I redact what I said in my last post - Tiled and this other tool, Tiled2Unity, probably saved our project. My teammates don’t have to fight an uphill battle with Unity to make the maps I’ve had in mind, nor juggle object management: I can do most of that in Tiled and just pass the files off to them to use. Tiled2Unity makes the .tmx maps viable, and we’re finally starting to see some progress.
(Tiled’s image export needs just a bit more work, though.)
We’ve also received a bit of crucial feedback that’s helping us structure our story, which we’ve been having trouble with up until now. Questions of player agency and the narrative flow came up, and someone provided a solution about connecting both of those. We had an idea for a dark maze, a pseudo-platforming level, and other minigames, but weren’t quite sure how to make these gel with everything else. The answer: “trials”.
Basically, the player will talk to one specific NPC before choosing which minigame to go through first, then which one to do after it, and so-on. Completing all of them will let them progress up the mountain and meet the Beast. However, performing certain tasks beforehand will make the minigames easier to deal with - for example, the dark maze is technically doable as the very first trial, but the player can’t see anything. They have to rely on sound to get through. But there’s a lantern that can be picked up beforehand, creating a small circle of light around the player when they enter the maze.
This hasn’t exactly been implemented yet, but if our project is going to succeed, we need to get the other levels sorted and coded, and fast.
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