We experimented with rotating platforms recently, and it was a huge success! So much fun. I’d like to walk you through the development of the feature, starting with the end result and then going back to show you the steps along the way.Here’s a playtest we did the other day that proved out the fun factor.
OK, now let’s take a step back and see what we did to get there. First, there are two types of movement: straight line motion and rotation. So first I added straight line motion (the easier one).
As you can see, the player collides with the platform, which is good, but he’s sliding off it and generally not interacting with it in a fun way. We’ll get to that later, but first I wanted to get rotation in the mix, which was one of the big hurdles. Correctly handling collision with rotating objects and adjusting the player’s position accordingly was no chump task.
Great, so now we’ve got rotation. But (A) our little dude isn’t sticking to any of the moving platforms, and (B), he just kind of pops inside a block when there’s no room to move. So we’re going to address that by making the player move relative to any block he’s standing on and by squishing him to a comical death when there’s no room.
Woooo! It works. This final step is what took it from “completely not fun” to “super fun”. Then it was time to put some actual levels together and try them out, resulting in the first video.I hope you found this fun and interesting. I’m going to be posting more dev blogs like this as we move toward shipping Paperbound.
