Hey folks, so sorry about the late update and the fact it's going to be another cop out Blog link!

I've had a short week because of Canada Day and spent most of it pouring over gameplay video from testers. So this update is really just some examples of the types of changes I've been implementing based on the videos and tester feedback.

So, for those of you who are interested in reading about that kind of in-the-weeds details, you can hop on over to my blog for the full update.

https://louardongames.blogspot.com/2017/07/suzy-cube-update-june-7-2017.html

Man! I am inundated with gameplay clips!

Not much else to talk about this week. I started my week implementing some last minute tweaks and bug fixes based on my own playthroughs and feedback from a friend. One such tweak had me diving into Suzy's character controller to fix a bug which could cut her jumping short when trying to jump while pressing into a wall. The controller was erroneously treating it as a collision with a ceiling! Whoops! Fixing this, obviously, smoothed out a number of sporadically unreliable jumps.

By mid week, I had a build ready to go for testing. On Wednesday, Touch Arcade mentioned my search for testers on their front page and the floodgates were blown wide open!

In one day, I quadrupled the number of testers I had previously and I've been reading feedback emails and pouring over gameplay videos ever since.

As you might expect, then, I've been quite busy gathering playtest notes and implementing nips, tucks and fixes based on them.

For example, I added a guardrail to a semi-hidden area of the first level after watching a player misstep and fall to his death...



And I also made things a bit easier on Level 3-1, a snowy auto-scrolling level, by slowing down the scrolling slightly and also moving the kill wall which follows the camera.



The kill wall will, as the name implies, kill poor little Suzy if she falls too far behind the camera's view. It's meant to, basically, accelerate what is, for all intents and purposes, an inevitability.

I noticed, from a few gameplay clips, that players seemed to get flustered by the pressure, so I gave them a bit more breathing room when falling behind and slowed things down a bit. We'll see if easing off this way helps with completion on this level.

So far, no obvious disasters in the gameplay department. Players don't seem to be getting lost or anything and, other than the issue above involving Level 3-1, folks seem to be more than capable of getting through most levels.

As previously mentioned, I won't be discussing specifics regarding the game's 'Special' levels in order to keep some surprises for even Suzy's most loyal followers, but I did want to mention that I've got the paper design done for Level 2-S and plan on drafting it and, hopefully, one more special level next week. For those of you who are currious, the special levels are optional levels which are meant to be short departures from the game's regular levels and offer an opportunity for players to earn more Bonus Stars to unlock later levels.

On that, I bid you all farewell until next week. I've got many more videos to view, notes to take and tweaks to make.

Hey, folks. I know it's bad forum etiquette, but I don't have time for my usual update paraphrasing this week and so I invite all of you to go check out my full update on my blog:

https://louardongames.blogspot.com/2017/06/suzy-cube-update-june-23-2017.html

Basically, I've been spending most of my week getting levels ready for testing and ensuring the test build works.

For those of you who don't feel like checking out the blog post... Here's Suzy Getting crushed by a big ol' bumblebee...



P.S. Good time to ask again, I guess! Anyone interested in testing the game (on iOS), send me a private message with your name and email address!

See you next week!

Wow! This looks so happy and fun. Reminds me of 3D Land.

Thank you! Super Mario 3D Land has been a HUGE influence on this game. https://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/08/lessons-from-suzy-cube-why-do-master.html

I also spent a bit of time hashing out a "Suzy is behind stuff" solution with a designer friend of mine and he helped me bring my latest idea to life.
Finally, I had the idea of using a dithering pattern instead of alpha blending. It's quite noticeable in the gif, but just looks semi-transparent on my iPod's retina display.

Interestingly Mario Odyssey uses the exact same solution! I'm pretty sure all previous Mario games that did this have used transparency rather than dithering, so it's cool that you ended up with the same solution as Nintendo in this case. Digital Foundry point it out in their Odyssey analysis here. Spoilers beware of course if you're trying to avoid watching footage of the game. I linked to the exact timestamp for the dithering effect though.

