Hello people!

It’s been nearly 2 months since my last update! Looking back I can’t believe how much progress I have made on the game since then & how much personality my character is starting to show!

So, what have I been working on?

The main focus of the last 2 months has been getting my characters movement down and tackling how the game feels to play, it’s been challenging & I’ve encountered massive learning curves, but it’s been extremely rewarding. Learning about all the quality of life features that makes a platformer feel great & ultimately carving out my own settings, to make it feel truly unique. I’ve been using things like Jump/Fall curves, corner correction, Jump Buffering & Coyote time on wall jumps, cooldown management/effects & many more features! (For breakdowns of each feature, check out my Dev Log playlist on YouTube!)

For the main features I’ve been working on, here is a breakdown of each one:

Dashing & Dash Effects

The dash has gone through quite a few iterations, the original dash I had was inspired by Celeste & Hollow Knight & while it had subtle differences, it lacked a unique identity. I loved the way it worked, mechanically it plays really well with my character, but visually it was quite vanilla. One of the major things I learnt is how much I can convey about my character, through the visuals of each action. For example, instead of a basic dash, I added a few elements that made it stand out;

• The dash particles are unique sprites that loop through and get smaller, to show magical crystal shards coming from the arm
• The particles emit directly from the arm, no matter the direction you dash in, further emphasizing the root of his power being from the arm
• After the dash, to track cooldown we have a pink/white gradient ghost trail that tracks back to the arm & a flash on the cooldown, this is my favorite part, I’ve never seen a dash do this before, it’s visual candy!

Wall Sliding/Jumping

One of the big additions to the movement is wall sliding & jumping. It allows more dynamic traversal across the levels, however it’s built in a way to prevent the player from just wall jumping up the entire level! I have neutral wall jumps, that gives you a boost straight up & directional wall jumps to push away from the wall! I also integrated my particle from jump/land into this, so we have directional particles as we launch away from the wall!

Jump Curves/Fall Curves

I revisited my jump to add Jump/Fall curves, this allowed me to have way more control over the arc/hang time of the jump. My character has the ability to attack while on the move, especially in mid air, so it’s important that I have enough hang time to attack mid air, but not enough that it makes the player feel to floaty. It took a while, but the jump feels perfect now!

Momentum/Acceleration

Working on momentum and acceleration has been tough, as trying to find a balance between something that feels good, is fun to play & matches what I want isn’t easy. Personally, I really like snappy movement with instant responsiveness, I’m not a massive fan of long acceleration curves as I find it frustrating to want to do something and be hamstrung. So I added a VERY small acceleration curve, so you can feel a ramp up to max speed when walking, but it’s subtle & player intention is kept. I still have a lot of work to do on post action momentum, like coming out of a dash/running, so that will get tightened up over the coming weeks!

Look Up/Crouch with Camera Panning

Holding the “Up” button has a “Look Up” animation & holding “Down” has a “Crouch” animation. Both are built in with a camera panning function, so while in those states, the camera will move up/down to reveal more of the level, this can be used to strategically see what’s above/below!

Quality of life features

I’ve added a BUNCH of quality of life features, to make playing the game feel extremely smooth, I won’t go into them in detail here, but here are the main ones;

• Corner correction (Vertical & Horizontal) on jumping/dashing
• Jump Buffering / Coyote time for wall jumping
• Edge push (If moving slowly off an edge, we give the player a slight push)
• Air Drag (If turning in the air, we apply air drag so limit momentum)

Initial work on attacks

I’ve started doing the initial work on my attacks, it’s very basic at the moment, but the crystal arm is going to shoot a boomerang projectile, that’s all I can say about it at the moment, but anyone who played Rayman 1 will know what I am going for!

YouTube

I also have a YouTube video in the works going through everything I have worked on so far, so look out for that!

See you soon with more updates!