physics Invested 1.2.1 – A Mistborn Physics Demonstration

[+Artemos he/him]

Update 1.2.1 – The Zinc Peripheral

In Invested 1.2.1, the sphere's had a zinc peripheral installed, letting it use feruchemical zinc to increase its processing speed and slow down time. This makes it easier to fire coins while flying and select targets for Pushing and Pulling in the heat of the moment.

Spoiler

Brandon: "The only thing I didn't include, I think, is the red-shift of light"

Me:

 

See the changelog for all changes, but here's one in particular: you don't have to select targets before Pushing or Pulling on them. Trying to Push with no targets selected will Push on whatever metal you're looking at (dubbed "vacuous" Push/Pulling). This means you can fly around Luthadel without touching the keyboard. Since some of the controls have changed, be sure to check the in-game Help Overlay as a refresher.

Next step: Means of quickly choosing different methods of controlling Pushes and Pulls. One of these will be a method for Pushing on all targets in a general direction, which Wax does a lot in the books. Another is the famous steel bubble.

If math gets anyone excited, here's the fun differential equation I wrote for the intensity of the visual effect during zinc time. Fiddle with the variables and try to figure out what they're for, 'cause I ain't telling. X-axis is percentage of zinc remaining in the bank, and y-axis is intensity.

Hope everyone's having a good summer. As always, let me know your thoughts.

---

Update 1.2

Last year, I began working on a game/simulation implementing the magic system of Allomancy. I made a thread several months ago to document the initial state of the game and discuss different ways to mathematically model Pushing and Pulling. I establish a lot of the physics of the game there, so I recommend you read it if you haven't already.

I've worked on the project a lot over the past few months. This post will be separated into three main sections: the first, focusing on the physics; the second, focusing on the game (with an interlude for more physics); and my plans for the future. Here is the second update on the progress of Invested.

Spoiler

 

 

The Physics

In Pagerunner's famous thread, I made several simulations comparing different models of Pushing and Pulling, showing off how Pushing duels could work as well as what happens when the coin you're Pushing suddenly hits a solid wall/ground. Those simulations can be all viewed in-game, so feel free to examine them yourself and experiment with the Allomancy settings.

If we assume anchors do nothing special for your Pushes, Allomancy behaves like an undamped spring. If you push off of a coin into the air, you'll oscillate up to your max height, then fall all the way back down to the ground, then back up, and so on. Changing the relationship between distance and strength doesn’t change the behavior of the system.

Spoiler

 

Pushing duels work in a similar way. The 10 cubes are allomancers, anchored to the ground. Without any dampening, you get a boring spring.

Spoiler

 

The only model I could find that solved both of these problems was the infamous theory that the strength of Pushes is a function of velocity. In case you haven't been following those conversations, this theory (in its most basic form) claims "the higher the relative velocity between the Allomancer and target, the weaker the Allomantic force." Pushes on anchored coins will be stronger than Pushes on unanchored coins because anchored coins are completely stationary (that is, the relative velocity between the Allomancer and target is much smaller). The flavor of this theory that works best in the game (in my opinion) reverses the effect when the relative velocity is negative, i.e. when the Allomancer and target are moving towards each other. This means that Pushes on targets flying towards you are even more stronger than Pushes on targets flying away from you. When you're falling and throw a coin down, your Push will be weak until the coin hits the ground. Then, your relative velocity will be negative, and the Allomantic force will increase significantly, giving you a "jolt" as soon as the coin hits. This is the effect we see in the books, so it's what I have enabled by default in the game.

With this model, Allomancers stabilize near their maximum height, rather than oscillate about it:

Spoiler

 

Changing the constant used in the calculation of this velocity factor makes the system more critically/under-damped:

Spoiler

 

 

Watch how duels play out. I've also unanchored the Allomancers, and this looks a lot more like how I envision Pushing duels in the books. The strength of the Allomancer is important, but weight determines who will move in the end.

Spoiler

 

Again, you can experiment with these settings at any moment.

Spoiler

 

---

The Game

The player is a "primer sphere" - an Allomechanical construct or fabrial. It is an experimental device designed to test the limits of Scadrian magic.