Oh! Neat! I had noticed them using it to look "through" Mario when he's in front of the camera, but I hadn't noticed them using it for mario being behind stuff I do think this is the first time they've handled it this way. In order for actual alpha to work properly, (with the whole model appearing as a single translucent silhouette) I figure you would have to render your character silhouette to a separate buffer and then draw that buffer to your screen as a single translucent image. The dither pattern doesn't require this kind of buffer.

Yeah my version of "parenting" in my code is a pretty loose concept (it basically just controls update order and relative movement) so I don't have any issues with accidentally inheriting things that way.

My Unity knowledge is very limited. If the platform's visual model needs to be scaled, could you put that model on a child object of the main platform object and then scale that child? Then the scale wouldn't affect the platform's other children.

Yes, that's the recommended answer here: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/12083/how-to-get-a-character-to-move-with-a-moving-platf.html

But I wonder if that approach would work well for a 3d platformer with rotating platforms since now character's movement would be relative to the platform's coordinate system and not the world.  Will test it later to see.

Indeed, parenting to a rotating platform would, likely, be bad news. Probably best to mimic parenting in your own code. I use the old Character Motor script in Suzy Cube and it handles most tricky collision situations quite well. It has its downsides too, so I'm not 100% sure I would recommend it, but it could be a good learning tool for handling that tricky stuff like moving platforms, slopes etc.

Getting all the levels in is a major milestone, congrats!

HA! I was just catching up on your thread!
Thanks, man. A couple levels are going to need some major nips and tucks before I'm ready to send them out for testing, but all in all, it feels pretty great to have made it this far.

Sorry for the missing update last week, I was out of the country... Aaaand sorry for the late update today, I was busy playing through the game...
FROM START TO FINISH!!!!

That's right! with the exception of bonus levels (which I don't want to talk about too much.. even you guys deserve a LITTLE surprise!), all regular main-line levels are in! Mind you, this does NOT mean they are all in a shippable state! Let's be clear on that! But it is a rather important milestone as, from now on, level design work will be about refinement and honing rather that starting from nothing.

So, as you might have guessed, I've completed work on Level 2-4! It introduces the Ground Pound power-up and includes lot's of things that go BOOM!



It's also a great place for bomb lobbing baddies!



I also spent a bit of time hashing out a "Suzy is behind stuff" solution with a designer friend of mine and he helped me bring my latest idea to life.



I've been trying different solutions to this problem since the start of the project and they've all had drawbacks, especially when it comes to translucency. Finally, I had the idea of using a dithering pattern instead of alpha blending. It's quite noticeable in the gif, but just looks semi-transparent on my iPod's retina display.

Mind you, it isn't the most optimized or technically fancy solution.  I simply applied two materials to Suzy's mesh, one, drawn first, which is a solid colour, ignores depth information and is rendered using a dithering pattern, then the 'normal' shaded material, complete with Z read/write on top. By playing with material render queue values, I was also able to ensure the effect wouldn't show up on top of certain other objects like power-ups, enemies and particle effects.

Sorry again for missing last week and sorry this update wasn't meatier.. I'm sure E3 had nothing to do with it... ya...

Anywho, with all the levels now in place, next week will me more of an organizational one that anything, getting the game ready for a big round of testing! I'm not going to promise anything to those who've been chomping at the bit to test the game, but I do hope to have a build ready by next Friday. A lot of that will depend on how many bugs I decide really need to be fixed before testing can start. So, on that note, check back in next Friday! Ciao!

I'm just curious.  Was there a "good reason" (e.g. feature) why you wanted to upgrade?  I'm just wondering because I've seen a few devs losing hours and days after an upgrade by having to redo certain things that got messed up.  Probably that's why I've also seen a few people recommending to stay with a Unity version for the duration of the game development unless (again) there's a good benefit to upgrade.

Yes, an argument for sticking to a version of the engine can, absolutely, be made, however, I've been there, and it can be quite frustrating to see fixes or helpful features come down the pipe which you can't take advantage of. Since I'm developing Suzy Cube on my own, keeping up to date with the latest version of the engine isn't all that disruptive (I know I like to complain about it) compared to doing the same on a large team.

I was busy with other things this week, so it's going to be a slim update. But there are still some nuggets in here.

