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[diegzumillo]

I't not even a carnivore. I'm more of a frozenfoodvore. A lazyvore, maybe.

Day 21

So I made some mouthful animations for apple.



There are two paths to implementing this change in animation in Unity:
1) create new animations and implement all new transitions in the Animator. It's essentially a finite state machine that controls the animations with bools and triggers. So there will be twice as many animations with complex transitions to connect both mouthful and normal animations.
2) For what is essentially a swap sprite functionality that I want, that path is pretty bad. The alternative, it seems, is to move all sprites to a Resources folder so I can access them by code, then swap the frames every single frame inside LateUpdate.

Woow! they are both so bad!! So, so, so bad. Today I am only doing animation just so I don't have to deal with this choice between crap and also crap.

Edit: bolded "day 21"

[nova++]

Can't you make a ScriptableObject or some other class containing the relevant frames and use that instead of Resources? I don't know how you are doing your animations deep down, though. But having some sort of container you can hot-swap to switch to different animation states feels like a good idea.

[oahda]

Cute!

Also there's this:

[diegzumillo]

Oh... that's a a sensible built-in feature that solves all my problems and flew right under my radar.

Thanks, Princessa!  that will make day 22  a lot easier. Too easy, actually. I might have to actually make a level in this levelthon.

[diegzumillo]

Day 22

Thanks to Princessa's tip I managed to implement the mouthful animations quickly and painless. Then I took the time to revisit some old shitty code of the portal transitions and removed those glitchy blinks! I honestly thought that would ship with the game, given my utter lack of motivation to fix that. I don't know what drove me to deal with that today but I'm glad I did.

Here's a gif of Apple swallowing a box while running back and forth through a portal seamlessly.



On my to do list there must be an additional check before spitting an object, to make sure there is room for it.

[Ishi]

Excellent work on both counts!

I love these mouth-full animations, something about them really makes me smile! My one complaint is that the running animation isn't that noticeably different from the normal one - I think because the silhouette doesn't change too much. The more front-facing sprites have the big obvious bulges that are instantly noticeable. Not a big deal but might be worth bearing in mind for future polish.

[JobLeonard]

Also, do any transformations to Apple also apply to the box? Like, if he turns his reference frame 90 degrees by walking to the right and then spits out the box, what happens?

I think this question got lost in the exhaustion

[diegzumillo]

Also, do any transformations to Apple also apply to the box? Like, if he turns his reference frame 90 degrees by walking to the right and then spits out the box, what happens?

I think this question got lost in the exhaustion

It did! 
The way I imagined (and implemented) is that the objects in mouth traverse space the same way they would outside apple's mouth. In your example, if both box and apple had the same reference frame (both falling in the same direction), then after going through a curve they would be falling the same direction still.

[Ishi]

I had a random idea that I want to post before I forget. Thinking about Braid, a lot of the interesting puzzles came from objects that broke some of the rules of the world. The main mechanic of the game was being able to rewind time, but if I remember correctly there were glowing objects that ignored the rewind, such as switches that stayed flipped or platforms that moved in real time regardless.

What about having objects (crates, butts, whatever) whose reference frame remains relative to the world at all times? So if you tried to push it through a 90-degree bending tunnel, Apple's gravity would remain relative to the tunnel but the box's would remain in the original direction and maybe start falling back through the tunnel. Maybe these objects could still be scaled up and down, so only the gravity vector would have to be fudged with some kind of reverse-space-warping calculation. It could be really interesting and add to the mind-bendyness of the game, though I can't really think through the ramifications well enough to actually come up with puzzle opportunities right now.

[diegzumillo]

If you were crazy enough to browse through this devlog you would find this idea got thrown around a few times, with a few gifs too.

a lot of the interesting puzzles came from objects that broke some of the rules of the world.

But that is an interesting perspective. I haven't thought of it that way.

Maybe it could be a unique mechanic for a few levels. A level with some nuclear waste puddles that make apple glow for a few seconds and, while glowing, objects in your mouth preserve their original frame of reference.

Edit: today will probably be skipped, btw. I'm exhausted.

[diegzumillo]

Day 23 skipped.

Day 24 not skipped!

A productive day that still has hours left. I fixed some issues with the spitting mechanic. Now bodies don't go flinging with all force in random directions because I had forgotten to zero out the forces acting on it. It also performs a test to see if there is enough room to spit the object. With these updates I managed to get a simple "level" (too little to be called a level, really) that requires the player to swallow and spit two different cubes in order to climb the different steps. One cube is light the other is heavy, which right now are represented by almost identical sprites.



