Infinitap Games

In this developer diary, we talk about the changes we made based on your feedback to Neverending Nightmares to better create the feel of a 3D world despite our 2d art style.

This is basically the result of all the discussion we had on 84 - Representing a 3D World in 2D. I think I was able to find a good middle ground that has a more natural flow and still works for an actual 3D world.

Don't worry! In later levels when things are even crazier, we will totally abuse 3D space and come up with things that don't work out. Actually, if you pay attention to the 3rd level when we release the demo, it has some trippy geometry that wouldn't work in a 3D world. I am pretty happy with it.

Anyway, here's the video:

Oh, wow.

I was in favor of keeping it the way it was, but I'm glad you found a solution to your problem. And such a simple and elegant one, too! I wouldn't have thought that swapping the doors around like that would make so much of a difference!

Also, I may be imagining things, but I didn't think you could see the opposite door from the other side of the room. Did you end up scrunching these rooms up too?

And when you were talking about the facing left/facing right issue with walking downwards, didn't you say you'll be putting in a walking down animation at some point? Would that solve the problem, or do you still want a definite left/right facing mechanic?

Yeah, I am amazed and what a difference just changing the door layout made! I think it has the best of both worlds - it doesn't FEEL like you are going in the opposite direction and it's accurate.

I think that in combination with the new input remapping for the doors, it will feel much more like navigating a 3D space, so hopefully fewer people will get confused when they exit the girl's bedroom.

I like it. It's hard to "feel" it from watching alone, but I'm looking forward to testing it out when the new alpha is released!

It's coming soon! I don't want to make any promise, but I think Monday.

I too think it's the better way to fix it

It is amazing.

That's a very nice solutions. And it's also great that you are utilizing the possibilites of crooked geometry. It's a cool way to hint the player's that something's not right.

Another transcript up!

Hello and welcome to another in-game developer diary, I wanted to talk more about the 3D world and creating that since I did the other developer diary.


So if you recall this is the doorway and one of the hallways in the starting level, when you went through it there was some disorientation. We got a lot of feedback and gave a lot of thought to it, so let me go over some of the solutions we came up with to create the feeling of a 3D world with 2D art. So first let me go through this door


The first thing you’ll note is that when I went through this door I started moving to the left immediately and then after about half a second I started turning up. That is our input remapper, that’s what I call it anyway, it’s what ‘Parasite Eve’ and some other games did to revolutionise the way controls work with fixed camera angles. The idea is now we have it set up so if you walk through a door it keeps the input the same way, basically if you hold in the direction you’re travelling you’ll continue to travel that direction for a period of time and then your controls go back to normal. So what this does is if you continue to hold the direction through the door, it will give you a 3D clue for the way space has changed. I mean the best way to get what I’m saying is to just play it yourself and you’ll feel the difference, the one thing though is that you’ll want to continue to hold the direction when you go through the door because if you stop then things are just normal again.

One of the other things you’ll notice is that when you entered this room, you entered on the right side rather than the left.

The main reason for that is someone mentioned the 180 degree rule, where as when you entered through that we had a 180 degree flip of the camera which is disorientating. Now instead we have a 90 degree rotation of the camera so then when you go through this door into the bathroom

So there’s another 90 degree rotation and now the camera is parallel to that of the hallway which means this window can actually exist.


You continue through the bathroom, hold the direction, go through the door and now you’re in the girls bedroom

Again you’re entering through a different door in the girls bedroom than you did previously

And now we enter the door at the end of the girls bedroom and find that we’re back out in the hallway.


Now the question is will people choose to go right or left? I’m hopeful that because we’ve changed it to be better matched 3D space, it’ll be clearer and the camera angles less confusing. The other thing we did, besides the closing doors, was when you go through a door and you’re not pressing any input you automatically face the correct direction. Hopefully now when you go through doors, there’s a cue to which way you’re supposed to be going.

So I think that’s about it for this in-game developer diary, we’re really just trying to make the 2D space feel more like a 3D space in order to give you more clues.

Oh wow JPrice, thanks for doing the comparison screenshots! I was still having trouble wrapping my head around it, but that helps a ton.

I completely understood what Matt was talking about with the movement key though, holding it down as you go through a door will keep you moving in the same direction, and it sounds like a great solution to the problem. Can't wait to try it out!