As you can see, the lava is a lot higher in the second screen shot than in the first. Instead of the lava burning the bottom row as I had primarily designed it, the whole thing rises up. I think that for the next levels of the tower mode I will do one or two more inside the volcano, and then some going up the mountain side, and finally a few going into the clouds. Who knows but you might reach the space station in the end?
Anyways, I also put falling crates in the background to give it some character. I don't know how much I really like it, it can be a little distracting, and I actually jumped out of the way of a couple background crates on accident when I first put them in. But after playing with it and tweaking the boundaries, I think it will work and add to the game. I don't want to put anything in that doesn't add to the game in a good way, and I want a clean and simple experience, so I guess finding the balance here is my struggle.
The next thing, and a possible major game changer would be to switch out the survival mode for a building mode in which you have the crates fall in a particular order which is defined in either a ghost brick type system(shown in the pictures above) or an outline type system. I am toying with the idea of implementing the third dimension of movement in this game mode, which would definitely add to the 3D feel. However, after testing many different camera angles, I have come to the conclusion that the camera would have to move to a good viewing angle dynamically.
Furthermore, this game was originally a 2D game, and I still want it to have that feel. I am afraid that if I attempt to give the player more range of motion, and the game begins to play like a 3D game, the simplicity of the controls (only two buttons) will become a limiting factor to gameplay.
So I am kind of at a crossroads here; the survival mode seems to be too boring, while the building mode seems to be out of the context of the game. I am going to have to improve one of them, I just can't decide which...
Well, yeah, that's about it for now, except to say that I did some internal organization of the file structure to make it easier for myself to get around in the project now that it has grown so much. Oh, and I have been thinking about recording a jam session or two with my sister for more music; one song playing over and over is kind of driving me insane... Aaaannnnnd that's about it folks, until next the time that is.
