Moar level interaction

[mspraggs]

Perhaps we could have more blocks/props that the player can interact with? Ladders and launchpads spring to mind. I'm sure there's other things we could do as well.

[Fyll]

Thanks to the collision code (well, the old one at least), bouncy tiles are all ready to go.

Blocks that float around following a given trajectory would probably be best programmed as enemies which are non-lethal. Then they can obey an AI telling them to pace around in mid-air (or whatever).

I'm not too big a fan of ladders, possibly just because I'm not sure how to go about them. Also, what would the player do when climbing them (graphically, I mean)?

I've been meaning to implement the grow/shrink gun (and corresponding props) for some time (all of the bits should be there, I just need to put them together). That'd be something else, but I'll have to get around to it somewhen.

I'll see if I can figure out the wiki, and will start a list of what blocks/props/enemies/pickups/anything else we want to have in the game.

[DivFord]

Agreed on not having ladders. It's not worth the extra animation.

I feel we should shift our focus to completing the desert zone, so rather than implementing random props, we should work out which tools and props would make sense in the desert.

EDIT: I've written a lot about tools, but that's because the props depend on the tools...

Of the current tools, we've said the cannon is the starting item, and I think the mole-mitt makes sense in the desert. The ice-wand doesn't make much sense there at all. Either of the other two could fit, though there might be better places for them. Having said that, I would quite like to put the drain beam in the desert, for reasons that will become clear when I (finally) finish the enemy concepts…

As far as new tools go, the flamethrower has been proposed, and seems like a good fit. Some sort of wind-related item might also be interesting. We could add wind turbines for it to activate. Another idea might be some sort of bomb-launcher. It could work like bombs in Zelda, and destroy cracked rocks. I'd quite like to reduce the rate of fire on the cannon, so maybe a chain gun could be added as a rapid-fire version.

Three desert zones feels about right to me (three is a magic number), so if we get one item per zone, and have two to choose from, six is probably the number to aim for. That way, even on the third zone, there are still 4 items left from which the game will offer two, so things aren't too predictable. Which is the long way of saying "more ideas please".

[Fyll]

If you want to start writing ideas and whatnot down, I've put up a few wiki pages (currently, basically just lists).

Assuming the cannon is that starting item, that gives two pickupable items in the desert (namely, the Mole Mitt and the Drain Beam) at the moment. More would be nice, but it shouldn't be our top priority.

So is the plan: 10 desert levels, then 10 desert levels, then another 10 desert levels, then on to a different world and repeat? If so, that seems like a lot of desert. The alternative of 3 desert levels would be a bit too quick I'd imagine, unless the levels are really big.

[DivFord]

What is our top priority then? At the very least, we need 4 pickup-able items for the desert, otherwise it's impossible to offer three choices between two items.

Three sets of 10 was what I had in mind, but with each set being a slightly different kind of desert. That way we get variety, but also re-use lots of assets. I was thinking of maybe basic desert, followed by Dune-style desert (worms and spice, in case that wasn't clear), followed by desert ruins, though that's very much up in air at the moment.

[Fyll]

I thought the layout was going to be ~10 of one zone, then ~10 of another, etc, picking up a new weapon at the end (or beginning (or middle)) of each one. That way only two weapons were needed for each zone. The Basic Desert, Dune Desert, and Ruin Desert would then all just be different zones.

I'd list priorities as:

• Finish procedural room generation.
• Sort out progression through different zones.
• Get at least the Point Gems to work (I really should have already done this. Real life just jumped out and scared me).

Thinking of a list of priorities is hard. The point that I've failed to make is that I feel we should get what we have working properly and well before we try adding extra stuff in. Coming up with new ideas is good, but sticking extra stuff into the code at the moment may not be.

[DivFord]

End, I think. Feel free to think of the three deserts as different zones, but I think they should be drawing from a shared pool of 'desert items'. If we segment things too much, we lose part of the appeal of procedural generation.

Priorities are indeed hard… Honestly, I'd sort of lost track of where the coding had got to, so I may have been plowing ahead a bit too much. That said, without a goal to make progress, we're likely to just muddle around creating bugs and fixing them forever.

I agree that finishing procgen rooms is the top priority right now, but I think zone progression should maybe wait until we 'finish' the first zone. That's why I was pushing for a clear idea of what that zone is supposed to be.

I'll see if I can make some art for the point gems today. Do you want them in props, or should we add a sprite sheet for pickups?

[Fyll]

True... However, there are a few things that should be sorted out before we continue (I'm still working on collisions, fire, and animations...).

Fair enough. I do feel that 30 levels of desert might be too much though. Yes there are small differences, but it's still the same pool, and everything's still going to be brown!

I think a separate spritesheet would probably be better.

[DivFord]

If 30 levels is too many, the solution is probably to reduce the number of levels per zone, rather than the number of sub-zones. It should be easy enough to play test with 3x10, then change the number as required.

I could palette-swap the desert tile set… :P

[Fyll]

A purple desert, eh? Well, the game was originally supposed to be about drugs....

[DivFord]

The tile set we're using is actually a palette-swapped version of this one:

[mspraggs]

Following on from today's discussion:

• exploding crates,
• bullet impact animations.

[Fyll]

Exploding crates are now a thing. There's no bang or explosion, but they burst and knock everything around them back.

[DivFord]

How long has that been a thing? Because I thought that was a bug...

[Fyll]

Maybe two pushes? It should be a lot more reasonable now (I've tweaked the numbers a little).