The sphere's mechanical nature gives it full control of its body and moment, allowing it to roll across surfaces and jump. This is enhanced by the first metal the sphere can burn: pewter. This is used for sprinting and pewter-jumping. By passively burning pewter, the sphere exerts a greater force while moving, allowing it to better anchor itself or move while Pushing and Pulling. While burning pewter and jumping, the sphere jumps further in that direction and can jump off or up walls or kick away small objects.

Spoiler

Secondly, the primer sphere can burn iron and steel. Passively burning either of these metals reveals all nearby sources of metals. The wider the line, the heavier the source. The brighter the line, the stronger the potential Push on that metal.

Spoiler

The sphere can "Pull-target" and "Push-target" one or more metals at once. When a metal is Pull-targeted, it can be Pulled on - likewise for Push-targets and Pushing.

Spoiler

(Interlude: physics)

After all the calculations are done, the player has some Allomantic Force they exert on the target. The mass of iron or steel burned is directly proportional to the net force they exert. If you're pushing with 1000N of force, you're burning 1000mg, or 1g, of iron every second. There's actually a WoB that mildly contradicts this: according to Brandon, metal burning speed is proportional to power drawn, not force.

There are two reasons for why I make burn rate proportional to force. First, I can't be sure if Brandon is talking about "power" with the definition used in physics (i.e. a change in energy over time). If not, then there's nothing to worry about; the novels are wobbly enough to not be sure how precisely metals are burned. Still, in the future, I might shift things around to have all calculations work around power/energy rather than force, but the former is harder to calculate than the latter. My college-level textbook only talks about power in regards to applying a force to an object such that it moves at a constant velocity, so the math would get… difficult. I'm working on a model called "Distributed Power" based off of Pagerunner's model 3 that does something similar to this, but it's a work in progress. The main difference between force and power (in this context) is that power is a function of velocity; but, if we're using the Exponential with Velocity model, force still changes with velocity, just with a different relationship. There's potential for a fair bit of discussion in regards to this.

The second, more important reason for making burn rate a function of force is reduce obfuscation - if you're consistently Pushing with 1000N, you know you're losing exactly 1g of steel every second. If you have only 10g of steel left, your intelligent lizard brain can figure out how long you can keep up that push. This relationship is more intuitive for the player, and changing this to power would lose that clarity.

(end interlude)

It wouldn't be Mistborn if you couldn't throw coins.

• You can toss coins. If you Push while doing this, you'll fire coins directly towards the crosshair.
• Holding "jump" while tossing a coin will throw it downward, useful for cruising above the ground or a smooth landing.
• There's also a "Coinshot mode." With this, holding down Push (right-click) and pressing Pull (left-click) will instead throw a coin. This makes throwing coins work more like a conventional FPS where the LMB fires bullets. This (along with all of the controls, I guess) is a WIP.

There are a few scenes for the player to play around in: a tutorial and several sandboxes (as well as the Sandbox, which has some fun zero-gravity targets).

cracks knuckles cries in GTX 965M Turns On Motion Blur it's gamer time (recorded back when I only had my laptop at school)

Spoiler

 

There is an assortment of other videos here.

The Future

We've talked a lot about Newton's third law a lot, but let's take a look at Sanderson's third law: "Expand on what you have already, before you add something new."

