresh.

[@polyshrub]

Once again amazed at the unique solution you find for the problem haha

[@igrb]

You never stop blowing my mind!! this is genius and I love having this devlog because when I eventually play the game I'll appreciate all the effort that went into making it the best experience possible. Also, you make such high quality tools I'm sure they'll stick around even after astortion is released. Your next game will be standing in the shoulders of a giant with all these cool systems

[@3than3rickson]

Genius - you always continue to inspire me with your cutting-edge game design ideas

[@swalscha]

What if a player enters a room and decides directly to check the other possibility, this will cause both side to be directed the same way. I think you may add a "quantum entanglement" (to stay with your analogy) to define a definite loop on your map: knowing the state of one room force an other one to be definite (entanglement). Otherwise, a player finding a puzzle difficult in a room may track back and cause two directed rooms to be oriented the same way, forcing the player to back track all the map to switch on the door that she/he didn't open at first. Otherwise it's a good idea. I personnaly prefer a well designed linear game than a "OK" open-world game but I'm sure you'll find out how to make this new level of abstraction interesting. Keep up the good work 💪

[@timothymclean]

Yeah, I can definitely see some players breaking the game that way. Especially if they know different rooms can be loaded depending on where you enter them from..

[@swalscha]

@@timothymclean It's not really breaking the game but if you have to go back on 30 rooms because you forced a directed room to be in a certain orientation, it'd be really annoying. Personnaly I think of "bad design" when I have similar issue in a game (nothing more boring than redoing successively a lot of rooms that you just cleared). A better option than the entanglement that I mentionned would be to open all the doors on a section if a player reaches a certain point on the map. It'd be a challenge to explain why to the player but it's a possibility. Abstraction always comes with annoying specific cases and has its downside (like procedural stuffs add a lot to the contents but are less enjoyable than a well design quest for example).

[@timothymclean]

@@swalscha Depending on details of level design, it could absolutely break the game. If there are two truly one-way corridors, one of which is supposed to get you to X and one which is supposed to get you from X, locking both into the to-X position permanently stops you from returning. It's something that has to be designed around, one way or another.

[@swalscha]

@@timothymclean Oh yeah, I see now what you meant before. Well spotted! I think he mentionned graph theory somewhere, if he use it he should kind of be aware of that problematic. I have the impression that this design decision (contrarely to the others he made) will likely increase by a lot the development of the project whitout a substancial gain. I personnaly would have stick to the classic methodology : implement an open world game without gates except for single circular path adjacent to the open-world (one directed only and defined by design). Restrictions on other areas can be made with new ability requirements. Can't wait to see how he'll prove me wrong :)

[@KoshakiDev]

Amazing idea. I love how the world essentially designs and modifies itself around the player's choice of direction, it creates a unique experience for any replays

[@kaleygoode1681]

Great concept! I develop levels procedurally with spanning tree to decide the routes deliberately to avoid the situation but you've met, solved, named and shared it!

[@DemonPig666]

Absolutely can't wait to play this I'm glad I found your channel.

[@polandsilver3419]

Keep doing your work! You are one of the best gamedev youtubers! You are doing extremely good stuff, taking unusual topics and you have very good video quality! Good luck!

[@miloverreijt6396]

One of the most entertaining channels i'm subscribed to. Great video!

[@DeXyfero]

i like this concept, i’ve seen it around sometimes, and i’ve always thought its an amazing idea. Good vid.

[@FrostCraftedMC]

in the example of 2 puzzles going down towards a goal room, you could make the secondary "now useless" puzzles first door open and reveal a new previously hidden door with a bonus prize

[@ashisharky]

Every new devlog I see makes me more excited to see this game completed! I love this little mechanic described here!

[@krycerkris]

Clean video, clean game structure, clear code, clear UI, is there anything this man can't do??? Massive props, you're amazing

[@ggbg6789]

I’ve just finished your 26 devlogs and man, what a journey you have done. I really recognize myself in your 1st video. I have been thinking about starting a KZbin channel to devlogs for a while now and the discovery of your channel might be the trigger. Keep your amazing and inspiring work, and I hope I’ll have the courage to take the first step

[@MirMarksman]

This devlog series continues to be so god damn cool. Excited about the game but the tools you make along the way are so interesting

[@didiei3_ksd]

Man, this looks really nice! Your tools are amazing, it really inspires me to make and improve my own.

