Manifold Labyrinth Dev Diary 2

Alright, so it’s been about a month and I have made very little progress, too much real life... But I have got the game to a stable enough point where I feel like I can show it off!  I have also decided on the name that should fit the game fairly well, 'Manifold Labyrinth'.  The name still might change in the future, maybe to something like 'Manifold Maze', but for now it will do. On this post I will try to talk about where the game is at currently and where I want to take it.

Current state of the game

I have finally found a half decent way to map the levels on paper.  You wouldn’t believe the number of different ways I went through just to visualize it on paper.  It takes a while to map it out because I have to draw each region three times (top, side, front) with a variety of markings representing different depths and corners, but it works better than the other methods I have tried.

The core feature of the game works and works quite well.  I’m not sure if I said that last time, but now it is improved).  The player travels seamlessly from region to region except for one small thing... Currently the game only renders the region that the player is in, and the regions connected to the current region.  The problem occurs when the player can see straight to where another region should be, but isn't rendered because it is not connected to the player’s current region.  There is a simple fix for this; I just haven't had the time to implement it.

Collision is something I had to rewrite this past month, and it is a lot better, but still far from perfect.  I managed to get rid of 90% of my old collision code and optimize it a fair bit so it runs a lot faster with much better results.  But as I said, it still has some problems.  If you walk into a wall at just the right angles you won’t fall down.  There are also a couple of other small glitches and optimizing which I will need to do at some point.  But as of now it does what it needs so I probably won’t see any changes for a while.

I haven't been able to settle on a color scheme which I like, and sadly, that is one of the things I have spent more of my time on then I care to admit.  It looks alright in its current state but it could look so much better.  I did a little tweaking to the shaders and added a little bit of the normal to the color of the walls so players could see better where the corners are.  This is something I will probably just keep on tweaking through the whole development because I doubt I will ever be happy with it.

I also have one playable level (really just half a level with no end), but it should give a good understanding of how the game is going to be designed.

What I want to add

There are a lot of puzzle mechanics I want to add, but the first on I plan on adding is just a simple key and door mechanic.  Primarily because need to added to finish up the level I’m working on, but also because it is one of the most versatile and easiest to understand.

Some others I plan on adding:

·        Redirect a laser

·        Move and object to a trigger.

·        Switch a lever to open a door.

·        Move an object to hop on to get to a higher spot.

·        Conveyor belt.

·        One way door.

For the most part the puzzles will be built from fairly simple mechanics. I may also cut out the ‘redirect laser’, seems a little too much like portal and would be one of the more complicated ones to implement.  I might also cut out the conveyor belt and one way door, they don’t add an awful lot to the game play and I could achieve many of the puzzles they could create with other mechanics.

I still don’t have a basic menu so that will need to be added.  Along with that I need to add a timer, and some sort of scoring system.  And I still need an obvious start and end.

Jumping.  Jumping is not something I originally planned to have in the game, but after one of my friends played it, he mentioned that it felt really unnaturally that he wasn’t able to jump, even though there was nowhere to jump too.  So I think I will add jumping into that game.  Along with that I will probably add some object you can drag around which allows you to jump on it to get to higher spots.

So that’s it for today, here is a quick demo of the game in its current state, bugs and all.  I’ll be on vacation for a couple of weeks so I probably won’t have anything done for a while…