• Better ways of throwing coins
  • Changing between semi-automatic and fully-automatic coin-throwing
  • Throwing multiple coins in different patterns
    • Oftentimes in the books, you see Mistborn throwing a "spray" of coins at an enemy like a shotgun blast.
• Pewter
  • From the start, my plan with pewter was for it to work like a shield in other games, where burning it will prevent you directly losing health. Once health actually becomes a thing, pewter will serve this purpose.
• HUD
  • General polish is needed. It should be more clear when metal reserves are refilled, coins are picked up, on-screen text changes, etc.
• Sound
  • The game's completely mute at the moment. I have little experience with sound design and production, so having a meaningful sound system is still a ways away.
• Controls
  • I've been living in my own bubble, so I've grown accustomed my choice in keybinds. I am absolutely certain think that they're not the most intuitive. If you play the game, please let me know which controls make sense and which ones don't.
  • Argent threw in the idea of using bullet time (or, perhaps, Feruchemical zinc time) for steel and iron. It would help a lot to make Pushing, Pulling, and target selection easier.
  • In general, make target selection better. When you're surrounded by metal objects, there is a lot of visual clutter on the screen. I need to make a better system of prioritizing target selection so that you can say "I want to choose this target" and not accidentally select a target in front of or behind it.
  • I definitely plan on adding macros/techniques for Pushing and Pulling. Vin's Horseshoe Wheel is one example. What I call the "centrifuge" is another - Pulling an object such that it orbits around your body, then releasing it such that it flies in the targeted direction. Lurchers never got their fair share of offensive combat in the books, so I want to show how formidable they can be, with a spicy little feedback loop or two.
• Other Allomantic metals
  • Tin: zooming in, informative HUD elements about the environment, dispelling mists/visible stars in Luthadel.
  • Bronze: see nearby sources of kinetic Investiture, such as puzzle elements or enemies that would try to Push on you.

Spoiler

 

My requests for you:

• Play the game! You can download it from my GitHub.
  • What controls make the most sense for you?
  • What bugs and physics kinks do you find?
• Sanderson's 0th law says to err on the side of awesome. What should I add that would be fun? Mistborn is a fantasy novel, after all - so what are your fantasies for Allomancy in a game?

Edited July 23, 2019 by Artemos
Hid a gif in a spoiler tag to not bloat page

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

Ok, this is absolutely, irrefutably awesome. The moment I first heard of the Metallic Arts, I wanted to be able to play a videogame that used them. Seeing all the stuff you've got so far is only heightening my excitement for this. I'm not good at math, nor game development, but I can say that I'm excited to see what effects you translate the various allomantic metals to (and I can't wait to see if there are obstacles that only a Duralumin Steelpush/ironpull could overcome, just to enhance the sense of power Duralumin feels like it offers in the books). I'm most curious about something like allomantic zinc/brass... How would that work? Changing enemy aggression to target each other/not you, depending on what metals you use? I dunno, I'm just trying to express my hype for this and it's turned into a ramble, I'll shut up now

[+ILuvHats he/him]

Wow. It's amazing how much you've done so far. I'll have to try the game out. One question I have is if you ever see yourself attempting to make the player a human avatar rather than a ball? It sounds like it would be preposterously difficult to get the animation looking correct while the character flies through the air. There's just so many different movements and directions. 

[+Artemos he/him]

7 minutes ago, ILuvHats said:

Wow. It's amazing how much you've done so far. I'll have to try the game out. One question I have is if you ever see yourself attempting to make the player a human avatar rather than a ball? It sounds like it would be preposterously difficult to get the animation looking correct while the character flies through the air. There's just so many different movements and directions. 

Indeed. I would have to put more important aspects of the game - physics and level design - on the backburner for a long time. The ball's physics are very straightforward, and the ball make sense in-world as an entity made to test the physics of magic. Rolling up walls/ceilings, navigating around objects, and cresting ledges take infinitely fewer hours to animate. For the foreseeable future, you're a ball.

[+ILuvHats he/him]

12 minutes ago, Artemos said:

For the foreseeable future, you're a ball.

I always wanted to be a ball.

[Mushroom Catalog he/him]

This is amazing. Also, doesn't everyone secretly want to be a ball with allomantic powers?

As a side note, you did a really good job making this. I don't actually know how much effort it takes to do this kind of thing, but it looks like a LOT. It is really cool!

Edited May 24, 2019 by Mushroom Catalog

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

16 hours ago, Artemos said:

Argent threw in the idea of using bullet time (or, perhaps, Feruchemical zinc time) for steel and iron. It would help a lot to make Pushing, Pulling, and target selection easier.

