Echochrome - OLE tutorial

Published 26 July, 2007 Duration 5:55

The Object Locative Environment system was the tech demo precursor which gave rise to the idea of the full Echochrome game. Getting your head around the concept is likely to only be the first step on a long, mind-melting journey.

Comments (13) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Steroyd #1 5 years ago

    Friggen heck, when the guy started stacking... or sticking cubes together at the minute mark, I had to switch this off.

    It's fuxing my perception. @_@
  • Triggerhappytel #2 5 years ago

    This looks excellent; confusing as hell but should be one of the most interesting, inventive puzzlers in years.

    Will definitely check this out when I eventually get a PS3.
  • mingster #3 5 years ago

    There was nothing perceptualy freaky about that at all.
    Standard 3d functions.

    Best bit is right at the end the demolish button ..

    Didn't explain how you would do the escher like 3d drawing
  • Khab #4 5 years ago

    So it's a building game in a 3D world that works exactly like you'd expect, if you had never used 3d world building tools before?
  • ShekkyBoy #5 5 years ago

    No. This tutorial conveys nothing of the game's actual significance. If you watch the E3 2007 trailer, there are many instances where the object interaction is dimensionally impossible. It's quite mind-bending.
  • erp #6 5 years ago

    as someone else pointed out in a previous echochrome comments thread, you can actually download what's shown in that vid here (or at least something that's very similar):
    http://tserve01.aid.design.kyushu-u.ac.j...
  • Eraser #7 5 years ago

    err, I didn't see what was so significant about this video either.
    Echochrome isn't that mind-bending either, once you know that all the "impossibilities" are achieved by handling the drawing in 2D.

    Programming such an environment is probably headache inducing, but the theory behind it is certainly not.
  • kcorb #8 5 years ago

    Pretty lame. If you want to try what you saw yourself, it is theIncompatible BLOCK on Fujiki's site.
  • JamesBrophy #9 5 years ago

    This is a work of sheer genius. I can understand people not getting it. It's for people who understand 3d graphics. Not people who play games, but rather people with experience creating things in a 3d space.

    If your paying attention then you will see that a single black is placed on the floor.. blocks are stacked around it. The 3d rotation then matches our perception. That is ground breaking.

    He goes on to stack blocks under the lowest block. Once it goes back to 3d this shifts the location of the entire column to again match our perception.

    That is freaking amazing. it's fundamentally different to every level editor and 3d creation tool I have ever used. This is that is selling a ps3 to me. more then anything else, it's this.
  • YourMessageHere #10 5 years ago

    That's cool in an Escher-logic way, but...what's that actually for? It's not actually an Echochrome level editor, so is it just to mess around with?
  • ShekkyBoy #11 5 years ago

    Shut up Eraser, you fucking Wii fanboy.
  • spongebob #12 5 years ago

    @JamesBrophy

    Have you ever even used a 3D package? It is possible to make the same dimensional "mistake" in every and each 3D package (be it Maya, Cinema 4D, MAX, etc). Actually it's one of the basic principles you learn when getting into 3D modelling.

    How it works is that you view the 3D world from a single 2D angle. Say, you'd have a camera set up directly above or maybe directly at the side of the objects. This way you see only the 2D representation of the image.

    If you construct a 3D object, which itself consists of, for example, cubes, by using this 2D viewpoint, you will end up stacking cubes in a fashion that that looks proper from the viewpoint, but from other viewpoints it might look completely different.

    There was nothing special about this OLE tutorial. It just showed how you use some of the tools available in echocrome's level creation tool. Only thing that was nice was how you could easily attach cubes to each other automatically in 3D space without the usual camera twiddling of a 3D package.
  • Aka #13 5 years ago

    >If you want to try what you saw yourself, it is theIncompatible BLOCK on Fujiki's site.

    Hey this is pretty funky (IMO). But it's not at all as weird as it first seems in the video once you actually play with the program.