[@squirre1_m4ster22]

dude you are doing AMAZING! Keep up the good work I love to see such a smart person making a great game, my mind explodes with all the stuff you are able to do cant wait for the game to come out. :)

[@LucasTheDrgn]

This seems like it could create an extremely interesting routing challenge for speedrunning, especially if some of these directed puzzles end up not being entirely symmetrical, e.g., if a room is faster to solve in one variant (maybe the entrance places you closer to key points) but is faster to *reach* in another variant. Very cool concept from many different angles!

[@CoolGabrijel]

My mind is blown by the editor tools alone. Can't wait for the game.

[@mrOverYeff]

I only just discovered ur Chanel and u do so much amazing stuff, thank you

[@ChaosNe0]

Cool concept. I enjoy these devlogs as they present interesting problems I never thought about before and also provide naturally fitting solutions.

[@eboatwright_]

I love the little animations inbetween clips!

[@voracdesign]

This is some high IQ thinking. I really loved how the simplied version (the colorful one) made the explanation much easier to understand. Everything was really straight forward and I enjoyed the video. Great one!!

[@ElTaitronAnim]

This is really neat, thanks for sharing!

[@Camper_Samu]

this is a very cool design idea, thanks for sharing your creative process!

[@LinkEX]

Your videos are always such a treat. The topics start from a familiar area, but often dive into useful aspects that I haven't seen discussed elsewhere. Not only that, you have a great teaching style: - a familiar situation for the introduction, - intuitive explanations for the costs and benefits, - good examples to make it stick, and - superb visualization throughout! As for the visualization: Is all animation done with Motion Canvas? I just figured out you not only have your own video on that, but that, in fact, you created it yourself! Definitely checking this out next. (Currently I'm looking for a FOSS version for creating videos. "Remotion" is the one that seemed the most promising so far.)

[@koye4427]

If I wasn't aware of this mechanic I feel like I would just go the entire game thinking "wow! I got so lucky choosing to go left instead of right"

[@supercyclone8342]

Your channel just got recommended to me and I gotta say, this is really cool! Thank you KZbin algorithm!

[@reasonable1]

I'm a software engineer making web applications and your Typewriter system is super inspiring for in-app onboarding. Makes so much sense to me to treat software as a game. UI screens can be accessed from different paths and might show different dialog etc.

[@hereticstanlyhalo6916]

Wow, I really like this Cartographer & Typewriter system you have in place, I'm actively working on a game engine, and this is really cool, this is very inspiring for what I might require in my future games.

[@quintongordon6024]

Once again, a great video.

[@Shottos]

This is brilliant!

[@ranzu3138]

I enjoy learning game design a lot, makes me appreciate the games I play a lot more

[@gavin5410]

A full game with this design philosophy could be ridiculously interesting for speedrun routing

[@Steets]

Even ignoring the amazing design decisions and the amount of care that you're putting into this game, the utilities that you're using to create it are simply fantastic. If I didn't see a million other people in these comments saying that it was a custom utility, I'd think that Cartographer was some ridiculously expensive Unity add-on made by a professional company.

[@inbaker7564]

that amazing editing, you have a great talent in creating games, for sure I will check out the game when launching, great job, it's continue like this❤

[@lime31373]

This is very similar to how I plan to make the levels in my game. Very well explained. :)

[@pedeeli177]

i love how your custom editors look in unity. I would love a video explaining a few advanced tricks you can do with custom editors

[@jamesderaja]

This is an amazing level design idea this could easily make the player try different things and increases the replayablility of the game.

[@evaneatsbacon]

Amazing demonstration once again, so curious to see how these play out in your game :)

[@lyceenjps5353]

You can make the example room at the very beginning bi directed by letting the player bring a green cube from the previous room.

