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[diegzumillo]

(Just thought, is apple a cannibal? Or does the worm eat the small apples along the way?)

I remember an issue of Spider-Gwen wherein the title character was talking to (an imaginary) Spider-Ham, who was eating a corndog. She asked him if that was cannibalism, and his response (quoted from memory) was, "I'm a cartoon. Cannibalism would be if I was eating Porky Pig."

I assume the same principle applies to our dear Apple as well.

That's almost logical. If only spider-ham knew he is in fact a cartoon!

This apple pickable is starting to earn acknowledgment in the game now.

[diegzumillo]

That's almost logical. If only spider-ham knew he is in fact a cartoon!

I came here to read my last notes to know where I left off and I'm stumped by what I wrote above. Is it a joke? What am I saying??

[RealScaniX]

There is only one solution: Travel back in time and ask your former self!

[diegzumillo]

Hey all

So I'm slowly dipping my feet on the waters again, the water of the apple and worm pool, weird analogy. I noticed no one said anything about the gameplay itself. I mean, the thing you do on a moment to moment basis. Is it fun? Is it enough? I feel like the highest gameplay level (my term but I also heard primary game loop and variations) is lackluster. Without dangers what can you do to spice up platforming? Any thoughts would be appreciated!

I focused so much and for so long on the main gimmick that I sort of neglected the other super important part.

I still want to keep it deathless but I sense it needs more mechanics. What other deathless platformers are out there?

[diegzumillo]

According to my notes the idea was to use 'enemies' to create setbacks and obstacles. Which makes sense.

I just found Wario Land 3, which is a game that seems to do that. I'm going to play it!

[Ishi]

Hey all

So I'm slowly dipping my feet on the waters again, the water of the apple and worm pool, weird analogy. I noticed no one said anything about the gameplay itself. I mean, the thing you do on a moment to moment basis. Is it fun? Is it enough? I feel like the highest gameplay level (my term but I also heard primary game loop and variations) is lackluster. Without dangers what can you do to spice up platforming? Any thoughts would be appreciated!

I focused so much and for so long on the main gimmick that I sort of neglected the other super important part.

I still want to keep it deathless but I sense it needs more mechanics. What other deathless platformers are out there?

In terms of the actual mechanics (not control/physics), I don't remember having many thoughts about this. I was mainly focused on the puzzle possibilities of the space-warping.

Fez comes to mind as a similar style of game, it had no deaths and not even enemies. That placed a huge emphasis on atmosphere, exploration and some large-scale obscure puzzle solving, which I don't think would be that suitable in this case.

Wario Land 2/3/4/Shake Dimension do seem like good no-death platformers to try. In those games, general enemies will transform you rather than hurt you. Sometimes it's simply a setback that forces you to backtrack, but sometimes the transformation alters your abilities in a useful but limited way (e.g. a bee sting inflates you so you can float, but only upwards with limited left/right control). These kind of transformations or altered states could be really interesting when combined with non-linear space!

[nova++]

Personally, I think the warp aspects + standard platformer mechanics would be plenty. It might not be a good idea to try to cram in as much stuff as possible - both for your own sake, and to avoid overloading the player. With puzzle games, it's usually best to trim the fat where possible.

[diegzumillo]

In terms of the actual mechanics (not control/physics), I don't remember having many thoughts about this. I was mainly focused on the puzzle possibilities of the space-warping.

Fez comes to mind as a similar style of game, it had no deaths and not even enemies. That placed a huge emphasis on atmosphere, exploration and some large-scale obscure puzzle solving, which I don't think would be that suitable in this case.

Wario Land 2/3/4/Shake Dimension do seem like good no-death platformers to try. In those games, general enemies will transform you rather than hurt you. Sometimes it's simply a setback that forces you to backtrack, but sometimes the transformation alters your abilities in a useful but limited way (e.g. a bee sting inflates you so you can float, but only upwards with limited left/right control). These kind of transformations or altered states could be really interesting when combined with non-linear space!

My thoughts as well! I found some more notes I wrote (I keep finding these scattered all over the place) describing creatures that behave in specific ways you need to exploit. The flooblurgs are springs when you are smaller, for example, and only squish when you are bigger. I wrote down an idea for a flying creature that picks you up and reposition you in its nest, but when you are rotated with respect to it, it can't pick you up. Maybe you can reposition it! and coach it into picking up some other obstacle.

I took playing wario land 3 as my homework. I like the ideas in it so far but I'm not having a ton of fun, to be honest. It's kind of slow and boring, like everything takes a couple of seconds longer than comfortable, even simple animations.

Personally, I think the warp aspects + standard platformer mechanics would be plenty. It might not be a good idea to try to cram in as much stuff as possible - both for your own sake, and to avoid overloading the player. With puzzle games, it's usually best to trim the fat where possible.

That part in bold; that's what I used to think. It might be true but I don't know anymore, maybe because I've been playing this thing for years but I find it lacking. There are less puzzle possibilities with that alone than I expected. However, I do believe anything I add has to make extended use of the curved interconnected space! Like the rotating boxes I used in the original demo, or the behavior of the new creatures affected by relative orientation and scale. I think this is the way to go, but I'll keep in mind the bloat and the possibility of overwhelming myself (even more than I already am).

