Posted Thu Oct 3, 2013 at 10:30 AM PDT by Brian Hoss
Speaker and light bar providing creative options.
Supergiant scored an enduring hit with their first game, 'Bastion,' which has been a hit on the Xbox Live, the PC, and iOS. Their next game, 'Transistor' will be making its initial platform debut on the PS4 and PC. Today, the developer used the light bar on the DualShock 4 to illustrate the studio's non-corporate creative process.
"For instance, one of the ironic differences I’ve experienced going from a very big game studio to a very small one is that things can often move a lot faster when there aren’t too many people around to say 'no.' This simple fact is core to our creative process at Supergiant. We like quickly coming up with, and trying, new ideas all through development... Let me tell you about one unexpected example from recent months, involving a little trick we decided to try on a whim with the DualShock 4, when we first got our hands on it.
"The story of our game, Transistor, revolves around this woman called Red, who winds up with an extraordinary weapon that, among its mysteries, is able to speak to her. When we tested early versions of the game on our friends, everybody noticed the voice, but not everybody could tell where it was coming from or who exactly was speaking. This was an important problem for us to solve, as there’s a fine line between feeling intrigued by the mystery of a thing, versus feeling bewildered."
Ultimately, by adding a flash to the sword, and synchronizing that flash with the sword, "you instantly infer that the voice you’re hearing must be coming from that weird computer sword Red’s carrying around."
Once the team began messing with the DualShock 4, this solution grew. With the light bar now employed to flash in sync with the speaking weapon, what comes next is the controller's speaker.
"Our use of the light bar took nothing more than a quick conversation and maybe a couple of hours of engineering time. But to me it’s a microcosm of our development process. If we can pull together little touches like this spontaneously and often, then Transistor will be filled with them. And I feel strongly that the small stuff in games — those fun and interesting little details you notice in your favorites — are just as important as the big stuff. It’s what gives the best games their distinctive character and personality, and it’s the stuff you end up remembering long after you’ve finished playing."
You can find the latest info on 'Transistor' linked from our Video Game Release Schedule.
Source: PlayStation Blog
Author: Brian Hoss
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