Devil's Tuning Fork
November 16, 2009 2:57 PM   Subscribe

Devil's Tuning Fork is "a first-person exploration/puzzle game in which the player must navigate an unknown world using visual sound waves" and was made by a group of students in 6 months to compete in the Independent Games Festival. Unfortunately, it appears to be windows only, but the trailer is worth checking out anyways. It is pretty.
posted by juv3nal (17 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
via IndieGames Blog.
posted by juv3nal at 3:01 PM on November 16, 2009


Unfortunate, but profitable.
posted by jeffamaphone at 3:08 PM on November 16, 2009


Fucking awesome.
posted by fuq at 3:16 PM on November 16, 2009


Matt Murdock called, he wants his sensorium back.

(Seriously, this is so awesome.)
posted by griphus at 3:19 PM on November 16, 2009


That's a really neat look and I like the concept. Go them.

That said, one thing that struck me watching the trailer is that the conceit of sonar-like location would produce more of a static image for each ping from the position at which it was omitted than leave a sort of glowing charge on the 3D surroundings. That is, firing off a pulse should return something like an afterimage of the room at the position the pulse was fired and received from, which would persist, static on the field of vision, even if the player moved afterward.

But that might be obnoxious to look at, and designing an obnoxious game isn't usually a great decision.
posted by cortex at 3:26 PM on November 16, 2009


Well it worked for Bungie.
posted by turgid dahlia at 3:36 PM on November 16, 2009 [1 favorite]


Very similar to the Unfinished Swan previously discussed on mefi But both are very very visually, and in Devil's Tuning Fork aurally, interesting
posted by seanaes at 3:38 PM on November 16, 2009


This reminds me of The Unfinished Swan. Both are cool concepts.

On preview, seanaes beat me to it.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 3:41 PM on November 16, 2009


Well it worked for Bungie.

Funny you should mention that; one of the faculty advisors for this project (scroll to the bottom) was Alex Seropian.
posted by juv3nal at 3:59 PM on November 16, 2009


Disappointed that it's not actually that interesting from an audio perspective. Like, they should at least use 3D positional audio and echoes for the sounds in the game. Without that, it's kind of just "we're making the walls harder to see, ha ha".
posted by breath at 4:39 PM on November 16, 2009


That said, one thing that struck me watching the trailer is that the conceit of sonar-like location would produce more of a static image for each ping from the position at which it was omitted than leave a sort of glowing charge on the 3D surroundings.

If we thought about abstracting the way a blind person would echo locate, then they'd be able to hold a mental map in their head of where objects were for a while even while moving. Eventually the mental representation of the object locations would probably drift slightly until they emitted another "sonar pulse". That could be a really trippy and surreal visual of walls skewing out of true and objects distorting position and location. I'm not sure if it'd be fun, but I'm visualizing a blind character trying to stealthily navigate such a maze while being hunted by a creature that homes in on their echo locating pulses.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:39 PM on November 16, 2009 [2 favorites]


Yeah, BrotherCaine, that sort of middle-way of getting away from just straight-up afterimages toward some model of approximate spacial interpolation, without going as far as the outright traditional 3D "vision" with fade effects feel of this current work, would be really neat to see. Being able to incorporate a sense of movement-through-space based on short term memory of what you've last pinged, but without cheating about things like parallax and hidden objects, etc.

The cost-of-pinging idea is very interesting, too.
posted by cortex at 5:14 PM on November 16, 2009


Looks kinda neat, but why Windows-only? Cross platform is so, so easy nowadays and you don't even need Java to do it.
posted by DU at 7:03 PM on November 16, 2009


This does look cool. Wish I could try it out without dusting off the PC. (Same goes for Torchlight and Borderlands)
posted by now i'm piste at 7:20 PM on November 16, 2009


Cross-platform is, by definition, more work than single-platform and typically is limited to the lowest-common-denominator of all platforms' capabilities thus affording less room for innovation. A small team's energy would seem best spent delivering its vision, especially since that vision's likely long-term market lies in consoles in the long run.
posted by abulafa at 8:09 PM on November 16, 2009


What is it like to be a bat playing a video game?
posted by drlith at 4:38 AM on November 17, 2009


Cross-platform is, by definition, more work than single-platform and typically is limited to the lowest-common-denominator of all platforms' capabilities thus affording less room for innovation.

Lowest-common-denominator, yes, although the lowest is pretty high these days.

But I disagree that cross-platform is more work, let alone "by definition". An API is an API is an API. Pick a cross-platform toolkit instead of a proprietary one and you're done.

You'll have more *testing* work to do, but not astoundingly much more.
posted by DU at 5:52 AM on November 17, 2009


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