Suzy Cube Update: Friday May 6, 2016

#suzycube #indiedev #gamedev #madewithunity 

This week, I continued work on Level 5-B, otherwise known as the final boss level!!!

I'm, mostly, happy with how things are progressing, but I feel the level is going to need some massaging to really be its best. Working on the game's final level is a lot of pressure since it's the last impression with which the player will be left, so I want it to be a good one. That's the major reason I'm tackling it now rather than later, giving me plenty of time to iterate on it before the game's release.

A Long Treacherous Road

Some of you may have noticed that the level, so far, does not fit with my aforementioned plans to have every boss level be a vertical climb up to fighting the boss. How astute of you! Since this is the game's final level, I've allowed myself to break some rules, including aiming to make the level a couple minutes longer than usual as well as giving the player a nice long lead up to the final confrontation. For that reason, I've decided to build a more traditional set of platforming levels leading up to the tower climb section, which I have yet to start building. I'm hoping this will give the level more of a sense of story and progression.

Getting a bit tipsy

I've been making sure to mix things up with elements like seesaw style platforms, changing lava level and elements you'll have to contend with during the boss fight, like lava spouts.

That does not look entirely safe...

Hot stuff, coming through!

Who Gives a Flying Fox?

As I teased last week, I also have a handy new enemy to use in my Suzy terrorising toolbox, the Flying Skull.

Don't... move... an inch...

As you can see, these nasty little buggers like to meander around spitting fireballs at our brave little heroine! What's particularly neat about them is that they required exactly zero new code to get working. As all enemies in the game, they use a generic enemy script to handle things like taking damage, dealing damage, etc. Their behaviour is actually based on the spring motion script I use for the title screen camera drift and the procedural motion of Suzy's hair buns and, finally, the fireball spitting is the same behaviour used by the cannons. Bing, bang, boom, a new enemy!

Bits and Bobs

The more I progress, the more I find myself digging back into old scripts to extend their functionality and fix bugs or writing more little utility scripts to extend functionality in unforeseen ways. This week, I think I must have extended a good half dozen scripts and written at least a couple more. Some were small additions like a few handy new functions to an audio controller script and others should really open up new possibilities, like a new type of triggerable script which can call any arbitrary function on a target object, complete with passing a parameter! As evidenced by the Flying Skull, however, all these little bits of work pay off in the long run as the more bits and pieces I have to put together, the faster it becomes to add new game elements which players actually get to interact with!

Ok, I need to get back to it! At this pace, I'm likely to go bald before I release the game! Hope to see you all next week with, hopefully, a finished draft of the whole final level.