Three Hundred :: Mechanic #056
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  Mechanic #056 - White Noise
Posted: 10/04/07

One man's static is another man's adventure. A game where screenshots really don't do it justice.


  Description

[whitenoise1.png]

Here is a screenshot of the game. No, seriously. Maybe it just looks like white noise to you, but... nope, it's just white noise.

[whitenoise2.gif]

But here we have an animated gif of the game in action. All that's happening is that some of the white noise is moving and some isn't, and it's enough to give form and shape to the foreground layer. Why would somebody make a game like this? A game in which still shots show nothing but static? Because they can, god dammit, and it's a nifty trick.

My experiments show that this effect works best at a really absurdly high frame rate (and without that stupid flicker the animated gif is creating). Also, depending on the movement in the foreground, objects can seemingly disappear if they move at the same rate as the background, and certain types of jerky movement cause the shape to become fuzzy and less defined. More like animated static than a shape, really. Both of these things could make for interesting gameplay mechanics.

 

 





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