Suzy Cube Update: Friday November 4, 2016

#suzycube #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity 

This week I started building Level 4-1, added a couple new variations to the basic Skull enemies and implemented some odds and ends off the old to-do list.

Pound It

I'm making good progress building out the initial design for Level 4-1, which you can see at the top of the post. The level is focused on ground pounding stuff in forested surroundings. I also plan to have the later half of the level, sort of, transition to a rockier, more mountainy look to add some visual variety to the mix. The rocky surroundings will also be a great place to have lots of ground poundable rocks to break.

Learning Through Imitation

I also mentioned a couple new Skull variations...

Don't stand so close to me!

One is a version of the enemy who wears a Ground Pound helmet!

Up, up and away!

And the other wears, you guessed it, a Double Jump aviator cap! 

Both exhibit behaviours reminiscent of the way the power-ups are used by Suzy in order to act as subtle tutorials, if you will. Defeating one of these new Skull variants also grants Suzy the appropriate power-up so, my hope is that players will see these enemies doing something different while wearing silly hats, defeat them, get the hat for themselves and figure out that maybe they can now do something different too! They are like little mobile power-up dispensers with integrated instructions.

Odds and Ends

I spent way too long trying to make a nice, reusable pair of teleporting cave entrances. The idea simply being a pair of archways which teleport Suzy from one to the other giving the impression she's actually traveling through a connecting tunnel. I've used this set up already in a few levels but wanted to make something more reusable and reliable which wouldn't need a custom set up of triggers every time. I never got my originally planned setup to work properly, so I've fallen back on a good, but not as flexible solution but which actually works reliably!

The other little thing I got done which will come in handy for a later level is allowing cannons to impart a velocity onto their projectiles. You see, so far, the only thing cannons have had to do is spawn projectiles like fireballs or rockets which move of their own accord, now, however, cannons can impart a starting velocity onto their projectiles, allowing them to shoot out otherwise static objects like... oh, I dunno... bombs?

Probably shouldn't stand there...

I'm going to be continuing work on Level 4-1 into next week for sure and hope to get started on the next stage by next Friday, but we shall see. It seems I've come to have to expect the unexpected. Hope to see you here next week.