5 ms·

Jerk

191 points by surprisetalk 2y ago

pokpokpok 2y ago
I really enjoyed the story and music in this post! If anyone was intrigued by the idea of a game about shrinking, I wanted to recommend this tiny indie game about using laboratory equipment as your body gets smaller and smaller: https://darelooks.itch.io/inch-by-inch https://darelooks.itch.io/inch-by-inch
thih9 2y ago
I enjoyed reading that! > I haven’t seen anyone do a shrinking game. While I'm also not aware of a shrinking game, there are more than a few[1] growing games. Some aspects of the mechanic are the same - "what was dangerous before is not a problem now and vice versa"; it's just the plot that changes. So: in a shrinking game a small enemy will become a large threat and a narrow passage will become a large escape route - and in a growing game a large enemy will turn into a small threat and a previously large passage will become inaccessible. [1]: E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy
- ge96 2y ago
  Grounded (fight insects)
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  It's not exactly either a shrinking or growing game but maybe a bit of both: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superliminal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superliminal. (Ostensibly, in a growing game you get bigger as the game progresses and vice versa for a shrinking game; this lets one play with perspective to make things bigger or smaller as needed.)
- derefr 2y ago
  Reminds me of a proposal I've seen floating around for a Metroidvania game where you lose abilities as you progress (never gaining them back.) IIRC the idea is that it would still be a game with progressive exploration (if not necessarily Metroidvania-style exploration), as terrain-navigation-gated area design would be combined with more-mainstream keys-and-locks area design — so while you're losing your abilities that allow you to "sneak in through the back door" of areas, you're gaining key items/flipping switches/making friends that enable you to "come in through the front door" instead. Also, as with a "shrinking game", you'd see things you're currently "too powerful" to enter and need to come back when you're "weaker." In this case, because some abilities you start with would be too powerful — trading that power off for having too little precision/finesse — and so would be preventing you from entering some areas because every time you try to do so, the ability kicks in and pushes you past the gap you were trying to fit into (or whatever.) It's only once you lose the ability that you gain the precision required to aim for the gap.
  - spiralganglion 2y ago
    > Metroidvania game where you lose abilities as you progress This is brilliant. It solves the inherent tension of metroidvanias wanting both ever-increasing power and ever-increasing challenge. Rather than unlocking new areas, each time you lose abilities, it changes your relationship to existing areas. But the knowledge you gain — room layouts, enemy placement, hazards, short cuts, etc — becomes way more helpful when you can't just fly (perhaps literally) across the map.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
    This idea is really interesting to me but it seems like it would be hard to capture a similar kind of fun as progressing in a traditional metroidvania. That there is a trade-off between player movement abilities and map shortcuts is interesting enough to warrant a purchase (big fan of the genre, personally) but "100%" saves and the like could possibly be un-fun to make. Although, I'm already imagining a sequence where you trade away your last movement ability and walk down some long-ish path to a place where you get all or most of them back (or different ones!). That could be fun and rewarding but it would definitely have to be done right.
  - spywaregorilla 2y ago
    Seems very unlikely to work. Most metroidvania mechanics are not "useful", they're just "required" like barrier breakers or hazard resistances. Players don't actually care about having the latter. Taking away the ability open orange doors isn't really different from introducing new purple doors that you can't open. The tech that is useful, like dashes and double jumps, is really nice to have but not especially interesting to lose imo. If you "need" the dash then it's just a key. If you don't need the dash then losing it is just less satisfying movement.
    - lupire 2y ago
      Baba is You does this by giving you a bunch of tools to solve a level, then taking away one of them (or neutering it) and challenging you to solve it again as an Extra. It's fun because it makes you realize that you already had the power for a more a different solution, but didn't notice.
- rawcal 2y ago
  My boss and a long time good friend developed one[1] with his previous indie studio. Originally VR but playable with mouse and keyboard too, player can shrink both themselves and their enemies. (Not trying to advertise for sales as the company went under years ago) [1]https://store.steampowered.com/app/754850/The_Spy_Who_Shrunk_Me/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/754850/The_Spy_Who_Shrunk...
