this time I did some restructuring .. thing is I lost track of how many level stubs I got
and realised that starting a new map from scratch can wait for later
here is the current level select as you can see there are 5 bosses and about 19 levels (in various stages)
so I decided that it's time to cut things and 15 levels + 5 bosses will be plenty
also 5 levels from these will be small and very linear maps
the four extra maps will be merged into .. wherever I can merge them into
and there will be 10 big levels - and by big I mean these will be the exploratory levels
so these will take about 10-15 mins per map and I predict that the full game will be about 3 hours tops
.. which is still a lot considering that my past games only took about 30 mins max to beat (according to lets plays I found)
ok so the plan is:
10 big maps 5 small maps 5 boss maps
of course these are just plans - and you know how plans are
(I originally wanted 30 large levels after all )
anyway this is one of the maps I reworked to be the new level 2 (so the old level 2 is now level 3 and so on)
this was originally a frankensteinish mish-mash of various ideas put together and they never quite fit
and back then I decided to deal with it later
this is how it looked like before the rework
this is after - as you can see only most of the lower part was kept
the little basketball field and the large room was what I wanted to keep -
there is a joke with the basketball room that I absolutely insisted on having in the game
and so the whole map was twisted and turned to make it work
an unfriendly game of basketball
to get all secrets on this level you need to throw the ball in the hoop
just to screw with potential 100% speed runners
your reward is a powerup - in this case the Zortch equivalent of Dooms megasphere (extra health and armor)
still redoing this map was not easy - I left myself many notes with the
"just type it into the command line and make a screenshot " trick
which starting to prove itself very useful
sometimes I figured out the solution as I was typing (here I was wondering why some enemies didn't spawn)
many times I would just make a quick note without thinking .. like a reflex
in the end one thing is certain:
.. I'll see myself out
also here is another little gameplay video - this time about puzzle design:
until next time!