Over the last couple of weeks, I have been assigned (or more like somehow managed to assign myself) the task of wiring up a pretty crazy puzzle in SpaceVenture. It has been lovingly dubbed by the team as “The Pipes Puzzle”. Spoiler alert! The puzzle itself will have you turning valves in order to get water flowing in a certain direction, all while trying to get a tricky alien creature to follow the flow of the pipe system. I have had the honor of putting some pretty cool stuff into the game, but this by far has been the most challenging due to all the mechanics that have to be in place in order to make it all work.
The below image gives you a small taste of the scene, but mainly focuses on certain things happening in the background. All of the red and green objects you see in the scene are actually all behind the scenes items that won’t be present (at least visually) in the real game. In the full game, you’ll also get to see the beautiful background artwork that Mark has created for it. In the below image, most of the artwork is turned off, except for what I need in order to wire up the puzzle. The different red cubes that you see in the image are all triggers that get tripped off whenever one of the green cubes touch it. The green bars move along with the valves you will be adjusting in the scene.
The crazy alien creature in the image will only move if the water is flowing in the right direction, so all the valves have to be manipulated a certain way in order to solve the puzzle. At the moment of this writing, I’m about 60% of the way through it, and hope to have it completed by tomorrow sometime. It’s been a long drawn out process setting up all the objects, scripts, and events to make it work properly, and I’m excited about being finally near the finish line on it. Can’t wait to see what you all think when you get to play with it in the real game!
-Chris Pope a.k.a your humble local intergalactic SpacePope
PS- Be sure to check out the latest episode of the Space Quest Historian podcast to hear a little bit more about what’s been going on with the project, including some more input about this puzzle. The episode should be posted later tonight.