- j1mmie 2y ago
  There was a game called Specter Spelunker Shrinks that required arbitrary shrinking and growing. It's more of a prototype than a full game, but I could imagine this exact mechanic working in a more fleshed out setting. A cool thing about the game is that time also scales with size. So the challenge provided by moving objects also scales with the character's size (sometimes beneficially, sometimes not). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ65SWBb1Kg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ65SWBb1Kg
- calmbonsai 2y ago
  A wonderful example of fictional use of scale is Greg Egan's sci-fi novel "Scale" https://a.co/d/8t2LLwk https://a.co/d/8t2LLwk . It also touches on the real thorny issues of metabolism, heat transfer, and density, aside from the obvious geometry and ergonomic concerns.
lisper 2y ago
This is a great example of why HN's policy of not changing headlines from the originals doesn't work well sometimes. This headline is almost necessarily clickbait. There is nothihng this article could possibly be about that is actually related to the four-letter title, except maybe this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_%28physics%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_%28physics%29 But that is not what this article is about. It's about (spoiler alert) quitting your job to write games.
- growt 2y ago
  No the article is about the quest to make music that changed tempo, exactly the kind of jerk you linked (the author even links the same Wikipedia page towards the end).
  - digging 2y ago
    I mean, it's still a poor title for HN.
    - sctb 2y ago
      It's a great title/article pair for HN because it's unexpected/good, as opposed to clickbait which is unexpected/bad. The guidelines permit changing the original title in the case of clickbait anyways.
      - lisper 2y ago
        > it's unexpected/good That depends on your interests. If you care about the finer points of sound editing embedded in a rather extensive personal narrative then yeah, it's good. Otherwise not so much.
- hatthew 2y ago
  Agreed, I'm personally not a huge fan of needing to spend 3+ minutes just to figure out if I care about the article. I was tying to find the connection to physics and it turns out that the connection is literally just "rate of change^n" which was never even implemented in the project from the article.
jagged-chisel 2y ago
Why is the audio player askew? It's mildly disconcerting until you know that's the issue. Is that the point?
- spiralganglion 2y ago
  (Author here) Yes that's the point. Tried it on a lark, and it created weird feelings so I leaned into it. This is my personal website, and I've been trying to make it more deeply personal lately. Talked about it a bit in this thread: https://mastodon.social/@spiralganglion/112747815905067127 https://mastodon.social/@spiralganglion/112747815905067127
  - jagged-chisel 2y ago
    I like it. I mean, I like the why. It's not so offensive as to make me turn and run from your site, but it's definitely odd. To me, it actually makes it feel as if the text is askew. One of my eyes sees things kind of slanted when I'm not wearing my glasses - I felt like I was seeing that when I was on the mastodon thread and trying to observe the change the server admin suggested...
  - gary_0 2y ago
    It makes me feel like Scottish pornography: off-kilter!
- stavros 2y ago
  How did you notice a two-degree angle?
  - jagged-chisel 2y ago
    I’m apparently super sensitive to alignment. We have tested my ability to level things, place them in the center of the wall … I get perfect level, and I’m only ever off of positioning by about 1%. Sometimes helpful, often a curse.
singleshot_ 2y ago
> You don’t hear distorted bass all that often Cliff would like a word with you, sir.
- sonofhans 2y ago
  God, would that he were around for it :( Thanks for the reminder. I’ll pour one out for the man.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sporkl 2y ago
Cool stuff, nicely fleshed-out. Sort of like a Risset rhythm, which I’ve explored a bit myself [1]. One of my favorite pieces that uses this technique is Black Rain, by Daniele Ghisi [2]. [1]: https://www.dmitrivolkov.com/misc/risset-polyrhythm/ https://www.dmitrivolkov.com/misc/risset-polyrhythm/ [2]: https://soundcloud.com/danieleghisi/black-rain https://soundcloud.com/danieleghisi/black-rain
zem 2y ago
the idea of a shrinking game is fascinating - you would start off exploring the macroscopic world, and as you get smaller and smaller a whole microscopic world opens up, and as you're exploring it you also know that every pixel of the original map contained entire worlds as rich and complex as the one you are currently navigating, and which you will never see.

