Going back to making a platformer for this one. (These are usually less intense for me, let's see if that's still true.)

(Quick) Game Design Document for the August 10th game

High Level:

Sandbox platformer where the player is encouraged to simply explore

(some) Details

Player navigates with arrow keys

Player can explore the world using any of the tools available

Game should provide novel, interesting navigation mechanics

Nice-to-have features (in order of priority)

To keep the scope small, these are features that, while nice to have, can be left out if necessary:

• Procedurally generated world
  • When exploration is key, it is important to have a large world. Procedural generation is one (very useful) tool to accomplish that
• Swappable Powerups
  • There should be powerups that allow the player to navigate in whole new ways
  • Player should only be able to use a certain number of the power ups at one time (each one corresponding to a particular slot, and only equip 1 per slot maybe?)
  • Player should be able to change powerups "freely" (maybe in only a special location)

Reflections

The dynamic of collaborating is very different from working on a project alone. From the beginning, I pitched the game to Kimberly and Jet as a game about swapping parts to find the best toolset to solve the problems. Unfortunately, doing so intensified my sense of failure when, after struggling to pull it together, it became apparent that the swap mechanic was too complicated to complete in the timeframe. Fortunately, they were very understanding, and, once my efforts were redirected to something I could deliver, we ended up with a solid game in the end.

One detail that I found very interesting to implement was the camera motion. I'd been kicking around the idea of spending more time on the platformer camera, ever since a tutorial I watched mentioned how important the camera's motion is. Once it became apparent that high-speed motion was a key part of the game's core engagement, I decided that I had to figure out how to get a camera to support that behavior. After playing around with the camera I had at the time, I realized that centering the camera did not provide adequate response time for the player. I decided to try to mimic a "look ahead" behavior that would kick in once the player started moving fast enough, and would move the character off-center, in order to give the player a more optimal view. Ultimately, this was accomplished by creating an invisible object attached to the character, and following that object instead. I used what I had learned from my failure working on the swappable character parts to make this object's movements match the character's, but have it also move around based on the character's current velocity. After a little fiddling with the details, it came together to be a pretty great improvement over the old camera. (Vertical camera motion wasn't quite as smooth, though, since I had to work around a deadzone that kept the camera from moving disorientlingly when jumping. I ended up just mashing the "look ahead" behavior together with the smallest comfortable deadzone, and calling it good enough.)