Hey folks, hope the spring is treating you well. I got new sunglasses this month and i am SUDDENLY feeling a lot better in general. Weird 🤔🌞
Production is making good progress, I'm now at 18 of the 27 levels done, and getting into the testtweaktesttweaktesttweakte- repetition of ironing them out.
One really fun part that's brought me smiles is coming to these levels without the worry of difficulty or teaching. Assuming the player is competent enough to get here is giving me room to ~get weird with it~, doing node combos like a chain of spinners. Adding time nodes as optional routes for more time rather than as necessary checkpoints. Throwing switches at really inconvenient areas. Making the time window a lot tighter so it's reachable *just* in time.
The end result is some real fun challenging levels:
This one in particular when I playtested was a proper focused scramble to get to the end. Can't wait to hear how people find them!
I have culled a level at this point, definitely feeling the 'development blues' atm, so perhaps another will go.
The new nodes
But what are these new nodes?
Shard
When i was starting on the update. At first it was just the rebinding & portraits features. But then i got a thought of a new node:
What about a node that changes position each loop? Like a gate but it changes which path of the level you have access to.
A loop of a level, where the next loop after:
The first shard (fixed on it's loop) is 'lagging' it's fixed state, and now the 2nd shard is able to be fixed.
And it's been neat to design with this in mind: that now, based on the loop number, you need to remember what part of the level you can work with, and think ahead for the incoming one. Like looking at the landscape of it in a new way. Coding them in was straightforward, and their effect when broken has been a lovely shader wake-me-up to practice something new with.
As of now they have this mechanic where they 'lag' a fixed state for one extra loop. Maybe in the future they can get a bonus mechanic of lagging extra loops based on another node? or as time nodes are fixed? But for now I kept them simple with just 1 lagged loop.
Router
With one new node came the idea for another: what about a node that restricts access to other nodes based on the requirement slot? Like a toggle-group UI box
- As an idea? neat.
- As a feature? technical as heck.
- As a game mechanic? very tricky to work with (in a good way).
From drawing the idea, this node looks straightforward, right? any nodes connected to the router get controlled by it based on the requirement state.
But: how do we _order_ those linked nodes to match the right requirement? as the level design is not ordered the same way as they are visually.
Cue: a lot of math, trigonometry, getting really frustrated, a therapeutic realisation of long-held stress/fear with maths, then googling for 'how to get a point on a line', and we end up with this:
Based on the position of the router, get a point on a circle >> Then draw out the tangent lines from that point >> Then, for each linked node, get their position >> With the router's normal towards the centre of the game board, use that as a crossing line to figure out where each linked node crosses the tangent lines >> hey! we got a way of ordering them! by using this cross as a 'time' value on the tangent line.
(This took a week or two of thinking; drawing; by coincidence working through an ebook which taught the exact circle theory I needed with the tangent line; and a lot of deep frustration/crying as a dyscalculic person)
Other ideas
For this update, 2 new nodes and packs of levels has been way more than enough. A joy of game design is having more ideas! So i already have one for a future update if I return again in the future.
A node that shuffles it's requirement every loop/20 seconds? Like a briefcase but more erratic?
Including some smudging to blur out secrets for another game idea 👀
General Changes
It's been rewarding to come back to this project. And seeing the changes after the ui work I've been doing is it's own joy on top of the rest.
Level screen before changes
annnnd same screen with a couple new shaders in it.
Alongside this I'm exploring a new clock design, incorporating a shader to add some wobble/depth
All these spaces of jank or good-enough being replaced by Actually Good art is one of those things haven't had the pleasure of doing up to now. I treated my games as "release fix and done". Which has served me well to learn and practice. Now comes this sense of giving back.
There are still plenty bits of jank left and that's totally fine. But the main visuals, that's been really neat to redo.
See y'all later! 👋 (just made it with this post!)