Day 11 Progress
Today was all about adding the new mechanic, so lets talk about that. Remember earlier when I said there should be a better reason for the player to turn off their flashlight in a horror game? Well in Project Nightlight, turning off the flashlight in specified zones (phase zones) allows the character to 'phase' through some object as if he were ethereal himself! In this first dungeon area, the player phases through the chain flooring and is able to get past broken pathways by phasing into rooms below and continuing forward. Here's a screenshot of the phase zone:
And when the player turns off the flashlight on the zone they phase 'under' the grates, shown in the next sample:
In total there are quite a few zones in the first Otherworld section. It's kind of a mix of a puzzle and just a tutorial because there isn't anything to 'figure out' except the basic use of the mechanic. Though I could definitely see this being used in some interesting spots going forward where the player could phase through other objects instead of just this fence (this whole area could be expanded on to make a truly interesting puzzle):
And finally, one other thing I used that was new to my development were polygonal 2D colliders for walls. There may be a better, more efficient way of doing walls like these but I saw someone use this in a recent video and wanted to try it (side note, it crashed Unity the first time I added the component!):
So there is one more 'mechanic' I'd like to add to this area as well as adjust the lighting because it's obviously quite dark in general and while I like darkness in horror games I don't like complete pitch black (it's fine for me as I play it but I bet it would be too dark for even most horror players). Additionally the rooms don't have wall colliders yet so I'll need to take some time and do those. Onward!