Animations and design

Things are updating slowly. I have worked mostly with some game logic, camera following logic and especially animations. 

From the beginning I started out with frame by frame animation because I didn't know any better. I quickly realized that this was very time consuming. If I had actually given this some longer thought it should have been very obvious but to me I didn't realize there were other ways of animating 2D characters. 

Then I saw a animation tutorial by Blackthornprod about skeletal animation and it was kind of revolutionizing to me that of course this is how you should do it. At least if you aren't very graphically gifted like me. 

Skeletal animation still require alot of work and it is not given that you will be able to make it look good but I hope I have reached some kind of OK state now with my main character animation. I have now also changed him into the monocle man with a top hat and a monocle. The monocle man now has a scimitar but I will likely change it to a cane as it makes more sense. 

Alot of effort has been put into makin a level system where you can specify block combinations that can then make up a level. This should be possible to specify in a textual format, right now JSON, but should also be possible to generate procedurally. Right now the proceduralism is not that good and is based on markov chains but I see it as a stepping stone for something better.

I updated the camera following logic a bit as I wanted something that would be stable and not cause nausea but still follow the character in jumps and when blocks ascends. I found some inspiration from another blog talking about how they used panic lines where the camera must follow if the player cross. But as much as possible you want to keep the camera stable in the Y-position until the player touches ground on a block that is on another Y-position as your last stable Y-level.

Oh and since last I have added a jetpack which was quite fun to play around with. This will have a fuel pickup enabling you to use it to crack certain puzzles.

Another point I'm struggling with is how to treat the PI-decimal blocks. I want the PI-decimals to have a reason for being there. They should be important to collect, but still also be associated with dangers, such as explosions or fire. They can also be used to solve puzzles. But if they always cause problems then why would you want to collect them? A route I will likely try is the Sonic route (not the scenic route). In Sonic you collect the gold rings, this is important as it will save you from dying, you cannot die if you have some amount of rings. You will loose rings when you are hurt. In my game I'm thinking of connecting the collection of PI-decimals to positive pickups such as extra lives, health points or jetpack fuel. It might create an inscentive for collecting the decimals at the cost of the associated dangers.

This is the last devlog for this game. I plan to split out the current development into its own game. I guess you could consider it a sequel of sorts but I feel it makes more sense as its own game even though there are alot of similarities.