Player Controls Additions

Adding to the arsenal of player controls this week is that of the boulder toss.

No, not that one, ignore the the space launch, it will not be in the game.



That's better. As you can see the boulder toss throws the boulder attached to the player in a forward arc in the direction the player is facing. It is performed by pressing the "Punch" button while holding the boulder, combing the use of the "Grab" and "Punch" mechanics. The strength of the throw at a base level will be enough that the player will always be dragged a little towards where the boulder is thrown, making the use of the ability difficult to use in precision platform situations, as you may fall off a platform if you are unlucky.

Time System and Gameloop

The time system currently uses a coroutine as a timer that will slowly change the position of the sun/directional lighting in the world. There will also be custom sun and moon models for the sun and moon as they rotate around the world. The gameloop is still in progress so currently all it does is one loop of a variable time, and gradually changes the colour of the directional light as it lowers beneath the horizon.

Spawnpoints and Checkpoints

Among the new mechanics introduced in preparation for the transition to a fully playable demo of the game, we introduced the use of checkpoint towers to respawn at when falling off the stage or when being forcefully moved to the main island after the night phase begins.

When entering the area around a checkpoint tower, the tower will highlight red to give feedback to the player that it is currently active, with the previously active tower being disabled at the same time. The highlighted towers x, y, z coordinates are saved in a scriptable object class (a very useful tool for saving global data or instances of data classes such as item data or enemy statistics). This data is shared between the towers, the script that handles the gameloop, and a large invisible boundary box under the map that when touched by the player, sends them to the coordinates stored in the scriptable object.

Level Hazards

One of the first hazards to be implemented into the game is the landmine. The landmine will detonate when the player or boulder touch the top of it. This will be a helpful hazard for implementing mazes and other types of puzzles. The landmine works in the same way as the boulder toss, in the way that it applies force to the collided boulder in an arc in the forwards direction the landmine is facing.