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Cinetraverse ™

engine to play and solve puzzleverses in Cinetraverse format
движок для гри та розв'язування головоломок-світів у форматі Cinetraverse ♦




(Pieces of music that are played during this video: «Flying Celestial Nymphs» by Kitaro, «Shadows» by John Dyson, «Dark River» by Coil, «Oxygene 3» by Jean-Michel Jarre, and «Moon Dance» by Andreas Vollenweider.)


The shape of the form

If you need to express something, then you write letters and hieroglyphs in a sequence, or paint parts of a planar surface in different colors, or arrange sounds in time and space, or perform other classical activities. On the other side, you read, watch, and listen.

Or you can make a verse for Cinetraverse, and play a verse made by someone else. Remember though, that


Nothing is as boring as other people's dreams.
Attributed to John Green


However, if a human being is able to distinguish only a finite number of dreams, and the mankind exists long enough, then there are no less than two people such that their dreams would look one and the same to them and to anyone else. What remains is to make their dreams known to each other, or at least the earlier to the latter in case they are separated by millenia.

In

A Verse is a point-and-click-and-read puzzle that consists of the screens called Places, arranged in concentric circles, like knots of a web. The player's goal is to reach its centre, the Place that is hidden there. In fact, all Places are hidden at the beginning of the journey, except for one Place at the outermost circle where the player starts. In order to reach the next circle, all Places at the current one must be found. The player finds Places by moving to them through Portals, but every Portal is locked. To unlock it, the player must select the right combination of Things to complete the Phrases. These Things are scattered across the Places, and when the player acquires one, it is added to the inventory.

Watch the video above to clarify what is happening when the player explores the Verse. This is a demo verse, something that you can use as an example to create and share your own, entirely different verses, for others to play; or you can play the verses created by others. Simply put the verse's dir to "verses" dir and choose it from the main menu, there is no need to recompile the engine.

Out

If you are going to make new verses, we strongly recommend to read the Format page that describes the verse structure thoroughly. The «Creation & Sharing» section of the in-game help contains main specificities from there.

It is safer to begin with small changes. For example, edit "verses/demo/places/2/01_fallstreet/portals/street_basket_bridge.json" and replace "Destination" : "bridge" by "Destination" : "moon". Now this portal, when it has been unlocked, leads to the «Full moon in darkness» place instead of «Bridge in evening». As you can see, it is easy. Was the solution of the verse affected? Why? Play it again.

Usage

Go to Download page, get data and binaries for your OS. Put these binaries into data dir. Run cinetraverse-conf to adjust the settings through GUI, or edit "config.json" in any text editor. Then run cinetraverse and play available verses.

To modify the engine and/or configurator, download their sources and follow the build instructions.

No hidden objects

At any place, click and hold MIDDLE BUTTON to reveal all portals (locked or unlocked) and things that are not acquired yet.

In this game, it is something else that is hidden... and not just places.

Permissions & Credits & Licenses

You do not need any permissions from us to use the engine, or to make and share the verses for it.

If you modify the engine, then please change its name before sharing with others. If your modification uses another format of the verses, then please change the "Format" value in "verse.json" from the root of these verses (if such file still exists there).

As for mentioning the original Cinetraverse in your modified versions, it's up to you.

Cinetraverse is under GPLv3. What license your modification is under we do not know ☺ If you are going to make profit with it, be careful with the assets that you use. Also, notice that the licenses for Go, SDL2, Go-SDL2, FFmpeg etc. are different; are they compatible with your license?.. with each other?..

veandco/go-sdl2 and 3d0c/gmf

This engine uses

SDL2 (Simple DirectMedia Layer) binding for Go — go-sdl2 by veandco

FFmpeg binding for Go — gmf by 3d0c

They are included into source ("cinetraverse/externals" dir) and very slightly modified (see "notice.txt"); in particular, the import paths are changed to these local versions rather than the ones at GOPATH/src. If needed, check new versions from time to time and upgrade the local versions.

Interface localisations

Currently (v1.0.2) there are, in alphabetical order, English and Ukrainian. To add your language, see "langs/xyz" dir, where "xyz" is a 3-letter code from ISO 639-2.

When there is no interface localisation for a given language "xyz", — that is, no "langs/xyz" dir, — you can still play verses that support "xyz", but the interface (main menu, help etc.) will be in the default language, which is English.

And if you have made that "langs/xyz", thank you, and please inform us using Contacts so that we will add it to subsequent releases with credits for your work.

Anticipating a critique

[Insert thumb down picture here] «This is hardly a game, but rather a basic videoplayer obscured by some point-and-click elements and the walls of text reflecting the pretentiousness of the levelmakers. Not to say I have already seen something very similar somewhere, some time ago.»

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