Assignment 3: The Gap - Evaluation
The aim of this mechanic challenge was to get from one side of a gap to the other. I knew that I wanted to use lights and colours in some way.
My initial thoughts were to do something similar to the logic game Lights Out. In this the player must turn out all the lit squares. Clicking on a cell toggles that cell and each of its immediate neighbours.
My version of this was for the player to get from one side to the other by traversing hexagonal tiles that appear or disappear depending the colour of the tile the player is currently stood on.
The structure of the map was really straightforward as I knew exactly what I wanted it play like.
My biggest struggle was to actually figure out the best way for the lights to register which colour the player is already stood on and which other colours need to function.
I started very basically by adding collision boxes to each individual tile with the intention of it registering the surrounding four tiles. This however had numerous problems and I could not work out how to make work exactly like the lights-out game I had envisioned.
After some researching through various tutorials and speaking to some unreal experts, I realised that the best way to be able to have the tiles appear and disappear as I wish, would be to create and array for each set of colour tiles.
Using this array, I could have the collision of each tile run multiple events to both hide and unhide tiles. So, as per the image below, when the player walks on to a PINK tile, the blue tiles appear and the Yellow, disappear.
Once this was set up and working correctly, I began to tweak some of the minor details. Such as altering the shape of the tile from square to octagonal to prevent players being able to cheat and cut across corners when tiles were transitioning from one state to another. I also built in a basic respawn system, not because the player could die or fall off the edge of the platform (because I made it so the player could not fall) , but because it was very easy for the player to get stranded or take the wrong route and be unable to return due to the nature of the way the platforms only appearing depending on the colours.
Originally I made the restart button the spacebar, but after player feedback I swiftly changed it to X as players would instinctively want to hit spacebar to jump, even though the jump ability was disabled completely.
Finally, I added floating text to the beginning to let the players know they could reset the level, and some fireworks with floating text that would appear only upon reaching the other side of the gap.
Overall, I feel like this challenge was really successful. I spent far longer on this mechanic challenge than I originally anticipated. But it turned out far better than I planned also, and I learned several completely brand new skills by doing it.