Gizmos on just to show the failed attempts at spitting an object. Ignore the stupid super jump. It's a bug, but it only happens because I have it setup with infinite jumps to make it easier to debug levels.

[Ishi]

I love it! That's a really solid level for teaching the effects of swallowing different objects.

[diegzumillo]

Thanks! :D I like the idea of really short levels sprinkled between larger levels. Puzzle games always have problems with pacing. I'm not going to be the one to tackle that quantum gravity problem of puzzle games while still dealing with much more basic design issues, but this could be helpful. After a large level with layers of compounded puzzles comes 2 or 3 tiny self contained puzzle rooms for the player to catch its breath.

[diegzumillo]

After that update I kept working until now. After so many skip days I think I was overdue for an extra work day.

I worked a little on the player movement. Decided to remove the infinite jump cheat to see how it was for real, and realized it was broken. That super jump on that gif? unrelated to the cheat, it does happen all the time. So after digging through the code I realized it was very likely abandoned during some major refactoring!  I found variables, like verticaltopspeed, that were being reset without ever being set anywhere else, and all kinds of junk code that either did nothing or broke something. The spaghetti code led to some weird behavior like occasional super jumps.

I changed how things are accomplished and cleaned the code a little bit and now it seems to work fine and much more reliably. I also changed behavior while on air. A lot of people complained about finding it hard to control while jumping. I'm now playing with a snap horizontal movement at all times. Released left key, apple stops moving left, regardless if on ground or not. Feels a bit stiff in my opinion, maybe a little inertia would feel better.

Anyway, still some hours left before my offspring wakes up, so I'll use this time to sketch an actual level on paper and implement it tomorrow. I really want to make use of the buttportals now that apple can swallow and spit. Is there another word for holding something in one's mouth? swallowing does not sound accurate.

[JobLeonard]

Sounds like a good bit of late spring cleaning!

Also loving the GIF in the previous post. I know you're just testing things now, and will do polish later, but are you planning to give some kind of visual hint to the player how heavy or light the boxes will be? Because otherwise it might feel a bit random.

[diegzumillo]

Sounds like a good bit of late spring cleaning!

Also loving the GIF in the previous post. I know you're just testing things now, and will do polish later, but are you planning to give some kind of visual hint to the player how heavy or light the boxes will be? Because otherwise it might feel a bit random.

Yes! The idea is to standardize objects to make it a bit easier. Instead of boxes of adjustable sizes and weights, there will be the anvil, the wooden crate, the beach ball, bowling ball, etc. I should probably make a list of these things.

[litHermit]

Is there another word for holding something in one's mouth? swallowing does not sound accurate.

Closest I can think of is engulf. Though there's also pocketing 

[diegzumillo]

Is there another word for holding something in one's mouth? swallowing does not sound accurate.

Closest I can think of is engulf. Though there's also pocketing 

I'll stick with swallow then

So for day 25 I accidentally skipped! whoops  This is totally against my rules since I skipped day 23. But I was palying Poly Bridge 2 at 9 PM then it was 3 AM all of a sudden!

I even had a level sketch. But it was a shitty level that wasn't going anywhere anyway.

All right, for breaking my rules I sentence myself to make TWO LEVELS tomorrow. Plus self flagellation with a whip.

[JobLeonard]

The levels will do. Actually, even just you being nice to yourself will do

[diegzumillo]

Day 26

At least I get to say I really did my best today. Worked for solid 4 hours! Too bad I came up with nothing though.

Spent a couple of hours trying to make a level with the buttportal. Wasted a few pages of my notebook with sketches and I could not find an interesting puzzle there. Some half interesting ideas came up but I ran into the same problem many times: how to deal with a wrong move without forcing a restart? It adds complexity to puzzle design, levels need to be adjusted with paths that take you back without messing up the proposed path of the puzzle. Gosh, I'm so sad about buttportal's inability to make the game more interesting. It really did seem like it had a lot of potential.

Then I came up with a level idea making use of swallowing heavy objects. This one is pretty simple and not too bad. But implementing the level drained my patience for the day and I left it unfinished. When I don't calculate precisely the size of each room they tend to create impossible to solve overlaps on the level mesh.

Skipping a day because "ooh I'm tired and working is hard" may be against my rules but spending a few hours trying your best and failing isn't. My rules didn't explicit mention this but obviously any attempt is valid. Failure is an integral part of progress.

Puzzle design is HARD. I can't hire people but I am tempted to offer pizza delivery to whoever comes up with cool level designs lol