Summary:
In which level-polishing continues; a different aesthetic task usurps said polishing; healing is separated from utilities; the tutorial is then revised; and level-polishing resumes.
Greetings and salutations!
This week's screenshot shows the "Hall of Flow" in the Vertical Slice Moon, now with a bit more "depth" to its walls!
The week just past was... for a change,
not primarily a level-polish week. There was some of that, and other things besides, but one particular task arose to call me away:
To start with, I did as I recall begin the week with the polishing of the levels in the demo, in particular the "Bone Galleries" level of the Ossuary Moon.
However, for some time I had been dissatisfied with the look of the walls used for various "cave" regions of the demo--places like the (above-pictured) "Hall of Flow", or part of the "Hall of Lost Things", or even the recently-shown "Halls of the Ancients".
Don't mistake me: I did like the effect that I was using. But it had been developed, I think, before I started to add more "depth" to my depiction of walls, more sense of three-dimensionality, and so had become out-of-keeping with the rest of the game.
And a thought occurred to me, building on older ideas, that might improve things.
So I set about making changes--a process that in the end would take up much of the week!
But at last something was achieved, as shown above. Am I happy with it? Not entirely. But I am
more happy with it than I was with the previous look, and that at least is improvement I feel.
Another matter about which I had been concerned from time to time was that of healing.
In short, having it as a "utility"--as, essentially, a "metroidvania ability"--meant that it stood in the way of using other abilities, and that those abilities stood likewise in the way of healing.
But conversely, separating it out from them would mean further complicating the UI and control-scheme.
As I recall, I considered this matter further in the week just past--and eventually decided to indeed separate healing out.
And so healing now is separate from the "metroidvania abilities", with its own little UI space (as should be visible in the screenshots in this post, save the first), and a dedicated button!
And indeed, I think that this approach to healing plays better. ^_^
This did also incur some changes to the tutorial level--but overall, I think that I actually prefer the now-revised version thereof, too.
And at last, I returned to the polishing of the levels of the "Bone Galleries". No major artworks this time, but simply some minor decoration of a few of the floors and walls.
And as per usual, there were changes, fixes, and tweaks enacted in the week just past that don't seem worth detailing here!
That, then, is all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^
