Development Progression 3


V1.2, followed by V1.21 has been released, and with it comes a bundle of features and additions.

Firstly, there are three new levels, those being 4, 5 and 6. Each one grows in difficulty with the last being the most mechanically complex

See images 1 (LVL1), 2 (LVL2) and 3 (LVL3)

I didn't want each level to be an echo of the last, so I made spike objects that destroy the player and create a white particle pulse effect when the player touches them, before resetting the scene. Following this addition, I made spikes of each colour that can be toggled on and off by the player, acting as dynamic obstacles without moving. I also began using the reverse gravity area effector in my unique cases, such as in level 5, there is a segment where the player uses one to rise a large distance and must move horizontally to avoid the obstacles as they rise.

In level 6, I wanted the player to pass through a tunnel horizontally, then pass through it vertically soon after. To avoid the player being able to skip a small section of the level, I made a small area effector that prevents the player from falling past it at the tunnel entrance. This works the same as the other anti-grav effectors, but with a great amount of force, so the player is unable to fall far into it and gain significant momentum.

The other major feature addition recently was keybinds (See image 4, CONTROLS). There is a menu available from the title screen called "options" which holds the customization options for the controls, allowing the player to choose their own. By default, the controls are:

Left - a

Right - d

Jump - w

Inverse - space

Restart - r

Pause (not customizable) - escape

The keybinds are stores as strings in Player Preferences (Unity - Scripting API: PlayerPrefs (unity3d.com)) to store the users inputted keycode as a string (such as "w", or "mouse 1"). This string is referred to in place of the regular keycode enumerator and is read the same, allowing it to register the inputs with a player-provided string instead of the usual enumerator.

There was a problem that the default keybinds were set to all similar or identical keys, which was solved by resetting the keybinds to default when the title screen is first launched only for the first time. This is achieved by checking if there is a PlayerPref of a certain ID that doesn't yet exist, and if it doesn't, then it resets the controls to default and creates the previously mentioned PlayerPref, making it only execute that statement one time on launch.

I specifically made the sixth level with mechanical skill in mind rather than speed, as I felt it necessary that there was a slightly longer and harder level like this to create an incredibly high skill ceiling for the most skilled players to compete in reaching. The more difficult levels with more variables to consider make great competing grounds, as there is almost always room for improvement and something to be optimized in a better run. Optimizing the first three levels down to the tenth of the second was done quite quickly by skilled players, so I primarily just aimed to prevent that from being so easy in the second half of levels but leaving the first three levels untouched as a stomping ground for newer players.

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