DevLog 8 - Schrödinger's Bullet

Here is a summary of what happened over the past week. As mentioned in the last post, I made some first sketches for new foes like Pandora and Black Riding Hood two weeks ago. two weeks ago

While the evening news was running on TV, I created the clean line art for the characters(see pic below) and added a first idle animation for Pandora (see gif on top). During the drawing process, I couldn’t get the last playtest out of my head. I kept thinking about one particular thing that had come up in almost every playtest before. And that’s when something fascinating emerged.

I’ll call it:

Schrödinger’s Bullet

This might get a bit technical, and I’ll try not to dive too deeply into the details. Still, it shows how small design choices can have a big impact and how games can touch on ideas from quantum physics, where particles can be in more than one place at the same time. The basic situation: Paul is turn-based. This means the world only advances one step after Paul has taken his action. This includes any missiles or projectiles currently in motion. Now comes the Schrödinger part: In front of Paul, there is a projectile, calmly waiting for whatever action Paul will take next. What happens if Paul moves onto the tile where the projectile currently is? Does he get hit? And what if Paul moves onto a tile that the projectile will move into after Paul’s step? If both positions are lethal, the projectile is effectively in two places at once: its current position and its future position. It oscillates. That’s how I implemented it at first. During the last playtest, however, some players assumed they could safely move onto a tile occupied by a bullet, because it would move away on the next step. When I explained that the bullet was deadly both where it is now and where it will be, I realized something had to change. It simply wasn’t intuitive! So how do you solve this? How do you deal with a bullet that exists in two places at once or at least affects two tiles, one in the present and one in the future?

(short thinking pause…)

My current solution is this: the game simply forbids Paul from moving onto tiles that contain bullets. Bullets are now marked as non-walkable areas. [bullet sketch]](04.png) This has two effects:

Paul can no longer be hurt by stepping onto a bullet’s current position, because that move is impossible in the first place. Bullets now act not only as lethal projectiles, but also as shifting barriers, reducing Paul’s movement options. And while writing this, I realized a third positive effect: Some enemies use pathfinding algorithms that avoid non-walkable tiles. Since bullets are now moving non-walkable areas, enemies will try to avoid them as well 🙂 At the moment, this feels like a good solution. But maybe someone has a different or even better idea, or can share an example of how a similar issue was solved in another turn-based game.

Okay, that’s it for now with turn-based (quantum) physics.

Have a great week,

Tobi