2023-04-28
Haha, of course when I started this log I had lofty ambitions of new posts EVERY DAY. Here we are almost 2 weeks later. Oh well!
Was feeling a bit intimidated by some art, because I was having trouble finding buildings to collage at the angle I need. Overall, this game has a pretty weird angle. I imagine that may be what ends up convincing me to drop it, but for now we're going to just settle for "not perfect".
I worked on a tavern room. Trying to get to a "first finished state", which I guess is something like achieving roasted vegetables, though that's not what my overall plans for the proejct's story are. To that end, we've added Mario in a pot, who will spit out some vegetables for you if you roast him!
I also abandoned perfect movement between areas. I was previously lining up areas side by side, with a large area transition block within them (slightly offset) that when the player walked into them would refocus the camera. This was an approach that was easily copyable from area to area and didn't require configuration.
Too limiting though, I think! Taking inspiration from PS1 era games with fixed cameras, where perspective, angel, entry direction could all change between areas. So now we just have a bunch of specific area transition areas that live outside the borders of the camera and will warp you to the connected area. This will require some extra thought to not feel terrible - I had originally had both the left and bottom borders of this new area warp you back to the right edge of the starting zone, but moving down-right was a terrible experience as you'd end up transitioning to start, and then immediately walking back through the right edge and into the tavern again.
Swinging Mario was a fun little trick (though could still use some more polish). I'm just skewing the ropes, but also offsetting them at the same-ish rate so that their top stays in the same place.
