Coding and Other Mechanics

Of course I had to think about game play beyond the main mechanics. Of course I have previously mentioned player guidance. I began thinking about this using different coloured blocks and platforms however this of course was not enough. 

Early User Interface

As Unity had an updated User Interface system, I learned how to use it and started implementing UI.

This UI included a yellow target that would appear around objects that the player could grapple, this was bright and rotated to catch the players eye. This early iteration was perhaps too bright and obvious and would not fit in to our intended vision, however I used it as a placeholder which allowed me to experiment with a useful concept.

When aiming with the grapple hook, a redicule would appear in the world where the player was aiming, to help show if the object is too far away, and this would change from red to green when they were aiming at the correct object. I used various Raycast features coupled with the UI for this result. The same image that appears in the world would also appear faded on the screen overlay so that the player could see the size difference and use that to judge distances, useful idea however I am not sure it was necessary in later iterations of the game.

The UI also included text, which would tell the player controls and small instructions. This was done in a subtle way, so that if they player knew the mechanics they could ignore the text. This told the player how to grapple, jump and climb.

Other Visual Guidance

It was important to make sure that things were consistent throughout the game, so the climb blocks we decided should always be a consistent height, and areas where you grapple up would also be a consistent height. The parts that you can grapple also had an object and UI in order to separate them. This ensured so that once the player learned one thing, it could be reused by them.

     

In a similar idea, anything that the player could grapple and pull would be yellow, have a light, an object and UI. This would need to be simplified later on, however it was another visual repetition, where if the player see it they know they can grapple it to make something happen.

For the warping platforms, a pink platform would affect a green platform or object, during testing I kept it as simple as that. Again once the player learns this, they will know what pink platforms do. Of course this was placeholder. I also decided to put a flashing light of the affected object to more clearly show that player what was happening. An issue at this early stage was that if a platform both affected others and was affected itself, it was difficult to communicate.

Particle Guide

I found a script here: http://vincentedeluca.com/ on 03/03/2015

This is the only script I used from online, it allowed me to use empty game objects to create a path of particles. I found this very useful as I could then create a system throughout the level which would suggest to the player where to go, or where they need to go to progress and therefore where they don't need to and can explore. This came in useful during later puzzles to give the player hints without making anything too obvious.