Thanks all! I am going to focus on this for now. As wonky as the code is, it's functional enough already to take a back seat on the development.

[Ishi]

I took playing wario land 3 as my homework. I like the ideas in it so far but I'm not having a ton of fun, to be honest. It's kind of slow and boring, like everything takes a couple of seconds longer than comfortable, even simple animations.

I've actually barely played Wario Land 3 but I think Wario Land 2 is pretty similar in terms of the core mechanics and did suffer from being a bit sluggish, I agree. Wario Land 4 might be a bit more snappy and fast paced. (Wario Land 1 is my fave but doesn't have transformations so not really relevant to you.)

[JobLeonard]

Wario Land 1 gang rise up!

But yeah, I do also love the no-death aspects of the later games in the series. They were quite experimental games, really.

[diegzumillo]

haha this is awkward.
I remember making a promise to "finish the game before April" or something like that. "No matter what happens", I said, "it will be done". So if I did nothing at all, that's the game then. A piece of unfinished software on my HD forever and ever. And I was happy with that! enough of this project in my life, you know?

Then I moved on to other projects and suddenly caught myself thinking about apple and worm again "hey, whatever happened to that project? apple and something: something something spacetime?" So here I am, giving this piece of crap one more shot. My word is meaningless, my promises are empty, nothing matters. Let's make some levels.

I hereby challenge myself to make one level every day for at least 2 months. But let me make this a little more precise. Because I'm a cheater, I will one day make a doodle on a piece of paper and call it a level. Rules:
1) Skipping a day is allowed, I do have other things to do in my life. But the next two days are not skippable.
2) Levels must be fully playable. There needs to be a start and an end. No visual bells and whistles are necessary.
3) This is just to give me something to work on so if I instead work on something else, like a new mechanic or fix some bugs, it counts.
4) I need evidence to support my claims. So I will log here every day. Expect a post later today with a level or something else.

[RealScaniX]

Hehe, this is really funny. And super hard. I couldn't do this "a level a day" thing. 

[diegzumillo]

Day1:

I may have found a loophole in my rule set. All those levels I made before are broken ever since I upgraded to a newer unity version. So remaking those is not a complete waste of time!

OK, that wasn't what I had in mind. The idea is to expand the game, not rehash old stuff, but this needs to be done regardless. Also, I am also fixing a lot of bugs as I do this so it's excusable. Besides, I only had like 5 levels or something, and there are 59 days ahead of me... Holy crap, is that what two months sound like when we spell out the day count? 60 days is way too long! Why did I choose this time frame?? You know what, it's fine, it's ok. If I pull this off and end up with ~60 levels the game is pretty much done so it's worth a shot. It's more likely that I'll spend a good amount of days introducing new elements though. But even 20 levels would be a goddamn miracle for this project.

To warm up I remade one of the simplest I had before. One curve and one box.



I forgot what a mess this code is. And I left this project while in the middle of some major refactoring because it's basically broken. Never do that, kids. If you MUST then at least write a few comments somewhere to know what you broke and what you were trying to accomplish. I had to dig and find out why the ghost of the physics object wasn't disappearing when going through portals. The physics was also messed up. But now it's back to its former glory! wonky full of weird bugs and the player still does that quick spasm while going through the portals. Almost ready to be launched at $60 on steam!

[JobLeonard]

Is it bad that the panic undertones in your writing is oddly funny to me?

Hang in there dude, you're doing alright 

[diegzumillo]

Is it bad that the panic undertones in your writing is oddly funny to me?

Hang in there dude, you're doing alright  

The fine line between tragedy and comedy  

Day 2... out of bloody 60 I guess

A non-level day it was. I wanted to make a drawbridge with physics and that took too long, so no level to accompany this new feature. The feature consists of the ability to add an extra vertex to any physicsbody and make it fixed. If it weren't for my spaghetti code this would be a quick implementation but here we are.

(images will go here once Imgur decides to work again. For now imagine the most amazing couple of gifs with a swinging box and a drawbridge. Your mind is now blown by such advanced and life-like computer simulated blocks.)



I wanted to make a quick level making use of a drawbridge but enough time was spent getting this to work today, and I better space out my efforts to not burn out so fast. Gives me something to work on tomorrow too.

[Ishi]

(images will go here once Imgur decides to work again. For now imagine the most amazing couple of gifs with a swinging box and a drawbridge. Your mind is now blown by such advanced and life-like computer simulated blocks.)

Looks fantastic!

Excited to see more updates about this game. Whether you make levels, or features, or just tinker with things, getting a little bit done every day is a great goal. Good luck!

[diegzumillo]

Day 3

I have made the drawbridge level. Also tried something I have been thinking about for a while now; An overlapping level.

[JobLeonard]

Noice

Next up: the old "walk past an obscuring view and suddenly there's an enemy behind you" jump scare?

[diegzumillo]

A fruit version of slender man? Slender banana.

Day 4

A very exhausting day. Most of my day was taken by banalities of everyday life, like sweeping, doing the dishes, laundry, baby stuff. Then some time doing the more important work. Then what I had left I used it to make a level literally named "uninspiredlevel1". The number at the end is a good tell of how optimistic I am about these 2 months of level making.

[nova++]

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