At the beginning of the week (Monday/Tuesday) I went back and corrected some issues with the first level - namely, the pipe puzzle that I had created initially was not entertaining at all, so I removed it and replaced it with a smaller, concise platforming puzzle. I also adjusted timing values and platform placement to fix one of the puzzles in the later area, which was far too time consuming for the reward that the player received at the end. I’m generally happy with the result of this level, but I will probably revisit it in the third week and correct some issues that It has regarding how mediocre it feels currently.
Part of the issue that I have developing levels currently is the grappling hook. While the hook is fun to use and traverse the environment with, it limits level design somewhat in terms of how the environments have to be created. If the grappling points are present in the level, they generally change how the level is set out. Because the points allow players to traverse distances quickly, the distances are usually quite large. This means that larger levels have to be created, which leads to larger, emptier areas that are devoid of content ( somewhat more than I would like, in a lot of cases). In some levels, the grappling points are used quite well (such as the descent in level 3) but on the whole those areas should be rare, and make the player feel like they are set pieces to be enjoyed at particular stages. It is worth remembering that while it is our core mechanic, it should not be overused (for fear of all levels feeling the same) and instead should be used sparingly (such as the first part in the current level that I am building) to allow the player to traverse gaps or move around before going back to platforming. After that, the rest of the week was more about developing my level design skills than anything else. After the first week’s level, I was ready to improve the techniques that I was using to make sure the level did not feel similar to many of the Wild West ones. The result by Friday was something that I was very happy with - a revolving platform centre that leads the player further and further up the tower, requiring them to repeatedly walk across the centre section. This section took a while to get right, and I tried multiple different combinations - a multiple stage climbing structure that required the player to rotate it was not only too complex but also felt very samey, with the player looking at floor tiles for the majority of the time as they climbed up. I have plans for the rest of the level, which will include more creative and interesting platform applications, and a bit less of the grappling hook mechanics. In addition to this, I also fixed the Application.quit() bug that we have had for a long time, which prevented us from closing the application properly. The fix involved contact with the developers of obirope, who provided us with a patched version of their dll files that fixed the bug.
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