Slowly, The Level Grows

To start with, work continued on level two. Indeed, this week I started using my "palette" window in earnest, and while it's not perfect, I think that it does help.

My approach thus far has been to simply lay out buildings somewhat arbitrarily, then work and rework both the layout and the buildings therein as I figure out a main traversal path. So far I think that it's been working, but it remains to be seen whether this is indeed true, and whether it continues to work.

I'm honestly still not confident of this approach; I feel as though there might be some better way, but I'm not seeing it right now.

Still, I feel that I've made a reasonable amount of progress here.

One thing that I've noted is that alternate routes are already springing up, just by virtue of the traversal mechanics. Some of these I've removed, especially when they would make things too easy. Others I welcome, however, especially when they provide different opportunities for exploration.

I also did some work on the prefabs themselves. One significant part of this was in adding window- and door- frames to the various buildings. And I'm glad that I did: It was tedious enough to add them to what I had (including the small amount of level already in place at the time). How much more it might have been had I waited until the level was complete to add them!

I was quite amazed by the effect of adding these frames: where before the buildings had felt somewhat fake, I think, the simple addition of window- and door- frames left the them feeling much more convincing!

Speaking of traversal, I gave some thought to the ideas of placeable planks and ladders. The former I think that I won't implement, while the latter I may well.

The planks would have been carriable objects that could be set down across gaps, allowing the player to make their own paths to an extent.

In concept, this is fairly simple. With more examination, however, it appears somewhat more complex, as obstacles and corners become involved. In the end, I decided that it was better to leave it: I shouldn't be adding major features at this point, I feel, and this seems as though it would call for a fair bit of development.

The ladders would similarly be carriable objects, and similarly allow the player to place paths of a sort.

However, I think that it might be possible to create a version of these that would be fairly straightforward. Perhaps not perfect as I current envision them, but conversely not too far out of scope. We'll see going forward how this works out...

On the technical side, I decided to make the player-character move a little faster, and produce footstep sounds a little more rapidly.

The latter is, as you might expect, connected the the former. However, I did find that increasing the pace of the footstep sounds resulted in the scene feeling more urgent to me. As a result, I've tried to strike a balance, playing the footstep sounds at a pace that reasonably matched the movement speed, but that didn't sound too urgent--I hope!

As to the movement speed, I found during testing that on the larger, more open spaces of this level the previous movement speed felt a little too slow, a little too "stodgy", perhaps. When I approached a ledge to jump forward, I didn't feel that I was running at it, as I found that I wanted.

On the other hand, I don't want movement to be too quick, as that may interfere with exploration.

I could add a "run" button, but that adds to the already-long list of controls, and may encourage players to speed past opportunities for exploration.

So, as with the footstep sounds, I've attempted to strike a balance--to find a pace that feels fast enough for traversal, but that's slow enough for exploration. So far I'm fairly happy with the new speed that I've set--but I have yet to go back to previous levels to see how it works there.

Finally, I did some work on the ladders in the game.

I fixed a bug in the ladder-generation code. I also experimented with making them "solid", but found that this complicated matters.

Perhaps more interesting, I implemented support for moving the player to the centre of the ladder, and to the correct side of it, when taking hold of one. Previously, the player simply stuck to the ladder in place (aside from moving up and down, of course). This meant that they could climb the edge of a ladder, and so--aside from this feeling odd--could end up colliding with the ceiling or floor, preventing their reaching the end of the ladder.

So, I implemented a means of moving the player to the centre of the ladder. This isn't simply a linear motion, however: when the player takes hold from the side or back, they now swing around the ladder, before transitioning to a more linear motion.

It isn't perfect--the player can sometimes seem to "wobble" a little when gripping from certain positions--but I think that it's much better than the previous state!

I considered having the player's view automatically rotate to face the ladder. However, I realised that this conflicted with the player's ability to freely rotate on ladders, which I feel is useful in traversing from them. So, while it might be odd to approach a ladder from behind, swing onto it, and find oneself facing away from the ladder, I feel that it's better than the alternative.

That's all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^