Suzy Cube Update: Friday September 30, 2016

#suzycube #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity 

A new enemy type and lots of work on Level 2-1 have made for a nice week's worth of work.

Hot Stuff

I needed a really basic hazard to dog players into staying on the move. Something that wasn't tied to the ground, and with a simpler behaviour that the Bees. So I came up with this hot little number...

Aah! Begone!

As you can see, it looks a lot like a regular fireball but, you know, with eyes! It's behaviour is simple, as long as Suzy is within its activation zone, it will chase her slowly but relentlessly. It can't be bopped or killed by any means except the invincibility power-up and can even be lured into lighting torches and killing other enemies!

Oh, and it also passes right through obstacles, which is why I made some of its effects show over top geometry so you can see it coming even if it's behind a wall.

Ack! Where did you come from!?

Going Down?

And work is almost done on the design of Level 2-1. I went heavier into lighting this level than usual since it mostly happens underground and so relies less on a global directional light.

What game is this anyway?

I still need to do a pickups pass on it, adding coins and other goodies, especially to the boring rooms with nothing in them. Speaking of which, when I started designing the level, I had corridors between many of the rooms and I ended up cutting almost all of them out realising there was no good reason to force players to move through filler spaces which brought nothing more to the experience. I had to remind myself I wasn't making an adventure game, even though the level style is clearly Zelda inspired, and concentrate on having each room (or almost) contain something fun. The level is much tighter for it and I'm now happy with the layout.

Well, that's it for the update. I've been fixing bugs and tweaking old scripts with new functionality as usual but nothing really exciting enough to mention. Otherwise, my week was pretty much taken up with level design!

I should have the level wrapped up by this afternoon leaving me free to start work on Level 4-1. Until next week!