New Gameplay Video! Taking some of the inspiration from Gamecamp, I’ve captured a new gameplay video! A lot of the fine control adjustments really don’t translate to a video presentation, but some of the points to look for include: compass arrows for off-screen enemies, enemies that shoot back / different enemy types and alternate worlds:
Two points with this video: the first, the compass arrows are an interesting experiment. I’m not sure if I like them or not, but from a gameplay perspective they make a huge difference (and are more successful than alternate solutions including rendering enemies through the geometry (which only works in a select few cases) and an overlaid radar which doesn’t map well to the 3d space). The second point: for the alt worlds, the idea is that when in the red world, the white world enemies are shadows (and otherwise unable to see or touch you). While you can see the red enemies in the white would, you can’t hurt them and they can’t see you – but if you go to the red world, they now become quite violent and aggressive. Note that the red enemies are converting the white coins to red (which slow you down in the normal world but become collectable in the red world) – the radius by which they affect them is currently too small, but I will change how all that works as soon as I get back into the code.
I tried having a pickup trigger alt world switch ability (as well as specific portals in the world), but ultimately the push-button switch seems to be the best. Provided the user is prevented from getting into the alt world before the red enemies and coins, the switch allows for an easy option to escape as well to strategically attack / avoid larger enemies. Watching my Fiancé’ play last night, she made huge use of this feature without any prompting – I’m not quite sure where it will end up, but that first initial test is encouraging.
I’m going to continue to refine this, but I’m also going to start looking at what sort of changes multiplayer will require. I’ve kept half a brain to the netcode requirements (and I am familiar with Unreal’s networking system) but I also haven’t done any multiplayer development in about 5 years… which should make this interesting. Fingers crossed though!
Categories: Design, Development, Gameplay, Testers, Video
