Smaller update this week because of real work picking up – finally. There were a few things I wanted to try out this week.
When the reactors are taken down on a level the lights will now go red indicating a kind of emergency power in the base and a nice visual cue that the level has been completed. I wanted to flicker the lights when each reactor was destroyed (when there’s more than one) but unfortunately it would require destroying all the existing lights in the level and recreating them each time (this is because they’re static lights and can’t be controlled after creation easily). As this would probably result in a performance hit at a potentially important part of the level play I decided against it.
One of the components that will make an appearance during one of the later worlds, the holder, needed to be able to be built by the player. The problem here is that the component can be interacted with as well. As player built components are either built or deconstructed this added a bit of a challenge. The holder, in case you can’t tell, is a component that temporarily pauses the movement of a missile(s). The player can either click it to release the missile when they are ready (for timing purposes) or wait until the holders power runs out and releases the missile(s) automatically. Giving the player the ability to click it to release missiles when they themselves built the component was an issue. Normally any component built by the player can only be deconstructed, no other interaction is available. So, I needed to add in a secondary check for built components. The holder would set a flag to say that it is currently in use (holding a missile) and if this is the case clicking the component would interact with the building instead of displaying the deconstruction menu; if the holder isn’t active then the usual function occurs. It took a bit of working out but I am happy to say that it is functioning exactly as it should.
And finally, world 3 levels are continuing to be drawn up. The process is a little slower than with world 2 as it includes a few more features such as laser fences.