Why not a clever application of Allomantic Bendalloy for "bullet time"? Then again, you wouldn't be slow when swinging from anchor to anchor from your perspective... And the bubble wouldn't follow you (unless these are "quirks of the Primer Sphere")

[+Artemos he/him]

14 minutes ago, Halyo_Alex said:

Why not a clever application of Allomantic Bendalloy for "bullet time"? Then again, you wouldn't be slow when swinging from anchor to anchor from your perspective... And the bubble wouldn't follow you (unless these are "quirks of the Primer Sphere")

For those exact reasons you said. Feruchemical zinc does exactly what bullet time is supposed to do, with no more hoops to Push through. The Era 2 primer cubes are able to use feruchemy (when they used iron to decrease the weight of the airship), so it's within the realm of possibility.

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

Welp, foiled myself there

And I'm glad they can, because that opens up the possibility for iron Feruchemy for some Wax-style steelpushes and ironpulls. Maybe some heavy-metal (hah) obstacle crushing via high mass steelpushes?

[+Artemos he/him]

21 minutes ago, Halyo_Alex said:

Welp, foiled myself there

And I'm glad they can, because that opens up the possibility for iron Feruchemy for some Wax-style steelpushes and ironpulls. Maybe some heavy-metal (hah) obstacle crushing via high mass steelpushes?

Very good idea. Being able to manipulate your own mass with Feruchemical iron makes waaay too much sense in this game to not be put on the to-do list.

[Arcoss]

This looks amazing!

I would very much like to see this project continue but...have you checked if these kinds of games are legal? did Brandon say anything about it? I am just remembering the sad story of The Knights Of The Old Republic remake which was shut down by EA after two years of development

[+Artemos he/him]

46 minutes ago, Arcoss said:

This looks amazing!

I would very much like to see this project continue but...have you checked if these kinds of games are legal? did Brandon say anything about it? I am just remembering the sad story of The Knights Of The Old Republic remake which was shut down by EA after two years of development

I have no intent to monetize this; I'm just working on this in my spare time for fun. At this point, either someone from Brandon's legal time reaches out and says, "you can't do this, these people have the rights and they're making a real mistborn game," or they're silent and let me promote the series in my own way. Both cases are a win, from my perspective. Anything a real game studio could make is better than what I can do alone.

[+Artemos he/him]

Update 1.2.1 – The Zinc Peripheral

See the top of the original post for update details. Special thanks to @Argent for the idea of bullet time, implemented with feruchemical zinc.

[Scion of the Mists]

FWIW, I wouldn't really consider this to be a game as much as a physics simulator.  

Anyway, here's what Brandon's website says is his policy on fan-made media:

Quote

Can I Make A Non-Profit Fan Movie / Short / Trailer?

Normally, I’d love to do this sort of thing. The problem is, I just don’t have the right to say ‘yes’ any longer. Intellectual property rights can be notoriously tricky to deal with. Now, I personally have no problem with fan-films, games, creative works, etc. but I can’t give you approval. If you went forward with this, and a rights owner told you to stop, then you’d have to do so.

I’m afraid this puts you in a tough spot. If you wanted to do it, and hope that you weren’t told to stop, you could. Lucas lets people do fan films of all types. However, you risk having the whole thing yanked out from underneath you. You could approach the rights owner and ask what they think, but chances are that they’d just say no.

I am flattered you want to do this, and wish I could be more optimistic.

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

Awesome! The F-Zinc bullet time really feels like it was implemented well! Are there going to be other Feruchemical "peripherals" so to speak, like Iron for weight or Steel for speed? I'd love to be able to store weight and then just allomantically trebuchet myself into the sky, for example. And then tap that weight later to Push away a particularly heavy obstacle without needing an anchor to rest against. As for steel, I think it could be interesting to implement it as a sort of "boost" mechanic, where it gives you a short burst of regular movement speed when rolling around (at the speed of sound ), sort of like the Boost Ball from Metroid Prime. Of course, it'd still be cool if it was a general-purpose "speed-up" for the sphere in all manners, but I feel like if it functioned like a dash mechanic it would be more apt for evasion.

