# Primer: Time Is the Enemy > [!Info] VFX Design Doc > **Student**: Nikita Stulikov > **Instructor**: Leon Johnson > **Task**: Translate the movie's visual effects to the language of interactive media, create 2 VFXs for a game adaptation. > **Movie**: [Primer](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiguqi3w_CSAxXDlIkEHUvYBbgQFnoECEAQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0390384%2F&usg=AOvVaw0jxZe2uZqzxhO9NM7hRqDr&opi=89978449) (2004) > **Endurantist toys**: [[IntentionallyBlank/GAME DESIGN/Nancy Drew -- Dread of Time|Nancy Drew -- Dread of Time]] || [[DESIGNS/ToyWorldsAtlas/D-Atlas_Doc|Toy Worlds Atlas: Plankton]] > **Perdurantist toys**: [[IntentionallyBlank/GAME DESIGN/Hypercamouflage Submarine on a Toxic Tropical Vacation at Fortunate Isles|Hypercamouflage Submarine at Fortunate Isles]] || [[IntentionallyBlank/GAME DESIGN/Quantum Immortality|Quantum Immortality]] ## A topic that's older than old Time is a topic that never stops being relevant. The following documents explains design decisions for two VFXs created in a fictional game adaptation for the movie "Primer". To create an accurate representation for time-travelling features, anglophonic ("analytic") metaphysic of time was blended with German existentialist tradition. *** ## Movie "Primer" The movie is a riddle about time-travelling that is for the viewer to solve. Jigsaw puzzle is the form of its story. Created by Shane Carruth as a pet project, it barely had any budget but due to its smart time-travelling story, it gained a cult status. Let's scrutinize the concept of time that the Carruth assumes. In debates on the **metaphysics of time**, there're two main positions: perdurantism and endurantism. The former states that the time consists of temporal parts. The latter sees time as a holistic entity: > "How do things survive change across time? At later times, an object is, however slightly, different from what it used to be at an earlier time. Yet that object is the same object. How is this possible? There are two major views about persistence: endurantism and perdurantism <...>. The former maintains that objects are wholly present at each time of their existence. The objects have spatial parts, but they are not divisible temporally. <...> Perdurantism is the view that objects are made of spatial and temporal parts, or more specifically, spatiotemporal parts. Most humans are composed of legs, belly, and head in the same way as most humans are composed of childhood, middle-age, and eld. Ordinary objects are so-called spacetime worms; they stretch out through time like earthworms stretch out through space." - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, [Eternalism](https://iep.utm.edu/eternalism/#:~:text=Eternalism%20is%20a%20metaphysical%20view,and%20deaths%2C%20is%20equally%20real.) The "Primer" utilizes an endurantist model to speculate about time-travel. Below is a redrawn scheme briefly shown at the beginning of the film. It aims to explain the nature of travelling in the past. Essentially, an object set in specific controlled conditions, travels back in time instead of going forward. ![[DESIGNS/Primer_TimeEnemy/Primer_TimePrinciple.jpg]] *Time travelling principle in the movie* From [Primer Movie Explained (YouTube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYHOfVJEJhw) As shown in David Lewis's "Time and Necessity", a perdurantist model tends to assume the logic of multiple possible worlds. However protagonists in the "Primer" do not end up in other worlds because they can meet their own doubles. Thereby they still remain in the same world but knock its time our of joint. ![[DESIGNS/Primer_TimeEnemy/Primer_TimeTravelHistory.jpg]] *The history of protagonists' time travelling* From [Primer Movie Explained (YouTube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYHOfVJEJhw) If "Primer" utilized a perdurantist model, time travel would perhaps turn into possible worlds-travel instead. Each time the protagonists entered the time travelling machine, they would end up in a new perfectly enclosed world. > "An observer at the origin of their path in O may only influence events that will be in the multiplicity of the future light cones, along the line towards event E, as they are timelike separated from them. There is no way to affect anything toward the spatially separated event F. Only future timelike or lightlike separated events can be affected, as in that case the affection stays within the cosmic speed limit, the speed of the electromagnetic spectrum frequency. Action from O to S would require the observer to surpass the maximum speed limit." - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, [Eternalism](https://iep.utm.edu/eternalism/#:~:text=Eternalism%20is%20a%20metaphysical%20view,and%20deaths%2C%20is%20equally%20real.)  *Causal connectibility. Drawing based on Norton (2015, 211)* From [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://iep.utm.edu/eternalism/#:~:text=Eternalism%20is%20a%20metaphysical%20view,and%20deaths%2C%20is%20equally%20real.), Eternalism *** ## Game "Primer: Time Is the Enemy" The game's story happens after the movie's events. The movie hints towards a sequel but a budget was never secured. Only now the movie gets a refresher in ludic form of a game. The movie didn't fully resolve the riddle of time-travel. Protagonists leave the time out of joint: there are doppelangers and other time paradoxes in the world. Or world*s*, after all? This question is for players to figure. **Genre**: Mission-based puzzle adventure **Optional co-op**: Play solo or with a friend **Story**: Fixing time-travelling paradoxes through time-travelling. **Goal**: Ensure a state of the world that would