SEAR DevBlog, week of 2/23/26: Verticality and the Sky Story

Early work on a screen-splitting effect that will be used in the primary phase transition of the new level.

Work continued apace this week, though I don't really have anything groundbreaking to share. More advancement on all the stuff we're working on, basically. I did add a simple camera adjustment option that was a quick fix and a very welcome bit of functionality which will be in the next prototype push.

But a recurring theme this week was how flat the current levels are, which is not a very typical presentation for an antigrav game. With SEAR the situation is a little trickier than usual because the standard antigrav mode of "drive all over everything, 'down' is always relative to the vehicle" does not work well in landscape-based environments where we want to be able to have jumps and dips and boundary walls. Walls don't make good boundaries when you can just drive over them. So the plan is to have essentially two modes, one where the vehicle handles more like a traditional wheeled vehicle with regard to gravity, and one where it behaves more like an F-Zero or Wipeout vehicle (or a Mario Kart that's gone into one of those blue anti-grav zones).

However even in the latter situation, SEAR will probably do less of the crazy anti-grav stuff than most anti-grav games. It will always depend on the level (and thus, the song) but in general, the design of SEAR levels frequently relies on something most racing games don't care about - the view of the sky.

Events happening in the sky that inform the racing experience are what I call the Sky Story. These events don't have to be strictly restricted to the sky, of course, but a lot of the narrative elements that demarcate the song phase transitions tend to want to live in the sky - you can have celestial phenomena there like meteors and flying drones, as well as artistic renditions of sky elements or novelties like computer gridlines and the like, and it's a great place for musical emphasis in general.

Of course lots of racing games do cool things with the sky, though it's all usually strictly background elements. But because of the song-based nature of SEAR and the fact that we never have more than a best guess as to where the player will be physically located when a transition comes, it's more important, if that transition is going to involve any sky elements or there are parts of the sky story that enhance immersion in the music, that the sky be visible most of the time.

This doesn't preclude things like tilting the track or driving straight up or down a wall, but it does mean things like big vertical loops have to be handled with care. If done on a nearly transparent racetrack (like the one we're using right now), it could actually enhance the sky story, but it also momentarily inverts the player's view, removing the view of the sky entirely.

So it's an additional consideration. Our prototype levels to date have been largely flat due in part to this need to feel out how important the sky story is at any given time and nail down design options in that particular space - there is actually a lot we can do to make flat areas feel more interesting given the additional dimension of musical interaction, and it's been good to get a feel for those. I am looking forward to moving to the next step, and seeing how much verticality we can introduce while keeping the SEAR flavor.