[+Artemos he/him]

19 minutes ago, Halyo_Alex said:

Awesome! The F-Zinc bullet time really feels like it was implemented well! Are there going to be other Feruchemical "peripherals" so to speak, like Iron for weight or Steel for speed? I'd love to be able to store weight and then just allomantically trebuchet myself into the sky, for example. And then tap that weight later to Push away a particularly heavy obstacle without needing an anchor to rest against. As for steel, I think it could be interesting to implement it as a sort of "boost" mechanic, where it gives you a short burst of regular movement speed when rolling around (at the speed of sound ), sort of like the Boost Ball from Metroid Prime. Of course, it'd still be cool if it was a general-purpose "speed-up" for the sphere in all manners, but I feel like if it functioned like a dash mechanic it would be more apt for evasion.

Thanks! Iron is on the to-do list. Hopefully it'll show how broken (yet fun) is the idea of "storing mass" while conserving momentum.

Pewter already provides a speed boost/dash, so Feruchemical steel wouldn't have as much of a benefit. It's not out of the question; it would mostly come down to how well Unity handles the high-speed physics.

[+Artemos he/him]

6 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

FWIW, I wouldn't really consider this to be a game as much as a physics simulator.  

Anyway, here's what Brandon's website says is his policy on fan-made media:

 

Yeah, that's what I had seen earlier. Thanks for posting it. I share your perspective about it being more of a physics simulator; I'm not trying to create a game with the plot and story ripped straight from Mistborn. That would be more likely to put me in deep water.

[Argent he/him]

Aw, man, this gets cooler and cooler! I am genuinely flattered to have been a (small) influence on the development of this, it's not only a massive project, it's a good massive project (and also a massively good project).

I had an idea as I was rereading your write-up and watching the new animations. You are already aware of the visual clutter when using Steelsight*, and one way I thought you could solve (or at least lessen the impact of) it is by scaling the thickness of the blue line logarithmically instead of (what I assume is) linearly. Another is by assigning mass or mass categories to each metal object. A third is by configuring a filter so the Primer Sphere either completely ignores lines under a certain size, or makes them fainter and/or desaturated.

English labels in that UI would also be nice

* Why do they call it Steelsight anyway? Ironsight is exactly the same thing, and I see no reason for it to not be called Metalsight... 

[Moonrise]

Wow your work into this is simply incredible! I only had a little chance to mess around with it but I really enjoyed what I saw.

I did find the controls a bit hard to grasp (using mouse and keyboard). Seems that every time I open the simulator there is some downtime before I coax some form of coordination into my movements. There is just a lot going on, and understandably so. I had a thought that maybe you could add a way to deselect all pushes at once? For example when jumping from anchor(s) I would like to mass deselect them without the R-E combo (or is it  R-Q for pushes? I get them mixed up). Zinc peripheral does help with that, but I do not have enough fingers for everything

Either way, thank you for distributing your game and sharing your progress!!

 

[Squigs44]

Super Cool. I actually tried to start building something like this about a year ago but got distracted by other things, and didn't get that far. Overall the gameplay was really cool, and it definitely has a learning curve - just like actual allomancy.

A couple things that I think might be an improvement:

When burning pewter, I can pretty much roll up walls. Please nerf. I completed the mountain level by just pewter sprinting up the side of the mountain while occasionally using the lamps to speed up my ascent or to straighten myself out.

Using Zinc is really helpful when I was first trying to figure out how to get to the top of things. However, one thing I don't like is that you have pretty much an unlimited reserve. Yes, I know that you can only use it for 8? seconds before letting it cool down for about the same amount of time, but I feel like (1) It almost makes gameplay too easy, (2) It doesn't follow feruchemical rules. If you had it speed up in order to recharge, or make it so you couldn't move during recharge, or you only had a limited amount stored up, that might be better. Idk, it is really nice to have it so readily available when first learning.

You already acknowledged that you want to improve the way allomantic lines are shown, but I just want to reiterate that it was a bit overwhelming. It seems like there are some lines to objects that are so far away that they are pretty useless to push/pull, so pruning away some of the long distance lines might be an idea there (although sometimes being able to select those further metal sources before I started a movement was useful, so finding a balance here would be nice).

