Minimaps, hidden areas and stupid armour

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. A is for punch and D for kick. Press S to hold a grenade, the release S to throw it (be careful - hold it too much and you'll blow up!

Wahey! Look! A mini-map! It is excellent.

Anyway, this is an update of pleasant surprises, in the form of small touches that make a big difference (to me, anyway!)

So I was working on getting an easy system to have parts of the background seem to be in front of Dreg - this is important for things like when he's hanging off of corners (so that the lower part of his body is hidden by the floor... urgh, can't explain!!!)

I wanted to do this to allow Dreg to pass through windows (he is in front of the wall most of the time, but as he walks through a window, the part of the wall between the window frame and the foreground needs to be in front of Dreg. Again, can't explain. My Brain!)

Anyway, I suddenly realised that the same mechanic I use to have the grenade explosion reveal a part of the level could also be used to reveal hidden areas Dreg accesses. As you go through the window (in the part of the level to the left) the room is revealed as you enter it. The nice thing about this is that it was done entirely through my "level editor" - no additional coding was needed. That was nice.

The other nice surprise was how cool I find the simple addition of a gradient to the mini-map to give it volume. Observe:

Before

After

See? Now it looks like a compass or something! You might think it sucks, but I think it's wonderful, and so simple!

Then there's the armour. Again, you probably think it looks stupid, but I'm totally ok with that. In fact, I want to go further with the stupidness - I think I'll have three different suits of armour, and you obtain them part by part (helmet, torso, arms and legs), either by buying or finding them. Each part will increase your armour score, so it always makes sense to have the best version of each part equipped. My hope is that you'll end up with a horribly matched Dreg, which at the very least will make me laugh. Yipeeee!

Next up, shops, money, and the other suits of armour.