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Lydia Yi Presents

“Keep the Lights On Me”

Here’s the detailed run down of what I’m finding and foreseeing:

Just WASD for controls really limits the speeds at which Mr. Frog (I don’t have a name for the star of the show yet) can move across the stage. BECAUSE, if the spotlight moves at a set speed, it pretty much only feels good when Mr. Frog is moving at the same speed as the spotlight. Otherwise, when Mr. Frog is slower (and obviously it wouldn’t be fair for Mr. Frog to be faster), the spotlight stutters across the stage as the player tries to manage the light’s speed—not a great show, not a great player experience. Having Mr. Frog move at a set speed is not out of the question. BUT, I feel it’ll make the game too unchallenging and uninteresting…unless (and kind of even if) Mr. Frog’s choreo is something quite fast and erratic.

I had also previously considered simple “mouse cursor is the spotlight” controls—and though I think it could be a cute, casual experience—I can’t easily think of ways to make it difficult enough to be actually engaging or good lol. (I thought about scoring by how close to center the player can keep the character—which also could be done with set speed Mr. Frog WASD version of the game—but that feels pretty stale and unrelated to the fantasy of the game.)

The experience I want to go for is this: over multiple tries, the player learns and perfects a challenging spotlight choreography and performs it in smooth coordination with Mr. Frog. And none of those ideas feel like they really hit that experience.

So, I want to try something else!

So, here are some ideas and questions that are coming up for me:

> press a different key for different speeds toward cursor. Mr. Frog moves at 3 (or other #) different but set speeds throughout choreo. —kind of interesting, potentially really unintuitive and high learning curve?

> two buttons for faster/slower —doesn’t allow for quick speed changes

> spacebar to stop spotlight from moving —I forget why I thought it might need this lol…maybe it’ll make sense again later

> mouse cursor further from spotlight makes it move faster toward cursor (how intuitive and learnable is this?) —I’m pretty intrigued by this one…might need to try this though, I can’t fully imagine what this would feel like.

> idk why, but i’ve got this gut feeling that pressing keys may feel more right for capturing the goal experience, but i’mma ignore it for a bit to explore some cool mouse things.

> > maybe it’s because “spotlight goes toward cursor” feels more like a pulling action where as “click button” feels more like pushing/following with.

> potentially could also smooth spotlight movement for stuttered key clicks in the original WASD controls, but I’m far from sold on this, and also i think i’ve just lost interest in that first idea lol

> anyways,

Did some quick sketches for the star of the show. I like the last one! And since I won’t have access to my PC (and my laptop died a few months back) for the week while at my parent’s for Thanksgiving break, I’m planning to work create a model in Nomad Sculpt, then I’ll learn to rig characters in Blender once I’m back.

So the to-do for my week back home for thanksgiving will be:

> Sculpt Mr. Frog

> Start on composing the song that will be this performance.