Archive:
Finished off the bathroom. The baths move around a spline, and sink when you land on them. No new code, I parented sinking platforms to spline following NPC actors, and everything “just worked”. Although I need to do a new splash effect.
Also added a check to the player character to support immunity for different types of death. When the player’s in a bath, they’re also overlapping the purple-death-water-kill-trigger. Now, once the bath gets below a certain height – where it would look as if it’s underwater – I remove the immunity, the player dies, job’s a good-un.
Made a start modelling “Top Landing”.
Top Landing is done. Another Monkey Ball type thing, but this time you can fall off.
I had to change a couple of things to support killing the player while they controlled the rolling ball. The Game Mode assumed LU_PlayerCharacter would always be under player control, and called functions directly on that class, so I switched those over to use the IPlayableCharacter interface, so now any type of pawn the player controls can be killed and respawned.
A lot of the pickups in this room move around on splines, which is kinda nice, but the ball moves so slowly I doubt anyone would ever fall out of bounds. I think I need to add some flying baddies – maybe reuse the Head Over Heels chopper face? – to make the player flap a little bit more…
– The intro to the first game was meant to be a nod to Mark Rayson’s Retrovision events. He was ahead of the curve, getting people into pubs and halls to play “retro” games long before it became the sort of kickstarter fuelled thing it is today. I met the Llamasoft crew at Retrovision, and plenty of talented people, like Gary Liddon, who took a punt, and helped me get into the game industry. In the end, I didn’t do much justice to Retrovision in the intro scene – it was real last-minute-Larry stuff – but the thought was there.
Anyway, that’s a long-winded segue way into talking about the intro to this game, which I’ve always figured should be closer to where I am now; sitting in my pants, making whatever pops into my head on a given morning, except with a Buck Rogers tunnel, counting down the years…
I was fully prepared to hop onto Turbo Squid and buy the props for this, but then I found The Base Mesh, a site full of much higher quality stuff, for free! It is the absolute business. So I’ve got the rough layout for an office. Sans textures. Looks nothing like my actual office, but that’s by the by. This is my new hangover / CBA thing.
Didn’t get a lot done today, (my other jobs got in the way) but I did add some enemies to Top Landing, and also unlocked the camera rotation, so now you can spin around and see where you’re going. I’m not 100% happy with the ball movement, tbh - the lack of friction definitely feels off – but I don’t think I can really spend the time to get it perfect. Enemy of good, and all that.
Made Hidden Landing. Another tilting / rolling ball thing, but with the guard rails off. Ultimately, this will lead to another Ben Boombox, but I need to think of something for the player to do in there.
The Wine Cellar. Gotta be honest, I’ve been putting this room off for ages because I’ve never had a good idea for it. I was tempted to do a variation of the Donkey Kong thing I had in the first game, with wine barrels rolling down girders, except this time you’d have to climb up, rather than run down. In the end, I reused the sinking platforms (again, gonna have to lay off those), but this time with purple death water spouts. The spouts move up and down, so there’s a bit of a timing thing to this one, and to be a complete bastard, I made the barrel’s collision a capsule, so you really have to concentrate and land on them cleanly. It’s a bit tricksy, so I’ve added a new type of light to the room that directly follows the player, and put a reflective base under the water, so there’s more for the player’s drop-shadow decal to draw on.
I was going to make some of the barrels spin, so when you landed on them, you’d be pushed forward, but… That’s super tricky. I might save that for later, though.
This room also has a Ben Boombox, off to the side, hidden by a wand wall. Need to think of something to do in that, as well.
Friends:
If you like any of my work, please consider checking out some of the fantastic games made by the following super talented people:
