Hey everyone!

So I’ve gone a little quiet this week, I know. There’s been a lot of stuff happening: work started up again, and I tried to take on more than I really should have. Thankfully, there’s been some cool stuff that I’ve been working on too!

If you saw my Level Design post, you’ll know that I’ve been toying with level design some, and that Argh is (mechanically) staying the exact same as it was before; including variable jump height. This is because, as I’ve learned, you always want max jump in Argh, and having anything less is just frustrating. To implement it in Argh would be to redesign all of the levels, which is stupid and I’m not doing that. Sorry.

The second thing is that I saw a post about using an FSM to implement movement code, which really I should’ve done from the start. However, foresight is 20/20, so I implemented it after the fact, and found out that it breaks Argh’s previous levels. So, no go.

Well then what am I actually accomplishing for Argh?

I’ve added clickable buttons, so the Menu makes a little more sense. I’m working on adding a pause system and pause menu so that you can quit and restart. Once that’s done I’m going to work on getting a new improved level to go between Intro and The Actual Level. I’m toying with ideas for the name, but the concept is that it will teach the player about the wrapping mechanics of the screen. If it goes faster than I anticipate to create that (doubtful) then I’m going to implement something that will let me do a lot of cool levels in the future. The first one should be out by next week or two.

Once that’s all done, I’m going to start working on Argh a little less often in preference to new titles. Why? Because a lot of Argh’s problems are so deeply rooted that it would be more beneficial to me to just pull over what worked into a completely blank project and start over. These past few weeks have been an iterative process, where I’ve been refining and creating a 2D platformer system that really really works well. Thankfully this new slate approach is allowing me to iterate not just on my design from a game design perspective but also on my software design, which translates to more stuff I can do in the future.

Sorry for the lengthy wall of text, but I just wanted to keep everyone updated.