So over the last few days I've been toying with different movement based mechanics, including: a dash, a wall run, a grapple hook, a rope swing, a wall climb, and a sprint.
The first decision i made was to cut sprint in place of using a velocity system in which the player builds up speed over time until they hit a maximum allowed speed. I found sprint just felt like it was there for the sake of having it in and didn't allow the player to feel as though they were actually building up momentum. This can be seen in the video at the bottom of the post, however it is a little hard to display.
One Ring Can't Rule Them All
After speaking to my assigned tutor for the project I came to a better understanding that my mechanics should gel together well, using what I will now call the "rule of the rings". So the concept here is that I should never have mechanics that can be used consecutively that don't change allow for a change of interaction between the mechanics. So using the image below, each number represents a mechanic, and each rings shows that they should try to interact with the corresponding circled ring. As the grid gets bigger, the rings should stay the same - I'm currently aiming for just 4 mechanics, so this grid size is adequate.
Slot one and two in the grid are now occupied by a wall run, and a grapple hook. I didn't include the momentum gain as an actual mechanic as it isn't necessarily interactive, per say.
Wall Run
The wall run is something I have been almost set on since the start, as it's something that inherently feels cool to do once polished. It works consistently, although it still requires a little polishing in terms of a few bugs when looking towards player feedback - because I am not an artist I am opting to use camera manipulation to tell the player they are on a wall by tilting the camera. The system in place is a little rudimentary currently, but it works fine minus the occasional issue that I will be refining over the next 5 days.
Rope Swing
Originally, I planned on having a rope swing, where the player could throw out a rope to "hook points" and swing like they're on a pendulum from them. I eventually found that rope swinging in first person just doesn't feel too great - because its first person, the player struggles to understand where the apex of the swing is, therefore meaning they can't consistently perform with the same results. This becomes even more clear when you think about the lack of first person games that actually have a rope swinging mechanics - I can't think of one off of the top of my head.
Grapple Hook
So, I abandoned the idea of having a rope swing and chose to include a grapple instead. The grapple is simple in concept - the player looks at a grapple point and they launch towards it after a short delay. After a lot of tweaking I was able to make it so that the player is able to use the grapple to manipulate their momentum in a player defined direction, as opposed to the having their current movement values overridden. This makes the mechanic much more entertaining to use.
My plans for the next week are to keep experimenting with the rules of the rings so I can get another 2 mechanics in and working so I can move on to the level design portion of the project.
I am going to make a slight change to my project blogs from this post onward - instead of posting on set days every week I am going to be updating as often as I deem fit for the project.
Thanks for reading!
Trav.
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