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[diegzumillo]

@curvature
Hey there, math guy :D I'm glad you like it! that demo is pretty outdated though. The thing that bothers me the most about it is the lack of visual lines representing the curved regions. That's something I fixed but it's not in the demo.

@siskavard
Thanks! I'm torn between pride and embarassment. Master animator likes my animation :D master animation saw my animation D:

[siskavard]

HA!

dont change anything, i love the style

[diegzumillo]

Dear developer diary,

Highschool sucks!... Good thing I finished it 15 years ago. Let's move on to the actual devlog because this joke is dead.

I'm spending a month away from "home" to visit home. "Home" is in the US, where I currently live and home is Brazil, where family lives. Here at home I can do no work so my mind feels free to wonder and question some design aspects, which is work, I guess. And this devlog will be just that; myself thinking out loud about stuff.

Thoughts on main and secondary mechanics

I noticed something early on about the central mechanics: by itself it does not constitute enough filling for a full blown standalone sandwich. Maybe a browser snack though, but that's not what I'm going for. In principle I could add any other mechanic already made in other platformers, and see how it behaves with a curved space. It's fun to imagine playing Contra with this twist, where some enemies' projectiles would ignore the curves, others would not etc. Or simply add boxes and buttons for  some standard puzzle gameplay. But it feels cheap to simply slap some known mechanic on and call it done. No, I want something that is directly tied to the main ingredient, something that would not work or would not make sense without the curved space mechanic.

My best idea so far is attaching the gravity of different objects together. Say we attach the gravity of the apple to a simple cube, then the apple moves through a curved region and as he does so the cube will start rotating its gravity vector following apple's. I think this is simple enough but seems to have a lot of depth. I could make an entire world (set of levels) by simply putting the player with these connections pre-made for him to figure out. For example, making a physics bridge fall down by navigating in the map until the apple's gravity (and the bridge's gravity) are such that it falls into place. Then the next world I allow external objects to be attached to each other. Then in another world I can give the player the power to set these  connections himself.

I still feel like it's missing some minute-to-minute action. So I might add some dynamic and trivial dangers to keep the player engaged in the moment beyond platforming. Like projectiles, evading simple enemies and stuff like that. Together with the new dynamic in the previous paragraph I can see interesting implications and uses. I remember when I first posted the apple sprite here at TIG and someone suggested I made an enemy that is a sour faced lemon, which is nothing short of genius! so that could be one thing to spice up the game.

The old and still unanswered question

I still haven't made up my mind about whether other objects in the game world should follow the curved space or just apple. OR both and play with it. Even after so many prototypes and playtests I have no idea how to answer that question. If I do choose to make both options viable, which would be the standard state? which seems more intuitive to people: that 1) a box falling through a curved region would simply ignore the curve or 2) follow it, like apple? I'm inclined on the second. As I write this, I'm inclined to choose whatever is most intuitive and not use it as something the player could change. Feels more solid.

Thoughts on art

I still don't like how the game looks. I like how each individual asset looks on its own, my skills satisfy my own requirements most of the time, I like the animation and all. But the whole is what is killing me. Everything looks empty and bare and I have no idea how to fix it, I don't know what's missing. I look for inspiration on good looking platformers and they all use layers with parallax to give a sense of scale and play with horizon lines, vertical lines etc, stuff my game does not like at all.

[doobieshrum]

Best falling animation - 2015

The art is looking great man.

[diegzumillo]

Best falling animation - 2015

The art is looking great man.

Thanks :D as I said in the last log, I'm not too happy with the art though. But nice to know it's still good enough to get a compliment occasionally.

[diegzumillo]

Problem - Adding depth to 2D platforms

This is my current struggle. Every time I look at at the screen I see the flatest game ever made. To some extent this can be solved by adding more things in different layers; foreground, background etc. But what really drives me crazy is the sharp edge of my platforms. There is no easy way around this because of the nature of this game.

This is what a traditional platformer adds depth to platforms:



The upper side has grass, the sides have a different shading to break the pattern and the bottom has its own thing too. So this doesn't look like a lost polygon, it looks like it has depth. What makes this easy is there are only rectangular polygons.

So I tried making something here. It looks ok in this particular scenario:



I only put the edge on the upper side of these platforms and it already feels like there's camera angle involved. It's almost good. So now I would think it's just a matter of making another edge for the sides, a smaller one. But, see, this right here is the problem:



There is no up side, right side, bottom. The platforms can have any shape they like. It's just one more thing that makes me regretful for starting this project in anything but 3D.

I don't know how to solve this at the moment. My best idea involves making these platforms in 3D, extruded polygons, but I doubt it will look good. An inclined textured polygon wouldn't fit next to pixelated art.

Another idea. Adding the same edge to all sides doesn't sell the illusion at all. Unless, maybe, possibly, I code a change in color and tone depending on its orientation, but this seems like an awful lot of work for such a long shot.

