Posted September 09, 2019 by EgeCark
#devlog #newtonian horror #newtonian #horror #update #major #major update
Hello all,
I felt that it was finally time to start keeping a devlog. A lot has changed with Newtonian Horror since we first submitted it to GMTK Game Jam 2018. The first and most important change that I made was to add a grid system for level generation. For you see, we... didn't know that you could do that in Unity. Well, better late than never. This change meant the complete upheaval of our grid sprites and using a standardized 100x100 pixel template in order to archieve maximum details in sprites without tiring the player's eye. After creating the new grid sprites, our entire levels were redone from scratch.
It has come to my attention that this game does not work well with large open spaces, since the player tends to just float aimlessly, hoping to grasp at something. That is why, when recreating the levels, I wanted to design tight corridors and more cramped spaces where the player bumps at everything, constanly shooting gravity and anti-gravity wells to keep itself stablized.
We also decided that the camera was too close to Newton himself so I pulled it back. Now it's 55% farther away. (numbers, yay!)
The other super-duper important thing we added was a tutorial. A series of tutorial levels to put it more precisely. I mean Toprak and I could control Newton pretty well. But it was a whole other thing to explain how the game works to other players. I personally didn't want to use texts explaining everything because it seems like just the cheapest way to teach a player about a game. I would prefer if the player was engaged in the game whilst learning. So with a lot (A. LOT.) of play-testing and trial-and-error and some awesome feedback from the kind strangers at Reddit (seriously; thanks to all the people who played our game at the r/gamedev subreddit!) we finally finished our 7 tutorial levels. It starts off easy but gets progressively harder. I hope it would be enough to teach you guys how to play and develop your own tactics for combat and movement. But I always welcome criticism!
Lastly, another major change that we did, was to have the players adjust the intensity of the wells they're about to shoot by holding the corresponding mouse button. The more you hold, more strong and larger your gravity or anti-gravity well is going to be. This way you will get to travel across the levels the way you're most comfortable with.
That is it for the changes we made in the last year. Now, for the upcoming changes I was thinking: