Devlog #3: Interactions, Puzzles & Gimmicks

level design sure is nice, but plain old level geometry will only get you so far, almost all levels need some objects to keep the level interesting to the player

Revisting stage 2 from the last devlog to show how I've spiced it up: I've added "Gravity Blocks" which only become permeable if the direction of the gravity matches the checked direction of the blocks. Now in-editor these blocks may look very simple as they're all facing the same way but in-game their functionality shines through! take a look:

Originally the blocks didn't have the transparency to show that they're permeable but playtesting revealed that made it very difficult for players to easily understand how they're supposed to work, so the transparency was added as a "cue" of sorts to show that the blocks can be passed through and won't stop them.

As you can see, the simple addition of a few gravity blocks can alter the way the level is thought about entirely, now it becomes not just a simple flip to the end, but more about "which direction do I need to fall to pass these blocks?"

And hey, what's a platformer without platform objects? probably just an er. Platforms were very fun to impliment, using a sine wave with time.deltatime, and an amplitude value controlling the movement limits made for an easy, flexible & frame-independent platform object, plus its just really fun to mess with different values, but don't just take my word for it, take a look:

The final object I've added (so far) is the gravity inverter object, which will invert the gravity direction of the player on contact

its functionally complete, though playtesting reveals that its not very obvious what it does at the moment (which I agree with) so I'll need to assign it some sprites to make its functionality much clearer

See you in the next devlog!