DAY 43
So I meant to upload a devlog yesterday, but my ISP had issues which caused a significant downtime with my internet. Now the problem is solved and I can show you guys the progress that has been made.
Work resumed on the second level, this time advancing work from part 2 to part 3. And the progress was substantial, if I do say so myself. Check it out:
And here is a clip of what it looks like in action...at least so far.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sUJrzmEQ1BSVDP4zBDGsWMu8AgBTmSX-/view?usp=sharing
The way the area feels now is...a lot slower than I have anticipated. This isn't a bad thing necessarily, because I need some downtime from the relatively intense vertical platforming from before. Some excitement was lost during a playtest because of the overuse of grappling hooks. This was greatly reduced when I replaced some grappling hooks with a zipline and added the rope swing (to which I will eventually one of these days get to the bottom of and fix the damn thing).
Even though it was substantial, it was not without it's share of obstacles. For one, I could not come up with a satisfactory "breather" area between part 2 and part 3 of the second level. I did mention in my previous devlog entry that I had three solutions. To recap, here they are again:
In the end, I chose to build something similar to the "blue" route, which was the most straightforward solution of them all. The other paths are still on the table, repurposing them for "getting to the top of that rock pillar" secret area paths. It's the most sensible approach, since there will be players who would be curious enough to attempt a climb on that until the very top. For this particular section, I haven't done anything yet. I'm planning to introduce the wall climbing mechanic here, kind of like an early tease for it. It's like when you play the first level in a game and you'd find a secret area with a weapon that you would normally find three levels later
Another obstacle was figuring out a direction for the next area. This was the least problematic but the foggiest bit of level design I've encountered so far in the project. And the solution came one drip at a time.
During playtesting, I observed that there could be a potentially scenic view right before the pillar with the first zipline on it.
So that was a start, but what next? Next, it dawned on me that some cliffs would work nicely here, like a narrower, more stylized Grand Canyon like.
OK, that would work, what now? Well, the obvious choice was to have more pillars, but in a different format. This solution was not obvious and it eluded me for quite some time.
Great, then what? Well, then put everything that was implemented until now. Grappling Hooks, Ziplines, Collapsing platforms. Wall running definitely isn't a solution here. What IS a solution, though, is the Rope Swing. Welp, this is an incentive for me to finally finish bug fixing on the rope swing. If anything until now, this has been the biggest challenge so far.
Additionally, as a byproduct of the canyon layout, I noticed an opportunity to expand the flowing river that is encountered before the first transitional area. This would be the flowing river that I mentioned
And this would be the expanded area, which ends at an enormous waterfall. This section can be approached both at the beginning of the second level as a branching path and halfway through the canyon area. The latter area is also the end of the flowing river, as seen below from a bird's-eye perspective.
The flowing river follows the outside of the canyon layout (the left hand side), ends at a big waterfall with an exit to the canyon. This facilitates the opportunity to branch out the second level and have an alternative path towards the canyon. This area would feature the same mechanics as the rock pillar area, but their usage is flipped. Meaning that mechanics that were utilized heavily in the rock pillars area are now less prominent and the mechanics that were less prominent in the rock pillars area are very prominent here.
This alternative path provides two distinct advantages:
1) leaves room for further exploration
2) adds replayability value.
This also brings 2 disadvantages:
1) more work to be done to the second level
2) the possibility of a bad experience when the player approaches the level from the canyon side and reaches back to the very beginning of the second level.
Well, that is about it for yesterday's work (today's devlog). I'll continue to work on this today and with any luck, might also post later on today.
So see you guys in the next post. Bye.