Before I start on the update, proper, I wanted to get you up to speed on the status of the crash bug I discovered when upgrading to Unity 5.6. After many attempts to fix the problem on my end, I gave up and decided to bundle up a reproduction scene for the folks at Unity. No word on a fix yet, but they came back to me this week with confirmation that they were, indeed, able to reproduce the bug! This is great news as it's, of course, the first step toward issuing a fix. It seems the bug has something to do with OpenGL and does not show up on Metal compatible iOS devices.

Ok! On to some progress. I have not, unfortunately, completed the design on Level 2-4, but I have been making some progress.



The level will be rocky with tight climbing sections and lots of explosions!



The Ground Pound power-up is on the menu as this level will serve as its introduction. This means, plenty of Rock Skull enemies, bombs and metal switches to slam down onto.



Given the level's focus on the Ground Pound power-up, I also thought it would be high time to implement a feature I've had on my to-do list for a month or so now. That's right! Slamming the ground now causes secret, invisible, objects to momentarily reveal themselves!

To achieve this, I simply update a couple of parameters in a shared material when Suzy hits the ground causing it to flash. As all invisible objects share this same material, they all, simultaneously, become visible!

On a related note, I also went ahead and set up a functional invisible gift box.



Much like the invisible coins, moving through the invisible box reveals it, at which point it can be bopped to collect what's inside.

Well, that's it for this week's update. I'll catch you all on the next one.

BTW. I just re-read your post on how the ropes were done. So awesome! They look fantastic in motion and the shearing totally makes them look like they were hand drawn. Also, your use of a static collision line? brilliant!

Just wanted to jump in, get caught up and virtually high five you on your continued, fantastic work!

Level design was the name of the game this week. Not a flashy update but some good progress made nonetheless.



Work on Level 5-4 is nearly complete! The level itself is done but I'll be doing a coins and pickups pass this afternoon as well as refining the culling zones to optimize performance.



The level is split into three sections. Each section starts with a horizontal obstacle course followed by a vertically auto-scrolling climb around massive tree trunks. A teleporter at the top of each climb takes Suzy to the next section. Using teleporters this way was the easiest way to ensure checkpoints would play nice with the auto-scroll setups.

I also made a couple of small changes to Level 5-2. Nothing major, just "quality of life" stuff to polish the experience.



The level opens with Suzy gettings chased down snowy slopes by a big rolling snow boulder and there's a, sort of, cutscene to start the off the sequence. I finally decided that I should probably pause the game timer during this intro sequence. No sense in forcing players to lose seconds off their time.



I also addressed some awkwardness in this bonus star area of the level. The idea is that Suzy emerges from the archway up top and then is forced to slide down the ramps. If players fail to jump at the end of the third ramp, they will miss the star and be forcefully dumped into the exit teleporter. I had initially made the whole thing way too cramped which made the sliding go by too quickly and also caused Suzy to bump her head when jumping. All Awkward! So, I've opened up the area, and it feels much better now!

Short and sweet. No flashy stuff like new enemies or anything, but it sure feels good to have another level design in the can! For next week, I'm getting to work on the only remaining main game level, Level 2-4! This will be a significant one as it will serve as the game's introduction to the Ground Pound power-up! See you all next week!

Right you are.. Err on the side.. of course ^_~

This "mugging" animation, as a friend calls it, is used to entice players to double jump onto the Boss' head. I hope it will do the trick!

re
Lol! Yeah, that does look like one of those situations when the boss (or part of the boss) gets "close" for you to attack it.

Finally, I've started work on Level 5-4, another forest level with a vertical penchant. Something about trees just says "climbing" to me, I guess!

That's similar to me as well.  I want to see either what is inside or above the canopy.

Bob'omb character looks good.  The only thing I'm wondering about is, what will be the max damage distance when it explodes?  It looks quite large and I expected Suzy Cube the take damage in the gifs.

Looks like you typoed a bit at the end... I'm guessing you are asking about the damage radius because it looks like it should hurt Suzy at that distance?
I like to air on the side of the player whenever I'm assigning damage colliders i.e. the actual damage trigger is always smaller than the visuals. It's better to have situations where the player screams: "OMG! Did you see that!? I thought I was dead for sure!!" rather than "OMG! Did you see that bullshit!? It barely touched me and I'm dead!"

