DAY 67
Eyo, guys and gals. Hope you've having a great day. So, work continued yet again on the tree level. And I've gotta be honest, I had no idea where to go with the level when I started today. Tried some things that didn't work out and was slightly puzzled. But then, out of nowhere, a thought came to me. How about letting the player go outside for a bit? And I did just that. Take a look:
I'm starting to feel particularly good about this level in particular. When working on it, it's like the brain is on the lookout for ideas and then grabs one in mid air, just like a frog catches a fly. Good stuff.
BUT...there is a big "but" (noice)
I tried the wall run mechanic on the exterior of the tree trunk. And I've gotta say it bumps up the difficulty by a lot. Doing a wall run on a curbed is a challenge on the inside of the trunk. On the outside....hooo BOY what a nightmare. This one dangerously borders on the bad kind of frustrating. And I'm seriously thinking of removing it. But after I playtest it with other people. It definitely is something to master (I needed about 3-4 tries to get one run right) but I think it's too much. It really spikes the difficulty quite a bit.
What I also tried is a NEW mechanic, the crusher. Right now it's garbage, but it has a lot of potential. Some adjustments are needed: the crusher doesn't detect the player all the time, therefore it passes through him/her instead of pushing the player over. Should be an easy fix, the crusher moves too fast for it's collision to detect the player capsule (I've seen this before, it really is a quick and easy fix). While I'm at it, I should work on the crusher's timeline curve for it's movement.
This area is pretty consistent, feel wise. It's 80% a walk in the park and 20% a complete nightmare (because of the wall run).
Other than that, I have nothing to add. So that's it for today, guys and gals. See ya in the next post. Bye!