Devlog: slide hill
Added 2025-01-19 07:15:45 +0000 UTCI've been very ill and busy this week, but I still got some substantial progress done.
Jan 13
There is a major issue with how I'm handling colliders. Since I'm using a very unhealthy amount of invisible walls to keep the player from jumping off levels, I had to let the camera go through any walls that don't obstruct the view. Add that to a lot of back walls that have no collider and the result is a complete mess.
Since I'm working with low-poly models, I've decided to just take the easier route and keep colliders as close to the visual mesh as possible, whenever procedural collision shapes won't do the trick. That way I can forbid the camera to go through any walls and it should all work fine, although I might need to redesign any areas that feel claustrophobic.
Adjusting the colliders for all previous levels will take some work, but that's fine. We're testing stuff early, changes were expected.
Jan 18
I've spent the last few days building another part of Sheerk Prairie, which I honestly expected to be one of the smallest, simplest levels of the game. So here's the slide hill.
Slide hill building process
I think this can potentially be the most fun part of the level, since it's pretty much a race downhill with a rolling fat sheerk, while the player quickly decides which obstacles need to be removed and which need to stay for the payload not to fall off the course. That is going to be tough to program, but I think I can just keep it on rails instead of trusting the physics.
Also, as you can see, I combined the slide hill with the wolphin cave, another part of the same level. I would have kept it separate, but I might as well make some use of the available empty space. Once I test this area in game, there's only one puzzle left to build, along with some basic environmental storytelling, and we'll be good to move onto level 4, Vocifer Cave.
