MyRobot Development Part 28

Video shows the summary, text shows the technical.

This week:

• Improved Grapple Hook

• Small Polishes

• Map Growth

Improved Grapple Hook

 One of the problems with the old way the grapple hook worked was that every time the robot latched onto something, it would turn into a ragdoll. That lead to more likely physics glitches and made the player treat the ragdoll as a doll. And it took forever for the robot to get up, leading to clumsy gameplay loops.

With this new change it's almost instant to land and grapple again. Like I said in my previous development post, I want faster gameplay! Less dealing with physics and more results when you click a button.

Small Polishes

 This month turned into a polish month because it will be cut short with me being gone for a week (So no devpost next weekend!). So I used this past week again to knock out easy tasks and improve/fix existing features. Some of the things I did include:

• Removing sparks coming out of body parts when you grabbed them and they were already connected

• Robot running up slopes made it slam its feet into the incline

• If you didn't want to wear a new found item, you would awkwardly leave it on the ground. So I turned unlockables into gifts that disappear when you touch them and can instead be ordered at the store after you unlock them.

• Made a couple signs for the grapple hook tutorial area to teach you the tricks and mechanics.

Map Growth

So map growth is a tricky beast because it largely depends on how many robot mechanics there are. For example, the grapple hook prompted me to make the grapple hook zone and the laser arm prompted me to make the bug cave.

The tricky part is that I want each map zone to work with ALL upcoming or existing gadgets. I don't want people to cheese areas with 1 early-game gadget. Map growth is therefore tied to the hip to the design plan of MyRobot. There are two game design pillars for MyRobot:

Each pillar subdivides into related features that support the pillar they are in.

Map growth is heavily influenced by the "movement" bubble of exploration. Since the start I have planned to work on movement gadgets in ascending movement utility. For example, I first worked on the grapple hook and then the balloon gun arm. The balloon gun arm while not entirely replacing the grapple hook arm, is better for moving vertically (and an upgrade for the grapple hook if you use them together). So the map is being designed with the following in mind:

Because I am a two-man army, I really really have to be careful with feature creep and stay focused on the design path of the game.

I am really tempted to add survival mechanics like harvesting wood and stone to make your own base camp but I had to force myself to say "no". I just can't afford those features. I told myself that if I focus on the design document, I can work on the meat and potatoes of the game in a timely fashion.

Stay tuned!