The tutorial should have been obvious to me, but I missed the part where it wanted me to hover around the box to clear the stones at the top of the vertical climb, so I got stuck and just quit. Then I tried to figure out controls on my own, but it took me a while. Finally I went back to the tutorial and figured it out. Even then, the coin shooting mechanics were not super intuitive (I accidentally pressed C and then got frustrated by the fact that I couldn't use targetting with pushing/pulling until I accessed the help and found the controls). So having text that is maybe a little larger or noticeable in the tutorial might be nice for dumb users like me. Also, for some reason, I kept thinking that q was for pulling and e was for pushing, but I have no clue why I thought that (maybe I thought that we learned pulling first so pulling should be the button on the left?). After about half an hour of figuring everything out, the controls were pretty fluid for me though, so I don't think you really need to change any controls. I do think having a master controls list that is more accessible would be nice though. Oh, also, I feel like coinshot mode is pretty useless unless you are on the ground, since you can't push and pull at the same time.

For future developments, I would love to see health / combat prioritized. Right now this is a simulator, when I would love to see it as more of a game, with levels including combat, puzzles, even a story and RP. I know that this is a LONG ways off, but even having combat where a friend and I can duel with coins in an arena would be a lot of fun.

Btw, are you open to having other developers work on this with you, or are is this a project that you strictly want to work on yourself?

 

Edit: I just hooked up my xbox controller and I really like using a controller - much easier to juggle everything and remember what goes to what. Good work on getting that set up.

Edited July 27, 2019 by Squigs44
Adding info

[+Artemos he/him]

On 7/26/2019 at 3:00 PM, Argent said:

I had an idea as I was rereading your write-up and watching the new animations. You are already aware of the visual clutter when using Steelsight*, and one way I thought you could solve (or at least lessen the impact of) it is by scaling the thickness of the blue line logarithmically instead of (what I assume is) linearly. Another is by assigning mass or mass categories to each metal object. A third is by configuring a filter so the Primer Sphere either completely ignores lines under a certain size, or makes them fainter and/or desaturated.

English labels in that UI would also be nice

* Why do they call it Steelsight anyway? Ironsight is exactly the same thing, and I see no reason for it to not be called Metalsight... 

These are good suggestions for dealing with blue line clutter.

I had planned on having labels for each HUD element in the help overlay, but I completely forgot. Absolutely doing that for next build.

Iron- and Steelsight provide the same effect, yeah. Mistings probably care much more about the distinction than mistborn.

3 hours ago, Squigs44 said:

Using Zinc is really helpful when I was first trying to figure out how to get to the top of things. However, one thing I don't like is that you have pretty much an unlimited reserve. Yes, I know that you can only use it for 8? seconds before letting it cool down for about the same amount of time, but I feel like (1) It almost makes gameplay too easy, (2) It doesn't follow feruchemical rules. If you had it speed up in order to recharge, or make it so you couldn't move during recharge, or you only had a limited amount stored up, that might be better. Idk, it is really nice to have it so readily available when first learning.

You already acknowledged that you want to improve the way allomantic lines are shown, but I just want to reiterate that it was a bit overwhelming. It seems like there are some lines to objects that are so far away that they are pretty useless to push/pull, so pruning away some of the long distance lines might be an idea there (although sometimes being able to select those further metal sources before I started a movement was useful, so finding a balance here would be nice).

The tutorial should have been obvious to me, but I missed the part where it wanted me to hover around the box to clear the stones at the top of the vertical climb, so I got stuck and just quit. Then I tried to figure out controls on my own, but it took me a while. Finally I went back to the tutorial and figured it out. Even then, the coin shooting mechanics were not super intuitive (I accidentally pressed C and then got frustrated by the fact that I couldn't use targetting with pushing/pulling until I accessed the help and found the controls). So having text that is maybe a little larger or noticeable in the tutorial might be nice for dumb users like me. Also, for some reason, I kept thinking that q was for pulling and e was for pushing, but I have no clue why I thought that (maybe I thought that we learned pulling first so pulling should be the button on the left?). After about half an hour of figuring everything out, the controls were pretty fluid for me though, so I don't think you really need to change any controls. I do think having a master controls list that is more accessible would be nice though. Oh, also, I feel like coinshot mode is pretty useless unless you are on the ground, since you can't push and pull at the same time.