I am open to suggestions 

[diegzumillo]

I made this test right after I wrote that big grumpy rant. What I'm doing is basically layering three 'edges' of grass, each with its own texture (just a different overall tint) and displaced in a specific direction. It's pretty obvious that these are layers, but... I kinda like it. I'll sleep over it. Might be better than hard edge.

[marcgfx]

looks pretty good to me. not so sure about it getting darker further back, but the approach seems quite simple and could look good. I guess it would be easier to judge in motion though.

[diegzumillo]

Thanks, marcgfx. I woke up still liking it too. I did some more tests and changing only the saturation a bit looks better. I think we have a winner :D I might also make this fake perspective change as the player goes through a curve. I don't know, we'll see.

[diegzumillo]

After a bit of coding, the final result looks quite nice! I also tested making the layers displacement change with the character. I thought it would be disorienting but the effect is much more subtle than I thought. Here's a comparison between the edge layers static and dynamic:

[marcgfx]

I'd go with dynamic, just makes more sense. otherwise you would expect the character to also change perspective. It's subtle but it gives a good sense of depth, great solution!

[Moth]

Awesome looking game and lovely effects!

[diegzumillo]

Thanks Moth

@marcgfx: that's a good argument!

World 1 is getting some visual enhancements, like light shafts and some background floating islands, and it's starting to really bring everything together! I'm quite happy now. The flatness was bothering me a lot.

I'm also considering remaking the demo. The lack of visual indication for the curved regions is its biggest problem and as time passes my fingers are starting to itch to delete this thing from the internet. It sells the wrong idea about the game, make it seem it's just a random rotation gimmick that happens unpredictably. It's important for the player to understand space is curved. While I'm at it, it will also look prettier and have an additional level. Maybe more music too... hmm, I'll see what Raoul is up to.

Cheers, people! have a good sunday. 

[diegzumillo]

The demo has been updated!

It was consuming me that the curves didn't have any visual indication. So now it has. It also looks prettier than before and has an additional level.

If anyone wants to try it out, I would love to hear your thoughts! 

Play the demo here

[marcgfx]

Interesting concept. I like how you can use the turns multiple times to alter the view. It's quite tricky to know where the dangers lie though, I fell off quite a few times. sometimes there also seems to be no way out, but maybe I just didn't have the right ideas
with the right puzzles this could be amazing!

[Zorg]

I played the demo for a few minutes and ended up finding Isaac(?). But i have the feeling i missed a big part of the demo and have to play it again. At the moment, the level design is very confusing. But everything else is great and enjoyable! Following.

[diegzumillo]

Thanks for the feedback! 

Interesting concept. I like how you can use the turns multiple times to alter the view. It's quite tricky to know where the dangers lie though, I fell off quite a few times. sometimes there also seems to be no way out, but maybe I just didn't have the right ideas
with the right puzzles this could be amazing!

Did you play the browser version? I made it with a smaller field of view than the standalone so it would fit on all browsers. But ended up designing levels thinking about the standalone resolution only  If you are playing the standalone though, I have to seriously review these levels.

I played the demo for a few minutes and ended up finding Isaac(?). But i have the feeling i missed a big part of the demo and have to play it again. At the moment, the level design is very confusing. But everything else is great and enjoyable! Following.

Yay you found Isaac! there are two hidden Isaac Newtons in the demo. In the final game they should unluck stuff.

Level design is not my forte definitely. But the signature of this mechanics is maze-like levels though, finding your way out is part of the challenge. The only level I tried to make an actual puzzle and not too mazy is the final one.

[Zorg]

Played it again and found two bugs:
1) I respawned in a checkpoint tree and immediately fell in a spike pit continuously. But i was able to escape the loop.
2) At the rotating wooden boxes with spikes i missed a platform, fell off the world and respawned, but the boxes were still rotated, spikes pointing upwards. So i could kill myself with the spikes again and again, but advancing was impossible.

[diegzumillo]

Thanks for letting me know. I know exactly where the first tree is and how to fix it, and the second bug is something I solved before but accidentally broke it again. I'll it later today.

By the way, you can skip levels (debug cheat) by pressing F1. But the rotating boxes is the last one.

[diegzumillo]

Zorg, I can't reproduce the boxes bug. I don't know what happened there.

Anyway, I decided to patch the demo again. It was going to be a simple bug fixing based on your feedback, but I decided to polish a few other things too. There are more tutorial dialogs now and one extra level to introduce something the player needs to know before the next level.

NOW I'll leave the demo alone and get back to work. No more demo reviewing, no sir. The demo is now great, oh yes, it is. There is absolutely nothing I want to change about it and will definitely not change my mind about that. Nothing will consume me from the inside, about this demo, that will require me to review it.