Alpha phase of Klepto’s development has commenced! Our primary goals for this phase were only discovered after hours of discussion which seemed to be going in circles for some time – but we finally produced a clear production roadmap and hashed out a pipeline which would be more efficient than the pipeline we followed during vertical slice. We will be focusing our efforts during this phase on building a Level Design Toolkit. This will allow us to use the same assets and game mechanics to quickly build and iterate levels – increasing the amount of game content and improving the end value of the game. The premise of the game has shifted to reflect this; Klepto now spends the game training in computer simulations so that one day he might actually be a thief for real. Setting the game inside a simulation allows us to reuse assets without having to spend time making each level look like a believable place. It’s also an opportunity to inject significantly more humour into the game because each level is a reflection of the main character who has created this simulation in the game. Klepto’s arm has been given new life with a rope physics plugin. Juane got this new arm working with the character model and I integrated it with our existing grappling system. The arm now behaves much more believably and realistically becomes taught when the grapple swing commences. New to Klepto’s array of abilities is a magnetic hand which allows him to hold onto metallic, moving surfaces such as wind turbines. This opens up many platforming possibilities. I have implemented the core logic of identifying and being pulled to magnetic surfaces. The next step is to integrate this with Juane’s magnetic-chain arm which uses the same rope physics plugin.
Zac and I also spent time refining the basic player movement mechanics – arguably the most important aspect of the game. We decided on definitions for how high and far the player should be able to jump for single and double jumps and arranged a course of boxes which required a player to perform a series of single jumps and then a series of double jumps. These 1x1 blocks were smaller than any platform we would have in the game but we thought that if the player felt they were in control and the movement was precise for these jumps then the rest of the levels would be fine. Spending time defining distances for single and double jumps is another technique which will allow us to produce levels faster as we can be confident in what the player will be able to do. We had one person playtest this setup. The feedback demonstrated that the movement was an improvement from the vertical slice but still needed tweaking to improve precision. The playtester also pointed out that there needed to be more friction on the platforms as it was too easy to slide off.
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September 2017
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