^_^

Really like the promo stuff you've put together. Best of luck at the show!

Ahoy ahoy!
I spent the better part of my week re-working a couple of older levels as I march on towards getting the game ready for another round of testing.

The first level I had a look at was the World 2 boss level. This is the second time I give this level a good once over. It was simply too hard for what is only the game's second boss fight, so I eased up on it. I also made some changes to the Boss' attack sequence, mostly adding more idling time between attacks to give players more breathing room. And I gave the boss this new animation as well:



This "mugging" animation, as a friend calls it, is used to entice players to double jump onto the Boss' head. I hope it will do the trick!

The other level I spent some time reworking is Level 1-4. It really stood out as a big difficulty spike, especially so early in the game and I hope the changes I made will help.



Two of the more important changes I made pertain to the cannons used in the level. I made most of them fire less frequently, which should reduce the pressure on players, and I also made it so the (Suzy-seeking) rockets they fire can now collide with each other. This can seem like a rather trivial change, but in practice, it means that some rockets now explode against each other before ever reaching their target. This keeps the sense of tension and danger while being, in a practical sense, much safer.

I thought I'd also mention this tweak I made which has nothing to do with difficulty. You see the cubes of rock blocks in the screenshot above? These explode when hit by rockets and act as temporary cover for Suzy. I, initially, thought it would be fun to hide coins in all of them to reward players for steering rockets into them. In practice, though, this only served to hurt the level's pacing as players were rewarded for standing around waiting for rockets to blow up all the blocks. Remember, folks, as designers, we should never incentivize boring behaviour!

I've also been wanting to add exploding enemies to the game since forever but never really settled on a design. What I love about the visual design of the Bob'ombs from Super Mario is that it implies they are mechanical. This is important because it means that no living creature is committing suicide. I also didn't want to evoke images of suicide bombers, so having regular Skull enemies carrying bombs was definitely out of the question.

So, after many sketches, I decided to go with big ol' robot wrench hands on a bomb!



As you might expect, if Suzy gets too close, the Bomb Skull's fuse lights up and a chase ensues.



But, Suzy can bop her way out of it too, causing the Bomb Skull  to, basically, turn into a bomb.



Kablam!

Finally, I've started work on Level 5-4, another forest level with a vertical penchant. Something about trees just says "climbing" to me, I guess!



Things are still very early on in this design so there's not much to show or talk about yet. I should have more for you on it next week.

Well, that's it for this update. See you next time.

And after rearranging the hierarchy of objects in my rolling block setup, I got them tumbling jitter free!

Sounds good!  I'll remember that in case I or others have similar issue.
Oh, could you write down the hierarchy of items so I know what worked for you?

Actually, the solution was to un-parent the rolling block and its "parent".
So, the setup now is something like:
ObjectA is what moves around and only translates.
ObjectB (which is NOT a child of A) has the rolling script on it which performs 2 functions...
-Make ObjectB follow along with ObjectA's position.
-Control ObjectB's rolling motion based on the movement of ObjectA

Not a very elegant solution, I'm afraid.. but sometimes, dude's gotta move on!

Working on a new tropical world!





Blog post: https://kircode.com/post/speebot-tropical-gameplay-in-hd

Ok... Super tiny little nitpick... Only because I so love what you're doing... But when items get picked up, like the umbrella in this clip, it lacks immediacy, IMO.
You may find this too 'high concept'.. but because the umbrella pickup slowly shrinks when picked up, I find it confuses the act of "picking it up" like you now simultaneously have the umbrella while it's also shrinking and disappearing. You know?

I would elect to simply have a larger splash effect, maybe in the colours of the umbrella when you pick it up so it reads more, like, BAM! You've got he umbrella now!

And, again, I nitpick because I love!

New video, with some new soundtrack that I've composed:





Blog post: https://kircode.com/post/speebot-hd-gameplay-with-music

WOAH!! Wait what!? Your own music too!? You gotta be kidding me!? I'm outta here! *step step step step... door slam*