Personal Development Project - Blog Entry 6

Bug fixing

I found an issue where if I pressed the wall turn button while holding down the wall climb button, it would glitch the mechanic, and skip the animation, this also caused freezing issues with the mechanic as well.

To fix this I made a new Boolean that checks if the player is actively climbing when S is pressed. If this is true, the player can’t turn, if it is false the player can turn, as they are not holding down the climb button.

This works by getting the climb time value and when it is false, and not being used, it sets active climbing to false, but before this the player is climbing, thus iut is true and the player cannot do a wall turn and jump.

Making player health

I quickly made a player health system where they die after 3 hits, this makes the game more forgiving, and allows the player to go for longer without dying.

Removing the ladder

I realised that the ladder was a mechanic that I wasn’t going to use in my game, thus removed the mechanic, resetting the input movement back to its original form.

Adding controller functionality

I decided to add controller functionality, which was very simple to do and only required adding additional input options and adding a float + float value with both the game-pad key time down and keyboard key time down so that it worked for both.

Adding this functionality made the game feel way better to play, as is the common criticism of games like Titanfall and mirrors edge, the stick functionality for free running games feels naturally better to use in my opinion. This change makes the controls feel way less frustrating and natural.

Texturing/lighting improvements

I have bumped up the lighting so that the level is brighter, this makes it look visually more like Superhot and mirrors edge.

Unfortunately, the textures I had previously were way to bright and reflective, this meant that I had to darken the existing textures of my player weapon and the enemy bullet.

I also changed the texture of the rope so that it looked more thematically appropriate with the new visual style of the game. I gave it a holographic look, as though it is digitally constructed from thin air.

Level design

I created a tutorial course that teaches the player the basics of the games rules. In the future I will add widgets in the level that teach the player the specifics of the game.

Widget design

The next step I needed to make was to create the information posts in the tutorial, I started by creating the text in Photoshop

Widget implementation

After designing the widgets I imported them into the game and added them into the level in the form of box triggers.

Initially they worked by the player walking into them, and they disappear when they exit the box and never return. However, this was frustrating for some players as they would walk straight through the box and skip over the information.

To change this I then decided to work with a system where the player is frozen for a short amount of time while the information text shows, then disappears for good.

An issue I ran into was that if the player sprinted into a box, when the player got input functionality back, the base speed would be constantly set at sprint speed regardless of what was happening. To fix this I made sure that each overlap set the player speed back to the walk speed. This isn’t too much on an issue as it’s only the tutorial, this kind of hand holding will not be prevalent in the base game.