Ducts? Why Did it Have to be Ducts?

May 5, 2023

So, funny story. I had prepared a blog entry for April and it was all good to go but then I forgot to publish it. So this month, there’s now two blog posts available. Why not check out the April update then come back here? I'll wait.

Welcome back! After missing the April update, I thought I’d make it up by loading up on the screenshots for Sleuthhounds: Cruise this time around. For that, we'll delve into the dark ductwork of the ship itself.

The main overhead view of the ducts was inspired by
similar views in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

During his investigation, Pureluck Homes finds it necessary to search the ducts of the ship. This is something I’ve wanted to do in a game for a while. It’s inspired by a number of classic adventure games from the 1990s. The first is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, a game adaptation of the movie. In it, Indiana Jones visits several locations that are shown top-down with a small Indy on screen and with only areas that are in his line of sight visible. That fit perfectly for how I wanted the main navigation in the ducts to work.

Always be careful around exposed electrical cables.

Moving through the ducts, there are several locations that can be reached and interacted with. For these, the Cruise game switches to a more typical third-person view, albeit with Homes crawling instead of walking. These close-ups were derived from similar rooms featured in Space Quest V: The Next Mutation. In that game, the rooms make up a large, multi-floor maze, with one specific room, with one specific hotspot to interact with, needing to be found. For Sleuthhounds I wanted to be rather nicer to players, so close-up rooms only feature where there’s actually something to do.

Watch out for the spinning fan blade of death. Or air circulation.
Click to view larger.

The close-up rooms presented an interesting challenge. Here Homes needs to be shown crawling north, south, east, and west. This is actually the same as in a normal room where he can walk north, south, east, and west. However, I found that to get the crawl animations to look good, I had to confine Homes to walking exactly and only in those four directions. If he crawled southeast-ish his sprite would flick back and forth between his south and east views, which was more than a little distracting.

The second challenge came with him switching directions. It’s one thing when he’s standing and facing the right side of the screen for him to suddenly start walking towards the left. For some reason, adventure games are able to get away with that, including Sleuthhounds. However, it looks really weird when the sprite is facing the right side of the screen in a crawl position to suddenly flip to face the left side. To handle this, I had to create special animations showing Homes turning from one direction to another.

All told, making these “crawling” rooms was a lot more involved than making the normal walkable-rooms. However, I think it’s worth it for having a section of the game with a different look and feel. After all, I played those classic adventures thirty some years ago and the impression those scenes from those games gave me is still with me today.

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