Post-jam adjustments: Make the position of the rings well-known #2

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opened 2025-03-01 12:15:37 +00:00 by Taevas · 0 comments

Taevas commented

2025-03-01 12:15:37 +00:00

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"and it would be nice to have a bit of camera control (the first level, I didn't know about the one ring to the right until I'd done the whole level and could see the ring as I was coming back)" - oldpopsmcgee
"some workaround for the camera as others have pointed out would be appreciated, but I do also think its part of the charm to scramble from one place to another trying to find the rings" - daksh
"My biggest gripe would be with the camera making it hard to see where you have to go, which sort of screws you over unless you memorise all the ring locations." - Baconinvader

This was honestly my biggest worry while working on the game, which is why the camera logic is as complex as it is, but yeah that wasn't enough to make the position of all rings obvious to anyone who hasn't played the game before

While in development, I considered adding some sort of "ring detector", like Crazy Taxy's top arrow, but I realized before trying to implement it that it would greatly clash with how based on the flow of the ball the levels are designed: The arrow would encourage going towards the nearest ring, despite the nearest ring not necessarily being the most intuitive one to take due to the ball's velocity
(and any sort of system to point to Y ring if X ring has been taken would end up being too complex for everyone)
tldr such a thing would be misleading

Baconinvader's "minimap" suggestion is probably the way to go, though I think I would make it a transparent full map that takes the entire screen, very likely behind a button/key such as LCTRL, where its middle is the ball's position while the rings are represented with something like a O with a longer line | or arrow going through it to indicate its angle/rotation

While I feel like any sort of "freecam" would kill any and all flow of the game, maybe looking at a map could end up being distracting, though in the first place, if you use the map, aren't you lost enough to not be distracted from anything?

I don't believe there would be any good way to allow for manual camera adjustments, this seems like a trap to me, but I could make the camera look more towards where the gravity is going, and less towards where the ball is going

> "and it would be nice to have a bit of camera control (the first level, I didn't know about the one ring to the right until I'd done the whole level and could see the ring as I was coming back)" - oldpopsmcgee > "some workaround for the camera as others have pointed out would be appreciated, but I do also think its part of the charm to scramble from one place to another trying to find the rings" - daksh > "My biggest gripe would be with the camera making it hard to see where you have to go, which sort of screws you over unless you memorise all the ring locations." - Baconinvader This was honestly my biggest worry while working on the game, which is why the camera logic is as complex as it is, but yeah that wasn't enough to make the position of all rings obvious to anyone who hasn't played the game before While in development, I considered adding some sort of "ring detector", like _Crazy Taxy_'s top arrow, but I realized before trying to implement it that it would greatly clash with how based on the flow of the ball the levels are designed: The arrow would encourage going towards the nearest ring, despite the nearest ring not necessarily being the most intuitive one to take due to the ball's velocity (and any sort of system to point to Y ring if X ring has been taken would end up being too complex for everyone) tldr such a thing would be misleading _Baconinvader_'s "minimap" suggestion is probably the way to go, though I think I would make it a transparent full map that takes the entire screen, very likely behind a button/key such as LCTRL, where its middle is the ball's position while the rings are represented with something like a `O` with a longer line `|` or arrow going through it to indicate its angle/rotation While I feel like any sort of "freecam" would kill any and all flow of the game, maybe looking at a map could end up being distracting, though in the first place, if you use the map, aren't you lost enough to not be distracted from anything? I don't _believe_ there would be any good way to allow for manual camera adjustments, this seems like a trap to me, but I _could_ make the camera look more towards where the **gravity** is going, and less towards where the **ball** is going