DAY 26
Took a break from the Rope Swing mechanic and focused on something else I've been trying to implement: Grappling Hook. So far, it has been going rather smooth.
To give a small taste, the Grappling Hook I'm trying to implement is based on a similar mechanic found in one of my recent favorite games, Journey To The Savage Planet. In this game, you have a pistol-like weapon that can also be used in an utilitarian way, such as a grappling hook: you shoot at a certain point in the world, which is indicated via a UI button. When you do that, that pistol fires a grappling beam of sorts and pulls you towards the grappling point. This is how I plan to implement it in my game as well.
If you do not know this game but the described mechanic sounds familiar to you, think of it as the Batman Arkham series Grappling mechanic in first person.
Now, for the reason why this mechanic came into existence is because I wanted a very dynamic and exciting traversal method. An additional layer of raeson would be that the Rope Swing is causing a lot of problems both from a design POV and from a technical POV. Let me break it down for you:
From a design perspective, there were a few but very easily reproductible test cases where the player would swing so much that, after detaching from the rope, he/she could basically swing the rope onto a cliff and lock himself/herself out of progressing through the game. I wish I would've filmed the test cases and show a GIF to you guys, but I didn't film them. I'll keep this as a mental note and film my test cases in the future.
Furthermore, based on the test cases above, I concluded that there has to be a certain layout for the rope swing to work and for the player to not block himself/herself out of the game progression: wide open spaces with a death trigger below. As I was typing the previous, it suddenly dawned on me that most of the sections, if not all, from Jedi Fallen Order where Rope Swing was present, were more or less coincidentally fairly wide open spaces with a bottomless pit. OK, so there's another idea for a level.
For the moment I'm putting the rope swing on hold. I don't intend to shelf the mechanic, because it has potential. But I do need to investigate a solution thoroughly to make it work properly. Between the Rope Swing and the Grapple Hook, I wanted to make the Rope Swing more prominent than the Grapple Hook. But alas, it was not meant to be like that...
And so, the Grapple Hook came into being. Well, at least into being worked on. This mechanic also solves some design problems, like not being dependent on a certain layout to work. It can work, horizontally, vertically, diagonally, upwards or downwards. It has a lot of wiggle room and a lot of options for the player and for me as well. It also solves a level clutter problem: if you had 10 ropes in the level, that level would seem very very busy and confusing. Maybe cool, I don't know, but certainly confusing. The grapple hook, on the other hand, only needs grappling points and those blend in naturally with the environment.
Onto non-technical related stuff. Remember the bridge at the beginning of the first level? Here's a refresher:
Now, the bridge has been replaced with something more appropriate for the setting:
To be fair, it's a marketplace asset, but it does the job better as a placeholder than that blocky version. This will be the template I will build bridges in the game.
Also, some advancements in the level design department were made. Worked on the Rock Pillars level that will hopefully showcase the Grappling hook.
I don't know if you can see it, but in one of the screenshots, you can see the UI widgets for the grappling hook points. Let me zoom in.
OK, so that's it for today. This day was much more productive than yesterday...well at least less hassle-y. See ya in the next post. Bye.