Dev Diary - 9 Jan

4 JAN 2021

After a bit of playtesting from outside perspectives, there were a few bugs and issues I wasn't even aware of. Today, I just wanted to get those cleaned up immediately because they were genuinely game-breaking and I couldn’t stand watching them struggle through things I’d ever even seen before. Fortunately, it wasn’t that hard to fix, and I managed to patch them up pretty nicely. One issue was that certain platforms were just a fraction of a second off in their timing, so if you spent a particularly long time getting to them, they would no longer match up and you couldn’t make the jump between them. Instead, I added a new style of platform that only goes up when you are touching it.

5 JAN 2021

Under that same vein, I decided enough was enough and I couldn't stand level 4s massive elevator. It felt too daunting to want to tackle, but I couldn’t stand that if the player misses the incredibly small window that the lift was on their floor, they either had to wait forever or just jump and hope they didn’t die. Not good. Because of this, I spent the day calibrating it so that the lift stops on whatever floor the player is closest to if they aren’t on it, but behaves normally if they are. This is infinitely better for both the player and my sanity.

6 JAN 2021

I sped up the elevator’s movement a bit whenever the player isn’t on it to catch up faster. I also wanted to make it easier for players to understand how to play, so I added a bit of a hint over rescuable crew members. Whenever somebody play tested the game, they often asked how to rescue the crew. On a controller, I might be inclined to force them to figure it out themselves, but with how much trial and error it would take on a keyboard (despite the fact that I spent a lot of effort into making the controls menu), it didn’t seem fair. Now, if you wait next to a crewmember for too long without rescuing them, a blinking “R” appears over their head. The very first crewmember pops this warning up much faster so that they are taught right away

7 JAN 2021

I think the final boss fight would benefit from having alternating electric traps, but the trouble is that the traps only have a Live and Idle duration time. While these work for making alternating animations briefly, after a time the pattern will be borderline random. In order to rectify this, I managed to add an offset which I expected to be much more complicated than it really was. The levels I already have don’t really need this addition, so I won’t be implementing them into any regular level, but this is just what I need for the final stage of the boss fight.