We now have an hour of gameplay ready

 

Lots of small changes this week. I have the next 6 levels drawn, I just need to get them in-game. We have 34 well tested levels thus far, adding up to about an hour of gameplay.

 

Changes

The level one instruction are now trigger based, and to correctly differentiate between jumps and wall jumps.

Added text describing how to complete the level in level one.

Increased the camera initial look time.

The menu music volume is now always quieter than the game music.

Edited several levels.

Added 3 levels.

Darkened the brightest platform colors.

Fixed secrets being incorrectly saved as collected.

Text in the menu screen is now highlighted when you select the option to the right of the text.

Organized Testing and Refinement

This week I've been organizing friends to playtest the first 32 levels of the game.  It's about an hour of gameplay so far. To smooth out the learning curve I've ended up adding a lot more levels before the arrow platform is introduced than I expected. So it looks like each new platform type will be used for 20 levels. Either way, the results have been good. :)

The first video above shows level 39 and all it's glory. There is a lot you can do with some simple force physics, and it's an interesting twist to what people expect of moving platforms.

The second video reveals where the secret platform is in level 2. Each level has an invisible red box that is revealed when something comes close. When you activate a secret box and finish the levels, that level shows up as red in the level select menu.

 

Changes

Added 7 levels and edited several levels.

Changed the order of levels 1-20.

Added a few level to the demo, and removed a few (due to the ordering of the levels). These are the first 10 levels of the game.

Fixed keyboard wall jump button position in level 1.

Darkened some of the brighter colors.

Wall jumps are now angled further from the wall.

Improved player rotation caused by wall jumping.

Improved jump recognition.

Test everything

It's been an extremely productive week. I've been testing the game a lot and taking notes. One thing I took note of was that I should smooth out the learning curve more. So a few more early levels have been added for the purpose of teaching the player. The other levels are for teaching mechanics that are important to the old level 11-20. So far 25 levels are done.

 

Changes

Added 5 levels.

Slight edits to most levels.

Changed the ordering of certain levels (due to the demo including the first 9 levels of the game, you may notice that a few of the first 9 levels are different).

Added wall jump to the shown level one buttons.

Increased initial level pause time.

Player respawn is now instant, ignoring the initial level pause time.

Slightly altered the initial camera zoom in speed.

Fixed menu camera zoom out when there is only one platform left.

Darkened the blue background.

Increased how long particles are visisble before fading out.

Reduced number of particles slightly.

Optimized shaders.

The player can no longer wall run directly up more than gravity would bring the player down.

Jumping while standing is now angled upwards more.

Increased ground rotate speed slightly.

Increased the reveal area of secrets.

Added a glow to secrets.

Added more error checking for saving/loading. If you experience problems saving/loading check to make sure that your virus scan has not stopped the game from creating a save file. 

20 levels done so far!

20 levels are done thus far, and I'm extremely happy with them all. I've already started drawing levels 21-30!

 

Changelog

20 levels done.

Edited the main menu for clarity.

The menu is no longer slightly transparent.

The glow size of platforms is now more average between platforms.

The blending of platform glow is now additive.

The focus of the player (for the camera) can now go through moving surfaces.

Added pause instruction to level 1.

Doubled the outline width of all platforms.

I heard you wanted bigger levels

 

Behold the behemoth that is level 10. Every 10 levels you will find a level much larger than the levels prior. Many more levels were completed this week, as well as some improvements to the camera shake.

 

Changelog

Edited levels 3, 4, and 6 to make their gameplay smoother.

There is now a maximum amount of shake that can happen to the camera.

Levels 1-10 now all use the first music track. Levels 11-20 use the second track, and so on.

19 levels done so far!