A Week of Fixes

I focused on fixing up various things this week to prepare for level creation. I also worked on different "interactables" for Viola: Donkey Kong Country inspired "launchers". I've also changed Viola's movement a little bit, making her walljumps and movement a lot more natural.

Click 'Read more' to get the dropdown on the changes.

Jumpin' Jack Viola

The most important change I made this week was the change to Viola's movement. Essentially, Viola has a target velocity and a velocity. Velocity effects Viola's actual movement. Target velocity is influenced by the player's actions (like moving the control stick). Previously, every FixedUpdate would change velocity to instantly match the target velocity, making Viola's movement responsive.

Except, it was a little too responsive. After walljumps, Viola was able to instantly move back and forth, and (according to player feedback) Viola's movement overall could feel just a little too finicky.

The big change is that Viola's velocity now moves closer to target velocity with each FixedUpdate. This means that high amounts of velocity can't instantly be turned around. This gives the illusion of momentum during states of high velocity: wall jumps, and being launched from the newly created launchers.

One more change made is that some things don't influence target velocity, but will change velocity. Launching, walljumps, and jumps influence velocity so the player instantly lifts off at max speed, rather than accelerating over time.

This is the component for the basic launcher. Launchers are inspired by Donkey Kong Country's barrels: jump into one, be launched.

This is how the Launcher works (step-by-step):

• Touching the trigger attached to the Launcher brings Viola to the center (with an offset).
• After being in the center for a while...
• Viola is pushed into one of 8 directions.
• After being launched, the player has some influence over Viola's trajectory, but not much.
• Viola gets full control back when hitting the ground, or reaching maximum fall speed.

I've made 4 different versions of the launchers:

• The regular fires Viola in a direction as set in the component.
• The controllable launcher lets the player choose the direction with the control stick, then press A to launch.
• The moving launcher moves around, then lets the player launch in a pre-set direction by pressing A.
• A combination of the moving and controllable launcher: the moving launcher moves around, lets the player choose a direction with the control stick, and lets the player launch with A.

The idea I had for the visuals was to make the launchers old military cannons, or rather, thick sturdy pirate ship cannons. This fits in with the game's musical/orchestral theme: Tchaikovsky's famous 1812 Overture uses a "battery of cannons".

However, as you can see on the right, traditional cannons are rather thin. For Viola to be  reasonably launched from one, they'd have to be a lot bigger, so I'm thinking of the thick, sturdy cannons you might think of when thinking of pirates.

Next week I'll be working on revamping the level I made for the vertical slice into the "real" second level. More story, balanced monsters, fewer party members and a more straight-forward path to ease the player into the game.