Week 12 - Another Level

During week 12, I created another level that introduced a new obstacle: balancing platforms positioned above spikes. While the mechanic is fairly simple, the player can still slip off if they stay too close to the edge of a leaning platform.

After making it past the balancing boards, the player enters a tunnel filled with spikes, requiring careful jumps to avoid both the floor and ceiling hazards. From there, the player jumps onto a moving platform that carries them to a checkpoint. At this stage, I implemented a respawn system so the player no longer has to restart from the beginning of the level after dying. Instead, they respawn from the latest checkpoint reached. Following the checkpoint section, the player must climb upward by jumping across multiple platforms while avoiding even more spikes. While designing this area, I found myself reminiscing about the old Doodle Jump days.

For the checkpoint system, I initially created an empty object with a box collider set as a trigger. This object used two scripts: one to save the checkpoint position and another to display a message when the player entered the trigger. However, having both trigger functions on the same object caused issues with the respawn system, as the player would still restart at the beginning of the level after dying. To resolve this, I separated the functionality into two different empty objects with individual box colliders: one for the checkpoint itself and another for the message trigger.

Regarding the feedback I have:

• Reduced the sound volume as there was written and verbal feedback regarding this.
• I have fixed climbing the walls where you could come out of the game.
• More levels: Slowly creating more levels for the game
• Putting enemies into the game:  I won’t be addressing this as much as I agree and think a bat in the cave to try and avoid would add to the fun and detail to the game, I personally don’t feel that I have enough time. I want to focus on adding more levels. 

On the 20th, I completed the third level and began testing it. During testing, I noticed the player was once again slipping off the moving platforms, despite previously fixing this issue before testing day. I compared the settings and components between my older tested levels and the new level to ensure everything matched, and surprisingly, they did. I then tested the moving platforms in the older completed levels and discovered the slipping issue had returned there as well.

After investigating what may have changed, I realised the player controller script had somehow reverted back to the original downloaded version, removing all of the custom code I had added and modified. I reimplemented the required changes while keeping the code as simple as possible, and the issue was successfully fixed again.

Lastly I added a ending scene simply saying Thank you for playing. Giving the player a better indication the end of the game. 

Reference:

ChatGPT assisted fixing the platform issue: 

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a0d45d6-a580-83ec-b68e-05f68d7b51d

Checkpoint created by AI: https://chatgpt.com/share/6a13ba3c-a4fc-83ec-b3b8-e961c7842fb3