ibb & obb: sonic decoration for assisted jumps

A couple more half-formed ibb & obb sound thoughts.

ibb & obb progress through the levels by finding ways to get past physical obstacles. Often, it's important to propel your character high into the air as part of the puzzle-solving process.

It wasn't immediately obvious to me when I first played, but with the help of your partner it's possible to do an 'assisted jump': You stand on your partners head, they jump, you are propelled upwards as if stuck to their head, and at the apex of their jump*, you jump. The result is that you achieve double the height you would otherwise have reached.

This came as a surprise to me since much of the ibb & obb world behaves in close accordance with real-world physics. Since this technique is important to the game, and since it feels a little weird, at least to me, I'd like to use sound to 'address' this weirdness--I want to draw attention to the assisted jump maneuver, to help underscore that this is not an accident--but there by design, and to reinforce the impression _that_ this is a departure from real world physics, to help the game 'own' this deviation.

An assisted jump, when performed optimally (or close to optimally) would be accompanied by a sonic 'reward'. Not necessarily a special sound, but certainly audio feedback that would distinguish it from lesser jumps. After a while the rhythm of the sonic events that surround assisted jumps would become engrained in players' subconscious, there'd be a kind of sensory redundancy going on: advanced players may even be able to perform perfect assisted jumps with their eyes closed!

* It turns out that the apex isn't the best moment after all. The vertical velocity of the bottom player is added to that of the top player as it starts its jump. There is an optimum moment for gaining maximum height, but it's not at the apex, which makes things more interesting.

Related Posts :