191 points by surprisetalk 2y ago

I really enjoyed the story and music in this post! If anyone was intrigued by the idea of a game about shrinking, I wanted to recommend this tiny indie game about using laboratory equipment as your body gets smaller and smaller: https://darelooks.itch.io/inch-by-inch https://darelooks.itch.io/inch-by-inch

thih9 2y ago

I enjoyed reading that! > I haven’t seen anyone do a shrinking game. While I'm also not aware of a shrinking game, there are more than a few[1] growing games. Some aspects of the mechanic are the same - "what was dangerous before is not a problem now and vice versa"; it's just the plot that changes. So: in a shrinking game a small enemy will become a large threat and a narrow passage will become a large escape route - and in a growing game a large enemy will turn into a small threat and a previously large passage will become inaccessible. [1]: E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy

ge96 2y ago
Grounded (fight insects)
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
It's not exactly either a shrinking or growing game but maybe a bit of both: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superliminal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superliminal. (Ostensibly, in a growing game you get bigger as the game progresses and vice versa for a shrinking game; this lets one play with perspective to make things bigger or smaller as needed.)
derefr 2y ago
Reminds me of a proposal I've seen floating around for a Metroidvania game where you lose abilities as you progress (never gaining them back.) IIRC the idea is that it would still be a game with progressive exploration (if not necessarily Metroidvania-style exploration), as terrain-navigation-gated area design would be combined with more-mainstream keys-and-locks area design — so while you're losing your abilities that allow you to "sneak in through the back door" of areas, you're gaining key items/flipping switches/making friends that enable you to "come in through the front door" instead. Also, as with a "shrinking game", you'd see things you're currently "too powerful" to enter and need to come back when you're "weaker." In this case, because some abilities you start with would be too powerful — trading that power off for having too little precision/finesse — and so would be preventing you from entering some areas because every time you try to do so, the ability kicks in and pushes you past the gap you were trying to fit into (or whatever.) It's only once you lose the ability that you gain the precision required to aim for the gap.
- spiralganglion 2y ago
  > Metroidvania game where you lose abilities as you progress This is brilliant. It solves the inherent tension of metroidvanias wanting both ever-increasing power and ever-increasing challenge. Rather than unlocking new areas, each time you lose abilities, it changes your relationship to existing areas. But the knowledge you gain — room layouts, enemy placement, hazards, short cuts, etc — becomes way more helpful when you can't just fly (perhaps literally) across the map.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  This idea is really interesting to me but it seems like it would be hard to capture a similar kind of fun as progressing in a traditional metroidvania. That there is a trade-off between player movement abilities and map shortcuts is interesting enough to warrant a purchase (big fan of the genre, personally) but "100%" saves and the like could possibly be un-fun to make. Although, I'm already imagining a sequence where you trade away your last movement ability and walk down some long-ish path to a place where you get all or most of them back (or different ones!). That could be fun and rewarding but it would definitely have to be done right.
- spywaregorilla 2y ago
  Seems very unlikely to work. Most metroidvania mechanics are not "useful", they're just "required" like barrier breakers or hazard resistances. Players don't actually care about having the latter. Taking away the ability open orange doors isn't really different from introducing new purple doors that you can't open. The tech that is useful, like dashes and double jumps, is really nice to have but not especially interesting to lose imo. If you "need" the dash then it's just a key. If you don't need the dash then losing it is just less satisfying movement.
  - lupire 2y ago
    Baba is You does this by giving you a bunch of tools to solve a level, then taking away one of them (or neutering it) and challenging you to solve it again as an Extra. It's fun because it makes you realize that you already had the power for a more a different solution, but didn't notice.
rawcal 2y ago
My boss and a long time good friend developed one[1] with his previous indie studio. Originally VR but playable with mouse and keyboard too, player can shrink both themselves and their enemies. (Not trying to advertise for sales as the company went under years ago) [1]https://store.steampowered.com/app/754850/The_Spy_Who_Shrunk_Me/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/754850/The_Spy_Who_Shrunk...
j1mmie 2y ago
There was a game called Specter Spelunker Shrinks that required arbitrary shrinking and growing. It's more of a prototype than a full game, but I could imagine this exact mechanic working in a more fleshed out setting. A cool thing about the game is that time also scales with size. So the challenge provided by moving objects also scales with the character's size (sometimes beneficially, sometimes not). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ65SWBb1Kg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ65SWBb1Kg
calmbonsai 2y ago
A wonderful example of fictional use of scale is Greg Egan's sci-fi novel "Scale" https://a.co/d/8t2LLwk https://a.co/d/8t2LLwk . It also touches on the real thorny issues of metabolism, heat transfer, and density, aside from the obvious geometry and ergonomic concerns.

