transportational joy

Arrow keys for movement and crouching, spacebar to jump. Use arrow keys while swinging to increase his spin. Hold down spacebar to make the jump last longer. Hit spacebar again when holding on to a wall to wall jump.

I have moving platforms!

This is still just a simple demo of new stuff. If you want something more involved, and haven't done it yet, go fight some thugs and upload your high score here.

Yeah, they're glorified collision lines that have velocity. I had to do a lot of fiddling to get everything working just right, but I'm happy with the final result.

I was going simply to have a platform helping you get across the pit, but that would be too boring, so I've given you a very simple puzzle - can you get to the other side? a brain teaser that should take you all of two minutes to figure out! Fun fun fun!

So, the nice things about what I've done in these last two posts is that there are multiple uses for each - the line that kills Dreg then resets him could also be used to avoid game-breaking bugs. If for dodgy collision code or dodgy level layout Dreg falls through the floor, I could have a sort of "safety net" that will put him back where he should be...

As for the moving platforms, they could also be things like floating objects, or cars, or whatever, to keep the level layout interesting.

So what's next? Well I still need to integrate moving platforms into the level editor, as well as design different kinds (those that move in loops, those that are only activated when Dreg jumps on them, etc.)

After that, here's my "to do" list:

- menu screens
- NPC interaction
- the HUD
- items
- cut scenes
- stitching zones together (as in, the whole game can be explored freely, but to avoid too many demands on the processor, the world will be split into zones that are loaded as the player enters them...)
- level design - how are events triggered? how are missions given and stored?
- potentially other acrobatics (monkey bars, ladders etc.) but I'm not sure I can be bothered with them

Once I've got all these engine elements together I'll be able to get down and busy with making the actual game - designing, animating and maybe doing some extra coding for enemies, designing levels etc.

The plan is to have the whole game done before Christmas. Excitement.