The last 2 weeks I have been mostly focused on sounds. It's not the most rivoting work, browsing online for sounds to use, searching with terms like "fling", "thwap" and "clang".
Still it's amazing to see the difference sounds make in the game aesthetic.
When crates thunk on the floor, they really feel like crates! And that sound when you launch the grappling rope and it thwaps onto something! Man, that really hits the spot.
Here's a quick demo of the new sounds:
Furthermore I have an amazing composer that already made 8 tracks for the game. Our plan is to launch the game with 10 unique tracks, but I'd love to share the existing tracks with you already!
You can find them here.
A new big feature has been implemented as well: Cable length control.
I can tell all kinds of things about the technical implementation, but since images speak a 1000 words I'll just show you a video:
Last but but least I upgraded the UI with highlights! Buttons and other inputs now light up when you hover over them with the mouse.
It looks a lot nicer, but it will also come in handy when implementing UI navigation with keyboard/controller.
Here's a gif showing it off:
Next on the board is implementing configurable controls and keyboard navigation through the UI.
Unfortunately I won't implement full keyboard support for the level designer, since I haven't really figured out how to do that without it feeling unnatural.
ooh. i like the cable. how did you do that?
Thanks!
Sorry for the late reply, I didn't get any notification of your comment and saw it by chance just now.
The cable exists out of 2 parts. The 1st one is an invisible direct link between target and ship. This one takes care of the actual physics for keeping them connected. It's a special "Rope joint" tbat I made which basically only limits parting the connected objects to a maximum distance, and allows all shorter distances.
The second part of the cable is the visible part you see as player. This part is built out of multiple rope joints connected together, of which the 2 end point are directly connected to the 2 end point of the 1st part. With a bit of gravity applied to all the joint of the 2nd part, it simulates a real rope pretty well.
All physics have been made using the Verlet method.