lisper 2y ago

This is a great example of why HN's policy of not changing headlines from the originals doesn't work well sometimes. This headline is almost necessarily clickbait. There is nothihng this article could possibly be about that is actually related to the four-letter title, except maybe this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_%28physics%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_%28physics%29 But that is not what this article is about. It's about (spoiler alert) quitting your job to write games.

growt 2y ago
No the article is about the quest to make music that changed tempo, exactly the kind of jerk you linked (the author even links the same Wikipedia page towards the end).
- digging 2y ago
  I mean, it's still a poor title for HN.
  - sctb 2y ago
    It's a great title/article pair for HN because it's unexpected/good, as opposed to clickbait which is unexpected/bad. The guidelines permit changing the original title in the case of clickbait anyways.
    - lisper 2y ago
      > it's unexpected/good That depends on your interests. If you care about the finer points of sound editing embedded in a rather extensive personal narrative then yeah, it's good. Otherwise not so much.
hatthew 2y ago
Agreed, I'm personally not a huge fan of needing to spend 3+ minutes just to figure out if I care about the article. I was tying to find the connection to physics and it turns out that the connection is literally just "rate of change^n" which was never even implemented in the project from the article.

jagged-chisel 2y ago

Why is the audio player askew? It's mildly disconcerting until you know that's the issue. Is that the point?

spiralganglion 2y ago
(Author here) Yes that's the point. Tried it on a lark, and it created weird feelings so I leaned into it. This is my personal website, and I've been trying to make it more deeply personal lately. Talked about it a bit in this thread: https://mastodon.social/@spiralganglion/112747815905067127 https://mastodon.social/@spiralganglion/112747815905067127
- jagged-chisel 2y ago
  I like it. I mean, I like the why. It's not so offensive as to make me turn and run from your site, but it's definitely odd. To me, it actually makes it feel as if the text is askew. One of my eyes sees things kind of slanted when I'm not wearing my glasses - I felt like I was seeing that when I was on the mastodon thread and trying to observe the change the server admin suggested...
- gary_0 2y ago
  It makes me feel like Scottish pornography: off-kilter!
stavros 2y ago
How did you notice a two-degree angle?
- jagged-chisel 2y ago
  I’m apparently super sensitive to alignment. We have tested my ability to level things, place them in the center of the wall … I get perfect level, and I’m only ever off of positioning by about 1%. Sometimes helpful, often a curse.

singleshot_ 2y ago

> You don’t hear distorted bass all that often Cliff would like a word with you, sir.

sonofhans 2y ago
God, would that he were around for it :( Thanks for the reminder. I’ll pour one out for the man.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

sporkl 2y ago

Cool stuff, nicely fleshed-out. Sort of like a Risset rhythm, which I’ve explored a bit myself [1]. One of my favorite pieces that uses this technique is Black Rain, by Daniele Ghisi [2]. [1]: https://www.dmitrivolkov.com/misc/risset-polyrhythm/ https://www.dmitrivolkov.com/misc/risset-polyrhythm/ [2]: https://soundcloud.com/danieleghisi/black-rain https://soundcloud.com/danieleghisi/black-rain

zem 2y ago

the idea of a shrinking game is fascinating - you would start off exploring the macroscopic world, and as you get smaller and smaller a whole microscopic world opens up, and as you're exploring it you also know that every pixel of the original map contained entire worlds as rich and complex as the one you are currently navigating, and which you will never see.