allow to solve a time paradox. **Core gameplay**: At the start of each mission players receive an objective they need to solve through time-travelling. Each mission is a puzzle box that has several solutions that affect further missions. Sometimes players must replay previous missions to allow a solution in the next missions. Time travelling is represented with the [[IntentionallyBlank/GAME DESIGN/Primer -- Time Is the Enemy#VFX Erschlossenheit (Disclosedness) Life Flashing Before Eyes|Erschlossenheit VFX]] **Challenge**: If there's a time paradox ahead of the current temporal state of the player, time decelerates and stops completely when reaches the time paradox (game over). This feature is represented with the [[IntentionallyBlank/GAME DESIGN/Primer -- Time Is the Enemy#VFX Langeweile (Boredom) the Decelerating Time|Langeweile VFX]] **Style**: Low-poly shaded stylization with multi-media integrations. The base-style is similar to Inside and Disco Elysium. Multi-media integrations draw connections to the movie and amplify the theme of time out of joint. <iframe data-testid="embed-iframe" style="border-radius:12px" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/313hbrNYpT36VHc8vPBueb?utm_source=generator" width="100%" height="152" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy"></iframe> *** ## VFX Erschlossenheit (Disclosedness): Life Flashing Before Eyes **Concept**: There are moments when a person feels that everything wasn't for nothing. In German existentialist tradition such moments are sometimes referred to as the [world's disclosure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_disclosure) -- *Erschlossenheit* (e.g., see Martin Heidegger). Unlike in everydayness, a disclosed existence reflects on its own being. An awareness of one's existence illuminates life events in a holistic and thereby meaningful way. Life flashes before one's eyes. ![[DESIGNS/Primer_TimeEnemy/Dasein_GIF.gif]] **Design**: Time travelling kicks time and lifetime out of joint. I assume that it puts a time traveller in a *disclosed* state where their lifetime presents to them holistically. The **VFX** shows some opening (the disclosedness). Inside this opening, life events flash into one another. **Place in the game**: Appears in the loading screen during time-travelling transitions **Technology**: Unity VFX Graph, Flipbook, Coroutine for an Array of VFXs *** ## VFX Langeweile (Boredom): the Decelerating Time **Concept**: Disclosedness is not the only fundamental modus of being that presents being holistically. In "The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics" Heidegger argues that boredom (*Langeweile*) has a similar effect for on subject. However if in Erschlossenheit life feels fully meaningful, in boredom the whole world seems to contain no meaning at all: > "*Time pushes down on us, applying more and more pressure. We are uncomfortable with this as most of us are not capable of dealing with raw time. We suddenly become aware of many things, and most frighteningly of all, we become aware of ourselves. With nothing to distract us from time we see our own existence stretched out before us. Suddenly we begin to feel very insignificant. We feel ignored by the world as it passes us by, seemingly uninterested in providing us with any meaning.*" - Horan Cathal, 2008. ["Bored With Time?"](https://philosophynow.org/issues/65/Bored_With_Time) -- Philosophy Now, Issue 65) ![[DESIGNS/Primer_TimeEnemy/Langeweile_Gif.gif]] **Design**: It is commonly known that time feels slower in boredom. German language even captures that phenomenon in "Langeweile" -- "long while". The VFX represents this stretch of time. In the game Langeweile VFX indicates a Game Over state -- when time stops completely. **Place in the game**: The VFX appears when the player's attempts to solve a time-travelling riddle result in a time paradox. As the player's character temporally approaches the point of time where the paradox has yet to happen, the flow time slows down. Both game world and avatars decelerate. Time stops completely at the point where a paradox has to happen. At this moment the Langeweile VFX starts, and then the Game Over screen appears. **Technology**: Uses a PC URP Renderer with a Full Screen Pass Renderer Feature that has a material created with a shader **Note**: The spheric face demonstrates the effect's impact on 3D objects. Doesn't have any gameplay purpose *** ## Idea Backlog - Doubling objects - About a correlation between thoughts and time - A bleeding ear - The entanglement of time ([[IntentionallyBlank/NARRATIVE/Characters/Knights of Sunny Smiles|spatio-temporal worms]]) - The trace of time - Time out of joint - Puzzle box / jigsaw / puzzle of the time's or the world's pieces - "Breaking the symmetry" (as in the telephone scene) *** ## Reference **Filmography** - [Primer Movie Explained (YouTube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYHOfVJEJhw) - [Primer](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiguqi3w_CSAxXDlIkEHUvYBbgQFnoECEAQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0390384%2F&usg=AOvVaw0jxZe2uZqzxhO9NM7hRqDr&opi=89978449) (2004) **Literary** - Heidegger M. (1927) "Being and Time", - Heidegger M. (1930 (1985)) "The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude", - Horan C., (2008) ["Bored With Time?"](https://philosophynow.org/issues/65/Bored_With_Time) -- Philosophy Now, Issue 65 - Lewis D.'s "Time and Necessity", **Tutorial** - [Tech Hamlin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd0k6KdLIi8) -- Whirl camera shader for Langeweile VFX **Other** - For the definition of Recursion, see [[IntentionallyBlank/GAME DESIGN/Primer -- Time Is the Enemy#^2ae4cd|Recursion]]