Saturday, November 16, 2013

Fine-tuning.

    Raw as raw can be: here's a collection of "todo items" related to the "20 years anniversary level" that has staid draft since my first re-contact with the BilouCorp. It's not very sexy, but at some point, gameplay fixing is also those kind of fine-tuning.
  • [done] BIGFALL Camera: a maximum vertical speed of 7 for the camera is a minimum as Bilou's maximum vertical speed is near 6 (pixels/frame). It feels better when the camera is controlled by the DPAD (holding down when falling) rather than activated automatically when reaching a specific velocity. With those settings, the player has 0.5 second between the time pencils appear at the bottom of the jump-of-(fai|dea)th and contact with the ground. half that time is required to manoeuvre Bilou away by 16 pixels, that leaves ~0.25 seconds of reaction time to the player.
  • [done] Spongebops appearing on the bottom of the screen due to wrapping of the Y coordinate by the DS hardware (?) mislead the player into believing that there's an invisible sponge that will reveal if they jump into endless pits.
  • [wish, AskTheTeam] Bonus room with a "hidden exit" should better be replaced with a room that offers a limited time to collect all the items and brings you back to the level when completed (as in DKC). Until the engine can support that, make sure the room's exit is as close as possible from its entry, so that realizing that you can't come back through the path you picked doesn't prevent you from going further with the game.
  • [done] Chalk do break, much more easily than pencils. Use some chalk picture for the break-through platform on the desktop.
  • [done] Add an 'onscreen' controller that triggers an event when an object gets offscreen, so that 'stunned' animations can be completed and items no longer "magically disappear".
  • [done] with a horizontal top speed of 540, running becomes enough to clear the pencil-pit area: no more bouncing-on-bumpers or grabbing-sponges is necessary. with momentum limited at 480, it is still feasible to clear the pencils, but it requires to jump when Bilou's first feet is already out of the safety area, so the bumber is "safier", and it could be made more in the middle of the platform as initially designed, so you don't necessarily fall into the pencils if you miss it.

Croyez-le ou non, mais j'ai réussi à recontacter la "Bilou Corp", et j'ai donc une toute nouvelle toudoulisse pour le niveau-anniversaire. C'est un peu brut, vous m'excuserez peut-être un jour. Plein de petits règlages à faire: les vitesses de caméra quand on tombe, le remplacement du crayon-qui-casse par une craie-qui-casse, etc.

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