Suzy Cube Update: Friday September 16, 2016

#suzycube #indiedev #gamedev #madewithunity 

A bit of a weird update for all of you this week. I've recently returned from a month long vacation to Canada and have since been hit by a slew of distractions. I have still managed to make a bit of progress on Suzy Cube but not as much as I would have hoped.

A Trip to the Familiar

First of all, let's talk about my trip to Canada. It was great to return to the place I've called home for the vast majority of my life. My wife and I visited some of the western provinces for the first time and were not disappointed! The rockies truly are majestic, and the Alberta badlands offered unique and gorgeous views. By the way, the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumhellar, Alberta offered up the most impressive collection of dinosaur fossils I've ever seen! Definitely worth the stop if you're ever in that neck of the woods.

After some proper vacationing, we hopped on a plane to our old stomping grounds in the east. While in Ottawa (here comes the Suzy link!), I spent a day hanging out with my pals from Breakfall to "work" on my game while they worked (for real) on their upcoming project. Mainly, we just swapped Unity tips and discussed games and game design. It's what I miss most while working alone, that ability to feed off the enthusiasm of coworkers in order to recharge and get inspired. I got all of them to play some Suzy Cube of course, leading to some great feedback and a few surprising bug discoveries! More fodder for the to-do list, I suppose. All in the name of improving the game!

What can be Salvaged

I wrote a Lessons from Suzy Cube post recently in which I mentioned the rework I need to perform on Level 2-B. Well, combining the bit of work I got done while in Ottawa and the time spent on it this week, I'm now much happier with the state of the level.

Look up, waaay up!

I was able to salvage most of the level by simply making the tower much taller and spacing out the platforms to make them friendly to double jumping. The problem with the level's old layout was that it wasn't conducive to the use of the Double Jump power-up even though it was required to defeat the boss at the top of the tower.

Come at me, bro!

I'm having a bit more trouble with the boss fight itself, mainly due to the fact that Suzy's double jump ability isn't very extreme, so it's hard to lower the boss' head to a height that makes it obvious Suzy can bop it with a double jump without lowering it so much that it can be bopped using a regular jump. In any case, I've decided to give the boss fight a bit more thought before returning to it.

Going for a Scroll Stroll

In the meantime, I've made good progress on Level 3-1, my first auto-scroll level. Ya, ya, get it all out now. I don't care what you all think of auto-scrolling levels. I don't personally believe they are bad, by default. In fact, I find well designed auto-scrolling levels to be quite exciting!

A long way to go...

I've had to play with the spacing and scale of elements quite a bit as I try to balance the speed of scrolling and the difficulty. It's tough! Too slow a scrolling speed or too sparse a level and things feel boring. Too fast or too hectic and things quickly get overwhelming. I'm finding it's a delicate balancing act. I'm going to need to put in a fair bit more work into this one to get it just right.

We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties

I was pretty sure I wouldn't even get this update out as I spent the whole day without internet access yesterday. This morning I decided to try troubleshooting the problem a little more beyond just turning everything on and off. Finally, I discovered that my router and modem, which had been happily working together for over half a year have, apparently, had a lover's quarrel and are no longer speaking to each other. I've resorted to using an old router for the moment. Unfortunately, it isn't as reliable and doesn't have the range of my newer router so I doubt I'll be sticking with it as a permanent solution. That being said, I'm at least online for the moment and can regale all of you with my prose...

And Another Thing

Oh, ya... I also spent like, a day and a bit recording and re-recording lines for Bioware's "Explorers Wanted" contest.

If you've ever dreamed of voicing a character in one of the best sci-fi RPG series around, you should give the contest page a look!

Well, there you have it. After weeks without an update, that's all I give you, a paltry smattering of info with plenty of excuses. If I want next week's update to be more respectable, I should probably get back to work! See you all next week!