Time ceases to exist.
It’s pointless to resist.
All waves will halt.
We turn to salt.
My heart will slowly stop.
As color drains away.
We fade to gray.
The sun and moon no longer rise.
Upon my mind the darkness pries.
Eternal dusk will bathe the world.
The souls of all have been imperiled.
Note: The last word, imperiled, should be pronounced with two syllables, like “impurld” to rhyme with world and keep the iambic meter.
Transformations matrices have found their way into a great number of games. Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, Sonic the Hedgehog, etc. Most of these games share a defining characteristic. They are mostly first-person or third-person. In other words, there is a view window, and you either see from a vantage point equivalent to the character you are playing, or directly behind (and maybe slightly above in the case of Sonic).
Now, Chromomancy is not a first or third person game by any stretch of the imagination. It is top-down (I think that’s the official term). So it was a bit of a challenge to figure out how a transformation matrix could be applied to this game. The easiest solution is to not use the matrix, but that’s the easy method. This is the not-so-easy method that I decided to use.
As you can see, it is a little more trippy than it was last time. That is because there is even more spinning than there was last time. Now, the dots and the plasma can spin in different directions! So yeah. I’m not sure if I will keep it this way. But now that I know how the transformation matrices work, I can set it up as a real game mechanic. But that’s all speculative.
I do not own the music, it is owned by Sega.
And this is the depressing powm:
I’m spinning forever – Locked in motion.
Direction devoid of – All its meaning.
I’m lost and my mind is – Dizzy, fading.
The colors are leaving – Life forsaken.
It’s more song lyrics than poem actually. The meter of the lines before the hyphen is -^–^-. This part is meant to be sung. The part after the hyphen is simple iambic, ^-^-. This is meant to be spokenish. The first line is spoken somewhat normally but with reverb to make it trancey (Locked in motion). The second should be said in a way that makes it sound more depressing than the first line as if speaker is about to cry (All its meaning). The third should sound like the speaker is really in despair, like a howl of metaphorical pain (Dizzy, fading). And the last line is a true to goodness death growl (Life forsaken).
The progression to death growl applies only to the last 4 syllables of each line. The first 6 are meant to be sung with the same tune each time. Also, it’s not a progression of volume, the volume should stay about the same for each line, with the last 4 syllables louder than the first 6. These directions are probably not as clear as they could be.
Oh, and more about Chromomancy. There’s a source control set up on google code. Luke is working on AI, and I’m not really sure how that’s going aside from the fact that I know the green enemy in level 3 shoots at the player and if the bullet hits, its lights out. And the bullet bounces on the screen walls. There’s a Pylon in level 6 (and you didn’t have to construct it, nor will you need to construct additional pylons later because I’ll construct them for you), and pressing ‘O’ will activate it and allow the player to offer color shards to it and gain luminosity. Typing HELP in the Pylon screen gives a help message.
I think the next feature that will be implemented is a main menu so one can actually exit the game without having to take the time of dying. Because there’s no big red X on the top right corner that you can click. And if you just alt f4, the program will still keep running, eating up all your CPU. Yeah, that’ll be next.
Agathokakologic Alartolater 