[@jameshasseriousedoubtsabou560]

Absolutely incredible

[@DarthBiomech]

The downside, though, as far as I see it, is that you now need to make almost twice as many levels for the game, or even more in case of rooms with multiple entrances and exits.

[@Skeffles]

Fantastic solution to the problem!

[@3v1l73ddy]

I miss the light rays that show you what anchor you're connected to, I think they made things much clearer. The colour indicators for certain things also seem too close to each other in shade and hue so people who aren't good at seeing colour variation would struggle to tell, for example, which trigger is attached to which thing because they are all shades of orange that aren't too different. Other than that I just binged the whole devlog series and this game is looking epic. You're going above and beyond in some really interesting ways, I can't wait to see the final product.

[@Cosmic0verlord]

This game looks promising, I totally plan on getting it when you release it, keep up the good work

[@Cosmic0verlord]

Also side note, this is definitely the way I would have handled the level layout, with the dynamic level switching

[@nathanhedglin931]

Using wave function collapse for levels is a genius idea!

[@mrfabrice]

Brilliant! However I feel entangled levels would be a better naming than Schrödinger levels.

[@MagicGonads]

only if some paths switch to oppose/completement your choices elsewhere

[@cristinocanga]

This is so insane and genius! :)

[@JamesTDG]

Man, I always love accidentally stumbling across these devlogs, helps teach me stuff about making my own games, even if I probably will never use these concepts.

[@genericname6064]

you are SO under rated. what you do is really cool and you're really good at explaining how you do it. Imo you should have at least 600k subs by now.

[@davinrort2nd]

reminds me of fast traveling in open worlds bc you usually have to unlock them and they may or may not be near a mission/something it gives you a forced exploration or you unlocked one already while exploring/doing something else

[@_thresh_]

So basically turning the house from house of leaves into a video game

[@mr3shba]

This video is soo perfect ❤️❤️

[@CharlesVanNoland]

"It's worth noting that there's no randomness here" oh but there is! The PLAYER is the random variable! :D

[@AgentChick]

This is actually such a brilliant solution to this problem, I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this, though I guess it is also designed so the player doesn't notice :P

[@the_mm_159]

Really nice video

[@Encysted]

2:15 an entrance above an exit on the right-hand side, with a second permanent magnet in the ceiling that I think can only be used to swing across to the other starting point, and doesn’t help solve the puzzle.

[@muhamadshaker1318]

This is extremely clever idea, haven’t seen anyone do that before, its solves so many issues in Metroidvania games

[@ChannelOfJoris]

As awesome as this is it seems like a scoping nightmare, especially for puzzles that go up or down or into multiple directions

[@RexusprimeIX]

4:07 this gave me an idea; what if there was a level, or maybe a game event where the rooms are randomly connected. If a level, it could be that you do a set of rooms, then when you start backtracking suddenly the way you came from doesn't bring you back where you expected to end up, and now you have a puzzle to get out of this area. Perhaps it was some kind of quantum testing facility, but now it's broken and the rooms are acting sporadically.

[@ZedAmadeus]

The gameplay is looking really smooth and fun, by the way!

[@rogercruz1547]

Perfect name for the concept, I was wondering where you were going with the name but now it clicked hahah

[@amyshaw893]

How do you make the graph views like in cartographer and the older version? I've been trying to make editor tools that would use stuff similar to that, but I can't work out how to make my own node system in the editor itself

[@barigamb]

You are THE most underrated KZbinr. This was amazing.

[@S41L0R]

Thank you

[@firelion3487]

Woah! What a cool idea!

[@nolram]

Your tool-programming abilities are god-tier.

[@BugsAreFeatures]

How do you chose your colour palette? Your colours are always so well connected it's beautiful!

[@AstonishedByTheLackOfCake]

another aarthificial upload, nice

[@timothymclean]

I know I've been watching too many SummoningSalt and OneShortEye videos, because my first thought was how much this would complicate routing for speedrunners. Probably in a good way, though!

[@0x2480]

not only is this great for casual play and exploration, i can see this causing making routes for speedrunning to be way more fun as well more devs should take this approach

[@Crembonii]

THIS IS SO COOL!

[@krum3155]

yay, astortion devlog again!!