Brand New Bells!

A brand new set of bells based from Lazarus' wonderful concept art are now complete and UDK ready for level 1!  Awesome sauce!

Ooh!  Shiny!

And as an added bonus, these bells come with exciting new puzzles designed to bring additional gameplay to level 1.  Instead of being an optional tool to extend the player's tether, these bells will be imperative in helping the player advance through the level.  Each bell will produce a different sound, and players must ring them in the correct order to proceed.

That.... doesn't describe much, does it?  But fear not!  Details are currently still being sorted out.  We're hoping the new puzzles will be finalized and implemented within the next sprint.

Finally, the Flying Golem is coming to life!

Thanks to Kersti's awesome concept art for the Flying Golem, our vision for it is coming into reality:

Pretty cool, right?

And I am working hard to accurately bring her concept into 3-D, and then into the world of Chime. Usually, I am a strict polygons-only sort of modeler, so you wouldn't believe how much trouble I had getting Maya curves to behave like this!

Slingshot mechanic working!

So I spent a lot of time this weekend experimenting with the Slingshot mechanic.  Interestingly enough, I realized purely by accident that you can "ricochet" yourself off of your surroundings, reaching areas you were not aiming directly at.  This video shows me playing through two puzzles that I hope take advantage of this feature.

I think its very promising!

Meetings and Consecutive Tethering Particle

So this weekend the Programming/Mechanics/Puzzle design team had a meeting to all get on the same page about what exactly it is that we are going to accomplish this quarter on the mechanics front. We are now all on the same page, and we have a much more solidified idea of the exact functionality we need from each mechanic.

We had a small group meeting earlier today. We discussed, among other things, some gameplay improvements that can be made to Level 1. These improvements deal with making Level 1 more about exploration, and revealing the narrative to the player as gameplay progresses.

We also decided on which bell concepts we wanted to use for what purposes.

Flying Golem Bell - calls the flying golems
Gravity Bell - suspends gravity
Wind Bell - calls bursts of wind
Level 1 Bell - used for environment exploration in level 1

And on a programming front, minor improvements have been made to the slingshot mechanic. Also, the particle effect for player feedback for consecutive tether switching has been implemented and looks pretty cool. This led to the discovery of a small bug concerning the consecutive tether switching, but it has been remedied. Huzzah!

Also, this happened.

Slingshot Mechanic Prototyped!

Whoo! So the second of our major mechanics has an initial prototype. It still needs a lot of work, but its getting there!

//------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
state Slinging
{
    local vector slingVelocity;
   
    function PlayerMove(float DeltaTime)
    {   
        // Move pawn to the current tether position.
        Pawn.Velocity = -30 * slingVelocity;
       
        UpdateRotation( DeltaTime );
    }
   
    event BeginState(Name PreviousStateName)
    {
        slingVelocity = HTPawn(Pawn).Location - HTPawn(Pawn).MovementBoundsPosition;
    }
}

I know, you are saying, really Kersti? It took you that long to write this snippet of code? Jeeze you suck. This is just the snippet of code that defines what is happening. Easy peasy. The real challenge was in making this snippet work with the rest of the code. All the rest of my coding effort for this problem was in a million little places everywhere else in the script that needed some new variable, some new function. Also, I had to rework the way the states worked a little bit, but they work better now!

Anyway. From here on out for the slingshot mechanic, most of what I will need to do will be expanding this little snippet into a larger snippet.  All the programming structure is in, now I just have to finesse it, make it more involved.

But before I do that, I am going to go back and fix up the Moveable Golem mechanic a bit. Also, going to implement a feedback particle for consecutive tether switching.

Prototyping Mechanics

For Sprint #2 I am constantly prototyping in engine the new Dragging mechanic and the Slingshot mechanic.  I will be working closely with Kersti to make these mechanics run as smoothly as possible.

This week I have set up the new Dragging mechanic and have been toying around with it.  There was a little trouble setting up the custom node initially, but Kersti has figured out the problem and I am looking forward to setting up a solid puzzle with them now!

Moveable Golem Kismet Node

Thought I had done this already, but it was brought to my attention that I hadn't. I made a kismet node that will change whether a moveable golem is moveable or not. This node can be activated when a bell rings to make specific golems moveable, and then activated again when a bell has finished its 'cooldown' to make the golems un-moveable again.