Devlog 1.1_ Improve My Game Jam 31

Context

VOID was initially made for the Newbies Game Jam 2023. The theme was light is the enemy and the limitation being toggling, pure skill and floating. At that time, I just went for the simplest game idea I could think of because I was struggling with completing a jam at that time. I did the jam solo during my final year project, bad idea now that I think about it. I just stop working on my school project for that one week lol. 

Fast forward to now, I just completed my internship and was finding a jam to work in the meantime to refresh myself with Unity and I encounter this jam, so I was like perfect, I didn't like how I design the level previously, I feel that the pacing and difficulty is off and so it is time to rework it and see how I can improve upon it 5-6 months on. 

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General Timeline for the jam,

26th-27th

 - Busy with intern & completing my internship reports zzz.

28th 

- Read through my old code, didn't touch Unity for 5 months I need time to recap on Unity lol.

-  Brainstorming, writing down my plans and target for this jam and points of improvement from my previous version.

-  Do a basic setup in Unity for how big each level/section and see how I should continue designing the levels.

29th 

- Design Level 1 & 2 

- Write some basic code to handle scene transitions. 

- Edit moving platform code to handle waiting for Xs after reaching way point. 

- Make adjustments to the controls for the player.  

30th 

- Design Level 3 & 4

- Got heavily distracted and end up making some VFX while working on the levels halfway, for the death and portal effect. 

- Send out my game build and ask friends and families to playtest the game, Review playtest feedback and make balance adjustments.

31st

 - Design Level 5 & 6, Code a time manager to handle time slowing effect for the new extra jump powerup. 

- Review playtest feedback and make balance adjustments. 

- Work on post processing effects.

1st Feb 

- Do some debugging 

- Add and setup landing page, mission selection. post battle page. 

- Do some code for game manager to handle recording the time/death for every level.  

- Source for some sound effects and implement in game. 

2nd Feb 

- Writing Devlog while watch football at 4.15am

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Personal Goals for the jam

1.  Improve the level design of the game with better pacing, having obstacles variation slowly integrate in each level without the player feeling that the difficulty spike is too significant between levels.

2. Improve the visibility of the layout, player should be able to be clear of the objective of the game and know where they should head to and won't be lost or unclear of where to move for an extended period of time. 

3. Short 10-20 minutes time to complete the game, should take about 3-4 minutes to clear a level, roughly less than a minute per section. Don't add more levels for the sake of having more levels.  

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Problems/Issues with Version 1.0

1. Level too difficult.

Contributing Factors,

- Moving platform moving pass the speed of 15+ unity per seconds is way too fast.

- Platform scaled 1.5x and below is too small and leave little room for player to move, higher chance to move to a light obstacle instead,

- Rotating/Moving obstacle all rotate at different speed -> Harder for player to time their jump 

- Pacing is off, difficulty increase way too fast, variation of obstacle introduces way too early 

2. Objective unclear how to reach. 

Contributing Factors,

- End goal for each section unclear as it all uses the same platform 

- Too many unnecessary platform/obstacle places around the level with not really use to it

- Layout is messy each section has a different size

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Improvements 

1. Level design 

- Each level now has 4 section each targeted to either introduce a new obstacle or re-enforce player understanding and face tougher challenge of similar to previous levels.  Revamp the previous 9 sections design intent and spread it out into 16 sections to prevent difficulty spike too much.

- Platform scale to be between 1.5x to 2.5x, with platform that intersect with light obstacle be slightly larger at minimum 1.8x scale -> more are to land and move

- Moving platform keep to a maximum speed of 12 unity units and add in a delay timer of 0.1-0.5s when platform reach its targeted position

- Rotating obstacle rotating speed cap at 90 degree/s, minimize use of 4-way rotating obstacle

2. Visibility of game's objective/obstacles

- Added black/red portals to signify the end of a section/level

- Keep each level within the size of 100x60 unity units and the light border as minimum as possible.

- Added this line visual to show the travel path of all moving obstacles/platform

- Switch moving obstacles from a standard square sprite to a star shape 

- Keep elements in the map as minimum as possible

- Remove the "Ghost" visual that show the player previous dead spot and instead add in with death vfx 

3. New Stuff

- Added a level selection page and post battle page 

- Added an extra jump zone, to increase intensity/difficult of the level and provide something new for the later levels

- Added a time tracker to record player fastest clear record. 

(Supposed to have UI in game to show death count & time taken but I haven't figure out an optimal way to show it and not block the player view too much, so because I ran out of time, I decided to just put it in the post battle page only & also a pause menu -_-)