Thinking Outside the Box [or Chimney…] (7.16.2014)

Almost a month to the day I last updated the blog, so we have some consistency going!

As a reward, I’ll outline some of the things I’ve been up to since then, and also tease a few more things to come!

Sounds fun, right?

Err… right.

> [ Everfree Build Evaluation ] <

Over the past week, I pushed out a build of the finished Everfree Forest area to select folks to see if there were any design flaws, new bugs, and general questions/concerns.

This time, the response was largely positive with only a few minor complaints such as corridor spacing in one of the levels, as well as the fact that the time limits were rather generous.

I’ve fixed most of those issues, and I’ve been mostly retweaking certain Everfree levels for max enjoyment. It’s foundation-complete now, and I’ve moved on to our next area:

> [ Welcome to Appleloosa! ] <

For Appleloosa, I do want to consider the ideas I’ve had in the original game (smaller level builds, more focus on quick movement), as well as the ideas I examined in the game demo and other conceptual stages (more procedural movement, less deviation from the beaten path).

Appleloosa’s levels to me should have a certain feeling of not overstaying its welcome - so, not too long, and meant for the quickest ponies around. The early version of Appleloosa emphasized that with shorter time limits (which spiked the difficulty) and also careful enemy placement.

Today, I’ll begin drafting up a few of those ideas by re-imagining the old design and making the necessary adjustments to see if it fits in with the area’s “ethos”, so to speak.

As for enemies… that is still something I want to consider later, though this really isn’t much of a game about defeating things. Well, we’ll continually ponder that along the way. I really want to bring back the old parasprite enemies, but in a much better way possible. For now, the focus is strictly on the level’s foundations, rather than its features.

> [ Aesthetics ] <

I won’t exactly kid myself - the game’s aesthetics need a ton of work. There is no distinct “look” for it right now, though I have been mucking around with a few splash screens in order to give it sort of a clean feel. Like I’ve expressed in the past, I would need an artist to sync with my vision for the game in order to have a proper focus on the game aesthetics.

For now, the splash screens are in, and to get more technical, I’ve enabled anti-aliasing for the game, which should make it look smoother and less jagged.

The new Pinkie Pie animations are not in as yet, so this will take a little while longer. Please understand.

> [ Mechanics ] <

Mechanics-wise, the game is set for some pretty sizable changes.

First off, I will not force the collection of all coins in a level.

To further explain, I want to preserve the idea of a challenging game by adding an element of collection - rather than making the coins stay front and center, it would help to have some of them be more overt, and others more covert.

This opens up a whole new avenue to the game - how fast you can beat it (essentially speed-running).

In my last project, Marble Incline, you rolled a marble through a maze-like area to get the fastest time. The times for each level would be saved, and you would be able to go back through the game to try and beat your fastest time.

For Perilous Platforms, you can challenge yourself to finish it in the fastest time possible, but there’s a price - of course, that would be the coin collecting.

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The game’s story is of Pinkie Pie retrieving her lost bits in a variety of levels in order to fund and plan Spike and Twilight Sparkle’s one-year anniversary party (of their arrival to Ponyville).

The more you collect, the more bombastic and awesome your ending will be. Think of Luigi’s Mansion where the king of death stares himself gets to rebuild his mansion at the end of the game with the money he finds - it can either be a modest home, something a bit more lavish, or another huge (but non-creepy) mansion.

I want to have different endings depending on how players complete the game - either very quickly, or by taking their time. And to paraphrase from one of my friends who is testing the game, I “don’t want to make it like Sonic Unleashed’s medals, those are the worst.”

Meaning that Sonic Unleashed had a system where you needed to collect medals to progress in-game. That system is counter-intuitive to the speedrun-friendly focus of the game, so don’t count on a “you need x amount of bits to access the Everfree Forest area”-style of progression - you move at your own pace.

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So, to fully realize that speedrun-friendly vision I mentioned, I’ve migrated some of the systems from Marble Incline over to Perilous Platforms, and while it took some time to retool, it has functioned quite well with the tests I’ve made.

At the end of each area of the game, you’ll be presented with a screen that records:

your current and fastest times for the levels

the amount of coins that were collected in the level

staff times for the levels

I also considered some sort of grading scheme for each level, but I’ll leave that to chance right now. Plus I never really get how platforming gets graded.

So, does this sound appealing to you at all? Maybe yes, maybe no, but we’ll have to see for ourselves!

> [ Epilogue ] <

So, there you have it!

Both the Ponyville and Everfree Forest areas are foundation-complete, with Appleloosa up next. Also, the new mechanics for the game moving forward are still being carefully considered. More than likely, the Appleloosa build will have instances of the new mechanics, so let’s hope that they have a good impression.

Furthermore, I’m still somewhat on track to wrap up the level foundations by the end of my summer holiday, but in order for that to happen, I would need to spend two weeks on each remaining area, with the last one slightly overlapping with my first week of the new semester.

So until next time, my friends! Back to work for me!