Btw, are you open to having other developers work on this with you, or are is this a project that you strictly want to work on yourself?

I think without freely-recharging zinc, gameplay is too hard. It does follow the rules of feruchemy; the people who made the sphere (who have a much more advanced knowledge of the Metallic Arts than most era-2 Scadrians) use an unkeyed zinc metalmind that a "slave" processor/identity is constantly filling with its own mental processing speed. Forcing the player to slow done or stop moving kills momentum that I don't think would make for enjoyable gameplay.

Currently the threshold for seeing a metal is "would I have a non-zero Push on it?", which might be overkill. Increasing this threshold is a good idea to reduce clutter, since the player shouldn't care about or be able to see metals that a Push wouldn't accelerate much.

I really don't want players to have trouble with controls because they couldn't finish the tutorial, so I'll try to make the messages and message triggers more visible.

Accidentally pressing C to change the controls won't be an issue in the future; that'll be done with something like a weapon wheel for changing control modes for Pushes and Pulls, next update.

If Q and E feel backwards for you, you can swap it to E for Push-targeting and Q for Pull-targeting at the top of Settings > Gameplay. I highly suggest playing this game with a 5-button mouse if you have one.

The help overlay is the master controls list. I think playing with that open is the easiest way to learn controls. It doesn't fully unlock unless you finish the tutorial or complete another level. As I said, I really want players to finish the tutorial to familiarize themselves with the controls. I'll add a message requesting the player to finish the tutorial if the help overlay isn't fully unlocked yet.

I'm currently working on this project by myself, but I'm not completely opposed to working with others.

4 hours ago, Moonrise said:

I did find the controls a bit hard to grasp (using mouse and keyboard). Seems that every time I open the simulator there is some downtime before I coax some form of coordination into my movements. There is just a lot going on, and understandably so. I had a thought that maybe you could add a way to deselect all pushes at once? For example when jumping from anchor(s) I would like to mass deselect them without the R-E combo (or is it  R-Q for pushes? I get them mixed up). Zinc peripheral does help with that, but I do not have enough fingers for everything

 

There are multiple methods I normally use for deselecting all targets. Briefly stopping burning metals will deselect everything (pressing X is the fastest way). Holding R and scrolling all the way down will deselect all but 1 target. Also, if you plan on only pushing on a metal once (like an anchor to get yourself into the air), Pushing on it with no Push-targets selected is a good strategy ("vacuous Pushing").

---

Thanks for all the advice, everyone. As always, controls seem to be an issue, so it's good to know that next update will overhaul that.

[Moonrise]

Thanks for the comments! I happily had a chance to finish the full tutorial. What I rather liked about it was the step by step method to learning the powers (just like any mistborn, there is a learning curve). Two places where the progression was not immediately intuitive was how to hover by the cube, and how to pewter jump up the wall crevice. Did not realize at first how to do that despite the prompt.

Actually, I have no issues with the default keybinds. Yes there are quite a few functions, but I just assumed that not having enough fingers is normal--I do not play pc games all that frequently to give productive comments there. But perhaps instead of a text-heavy help overlay could you show a colorcoded picture of the relevant keyboard section? Images are easier to read than words. 

[Zinc_compounder he/him]

Okay, first, this is awesome. I haven't played through much of it, but I'm still figuring it out, and it's great. But I do have a few bugs to report.

1) I'm on a Mac, and a laptop, which means that I can't right and left click at the same time, and it makes it difficult, basically impossible actually, to move the mouse around while clicking. What I would prefer is having the option to do full keyboard control pushes and pulls, while looking around with the mouse or arrows or other keys. Because Macs are weird, and I can't right and left click at the same time.

2) When I go to edit gameplay settings, and click save and exit, it never exits. It will exit if I hit discard, but I don't get the changes then.

Still, lots of thanks for this.

Edit: I figured out a solution for the first problem. It just required me adjusting the inputs for the game to be certain keys, rather than the touchpad.

Edited October 19, 2019 by Zinc_compounder
Looked into topic more