Hello! 

This week I experimented with the player movement and constructed fundamental key elements for my game. Additionally, I got my first feedback and established a plan about how I want to move forward from here. It was exciting to take these first steps and I am looking forward to the next weeks!

Player Movement:

This was the topic of the week: Player Movement! I wanted it to feel smooth and light for the player to move across the map. Since there are clouds and wormholes helping us with our vertical movement as well we don't need to jump or duck on our own. Luna can not fly as well. This is why I decided to give the player the freedom of controlling the horizontal axis, by either pressing a/d or the arrow keys on your keyboard. To make falling feel more satisfying and less "floaty" I've implemented a system, where the player experiences more gravity when falling down, hence falling faster, the longer you are in the air. This caused a new problem, where the player was falling too fast so one couldn't react to offscreen obstacles. To fix that I simply added a terminal velocity, which slows the player down when exceeding said velocity.

Objects:

I added clouds with different abilities to the game, they are all made with a particle system and a collider. To add more personality, I gave them different faces, which are partly animated when interacting with them!

I added a satellite that paralyzes Luna for 1.5 seconds. When I add the player's health I want it to steal a life point from her as well. Something else I want to add is, that Luna glows red when she gets hurt.

The black hole transports the player to a different location. While the spikes steal stardust at the moment, but it will be converted into player health later on, because I feel like it will make the game more enjoyable, to keep track of health rather than how much stardust you have.  I don't want to respawn the stolen stardust and make the level frustrating to play and take away the game's flow. 

Feedback:

This week we had our first feedback session, during which other students from my course and the coordinators got to see our creations. From what I have gathered, every person trying the game liked the player's movement so far. Mission Completed!

During the session, I additionally got some valuable opinions on the visuals and further ideas for the game. Many pointed out that the hair looked unnatural and that the player model could not fulfill its potential while being scaled down. I have to agree with these points, since I was unhappy with the model anyways I plan to simplify it, erase the outlines and work on animations when the model moves. I also want to make the hair flutter more naturally. However, since it is a trail, adding gravity does not seem like an option. Maybe I can let it flutter up and down when the model moves vertically. It is definitely something I will look into!

Another person asked if I plan to make the clouds platform based, allowing the player to travel through them, so he would land on top. Which is an interesting aspect. I am toying with the idea of implementing an additional cloud with this ability. However, I do not want to do this for all of them because the game is about going down rather than going up. It would be a little disadvantageous to be able to travel through them while jumping or flying upwards, but not go down in return, right?

Next Steps:

- rework the player model & animate it

- rework the hair

- implement player health

- create a platform cloud

- make the first level!

See you next week!