An actual post!

The new build is up here!

Whoa! I'm actually posting again! Sorry, things have been very, very hectic for me recently, but I got just enough time to start looking at my tutorial (or lack thereof) again. So in this build, there's a super-rudimentary tutorial. It waits a set time before fading in. It waits a set time before fading out. This was extremely annoying to set up for some reason!

I should have had it set up in fifteen minutes, but I actually spend a long, long time fiddling over how I wanted the script to have multiple phrases to display, and how it would fade in and out and wait for so long between phrases. Then I ran into problems, decided it would be better to just make something simple, and cut out a lot of what I wrote. I'm already seeing that the way I'm timing my fades is completely backwards and I can do more if I just go about it in a different manner.

This week I'm going to Seattle, and next week I'm attending a wedding, so I make no promises to update for a while. But at least there's this one, brief moment of productivity in the middle of this very hectic time.

And the charge-up noise is, as always, by Javier Zumer. I use and modify it under this license.

No new builds this week either!

This week is another very busy week for me. I was out and about for over twenty hours yesterday! I don't know when regular updates will resume, but I'm not forgetting about the blog - there are just some other projects, some other events, and some other obligations that are keeping me away.

No new build this week!

Sorry, no new build this week! I was busy, then was at a wedding. For next week, I want to take another crack at tutorializing the start of the game.

Bug Busting

This week's build can be seen here!

This week I tackled doing the highlighted tasks from last week. Nothing special! It does always surprise me how rusty I am on the code I myself created. It's been so long now since I started this project. The upside to taking this long is obviously that you can let decisions sit and see how they feel, but taking your sweet time definitely isn't *all* upside. That's its own lesson, I suppose. I have to start researching how I want to release this, so that I can start researching how I want to pay the people I'd like to get to provide art, sound, and programming support.

Oh, and as soon as I get another playtest in I'm taking out those impassable goals. They're just... annoying. And not that fun.

As always, the charging-up noise is by Javier Zumer. I use and modify it under this license.

Boosting Lines

This week's new build is here!

This week I mostly... well, I was on vacation so I didn't do as much work on my blog as I could have with an entire week off. Still, I made a new level and added some functionality which really should have been there from the start.

The new level isn't anything amazing, but it's a very tidy puzzle that walks you though three chambers slowly and then has you exit those chambers quickly to solve the single goal in the level. It's really easy, but it uses later mechanics like warp blocks, so I'm not sure where I should put it in the progression.

I also made it so that extendable lines (yours and your enemies') now follow boost plates. It only took a little while to do, and most of that was just reminding myself how I had the system working in the first place.

I spent some time trying to create a level involving a puzzle with a lot of steps. I scrapped it, but not before finding out that deactivating warp walls doesn't stop you from going through them, and wrap walls that are adjacent to obstructions still let you pop through them. I might work on fixing these bugs for next week.

Lastly, I still want user feedback on having goals be solid to prevent exploits, but I'm deciding that I don't like them. It's really annoying to me to have them be obstacles, and if it's annoying to me I assume it's double-annoying for players.

As always, the charging-up noise is by Javier Zumer. I use and modify the sound under this license.

Vacation!

I'm taking a week off to visit some family. While I'm there I'll totally have time to work on this blog, but I did kind of take *this* week of blog work off.

Impassable Goals... Yay?

This week's build is up HERE

This week I changed the way goals work... pretty fundamentally. I'm comfortable doing so because the changes are easy to undo, but as of now you can no longer simply move through goals and linked goal nodes. You can only pass through them by charging.

This finally prevents people from doing the types of shenanigans I mentioned earlier. Is it worth it? Well, that's what I intend to find out. On one hand, it feels more restrictive. On the other hand, it could allow for some cooler puzzles. I'll let it sit a few weeks, at least until the next time I can get playtesters on it, then I'll decide whether to keep it or not.

Side note: never forget the supporting details which make a thing feel substantial. I could have just changed the code to make sure you can only pass through goals while charging, but I also added what I needed to create a little effect when you bump into them, and to have them visually react to you beginning to charge so that you know you can charge through them:

And finally, as always, the charging-up noise is by Javier Zumer. I use and modify it under this license.