posted in Projects Of Some Degree Of Interest

Hey! long time no see! Welcome to your favourite weekly blog! To recap what I said last Saturday, I could not write at that time. Thus this post will be pretty big. So, without further ado, get ready for your weekly update fix!

Elevator Updates

First, elevators were upgraded. Their 3D models used to be rather simplistic and not very detailed. They also didn't work at all.

But now, they're a bit more detailed.

For example, the lower part has a textured wallpaper. There's also a bit more elaborated decorations inside too!

There's even a decorative light above the elevator. Elevators also got proper elevator buttons both on the outside and the inside.

Like I said last week, to use an elevator, players must first fully enter it and interact with its panel. Then the doors close and the elevator moves to its destination. Once arrived, its doors reopen.

All elevator looks the same. Even in platforming challenges!

There's still some work to do but elevators are now fully functional. You can even find them around in levels.

Sliding Doors Update

Second, sliding doors also got an upgrade. While sliding doors can be blocked, it used to be hard to figure out...

Now we can easily find out the door is blocked while looking at a light.

When it's off, then the door is blocked and vice versa.

Pushable blocks

Third, there are now also pushable blocks. The idea is that this kind of block can be pushed by players to activate some pressure plates.

These are particularly useful for keeping a pressure plate on. They can also be used as platforms to access far away places.

New Challenges

Next, there are three newly implemented challenges. Let's take a look:

Challenge #4

With the push blocks, I was finally able to complete challenge #4. As I said before, the challenge is divided into three parts ...

Here is a short video showing this challenge:

Challenge #6

Here's a brand new challenge. It consists of a little labyrinth with forking paths. The idea is that each room has three possible exits. However, only one of these exits will lead to the next room... The rest will put you back at the beginning.

However, there is a trick: just use your ears. If an exit is real, it will sound different from the others.

There are 7 different rooms, after which we recover the loot.

The path is always randomly generated. The idea is to rely on hearing, not on memory.

Here is a small video showcasing this off:

Challenge #7

And finally, here's challenge #7. This is quite the traditional platforming challenge.

The idea here is that it consists of two distinct parts supposed to represent a reflection.

There are plenty of moving platforms and rotating platforms. Everything is reflected including the platforms. It isn't a complex challenge: it's just a high concept...

Here is the video:

Hard Challenges

And finally, there are now different difficulty levels for each challenge. The idea is that some challenges will be harder than others.

Most of the time, the harder challenges mostly consist of countless bottomless pits. In general, moving platforms will also go much faster. Some harder challenges might even complexify some puzzles.

To illustrate, let's take the challenge # 1.

Here we see the normal difficulty. There are solid floors and falling off generally isn't that bad.

Now let's crank that difficulty up a notch!

As you can see, the floor is gone. Instead, there's a big bottomless pit. One wrong move and you're done...

Minor Updates

Fixed a bug where the level generation wasn't deterministic. The same seed didn't always yield the same result.

Big player controller refactor. Now the player controller can properly deal with character collision hit flags.

Fixed a bug where bombs explosion wouldn't affect rigid bodies anymore.

Fixed a bug where sometimes the wrong reflection probe would be used for floor reflections.

Added some SFX that plays whenever an object falls into bottomless pits.

Fixed a bug where active bombs and arrows wouldn't get removed once they hit a liquid or a bottomless pit.

Fixed a bug where players would sometimes get teleported outside an elevator while taking one.

Fixed a bug where unblocked sliding doors wouldn't nudge at all.

Next Week

Now that challenges are accessible through the main game it's only a matter of adding a bit more. I also need to polish the elevator spawning a bit while adding a bit more SFX and details.

Next up it's your usual suspects.

So that's about it!