Time for another update on the latest and greatest goings on with the development of Paradox Pursuit. I have been making many tweaks and subtle changes to under the hood functionality, as well as continuing forward with production and design changes based on feedback from playtests.
One design/workflow breakthrough I had was the implementation of a loading screen to signal to the player that a button was actually pressed, and to distract from the next scene taking a bit long. With this, I found it convenient to title each level, and have each one have a unique loading screen complete with gameplay “hint” (or new mechanic introduction on certain levels). These are loaded at runtime from text files to allow more customizability on my end, and front load some of the performance costing resource reading. Here are those some caps of those text files in Visual Studio so far.
I have also been hard at work designing a new moment asset, and modeling more of the planned interest projectiles for variety in the full game. The moment mechanic has been redesigned as a means of immersing the character in the tunnel more – by removing the band altogether – and to provide more of a timing based incentive – by having the moments now included in the projectile spawning. The moment now gives the player a speed boost for the rest of the level on collect, but will invert the controls on miss. Check out a capture of the models below.
At the recommendation of my thesis advisor, I will be attaching a link to a downloadable file of the current build of the game (.apk for Android mobile devices) in the next blog post. Since I am constantly updating and building the game anyway, it will also serve to allow me to remember which version is currently up at the moment. Stay tuned for that, I’d love the feedback!
Jarell Pryor Senior Thesis 