This past week I made good headway on this project. I learned how to place large blocks of material, one layer at a time, to make it easier to carve out passages and rooms in the level. I built two mine-shaft-style elevators, a hidden point bubble cache, and figured out how to use water to add a little detail to the level. The biggest piece I completed was a giant “ferris wheel”, but that’s all I’m going to say about that. Don’t want to give away too much.
One lesson I am learning, and it is something I read about in a forum, is that scale is an important thing to consider. I started working on a vertical passageway, trying to add a little platforming element. I quickly discovered that if I made the player jump their way to the top, they would probably quit playing the level. I need to figure out how to eliminate some of the vertical climb while maintaining the pieces I already placed. Shouldn’t be too hard, I hope.
A followup on me trying to reduce some of the vertical distance. I cut out a giant chuck of the rock, right down the middle. Amazingly, one of the pistons held the entire top part in place. By shortening the piston it slowly lowered the top piece until it touched the bottom piece. I then fused the two pieces together. One side effect is that the elevators were messed up. I had to delete them and will add them back later. Such is the life of an amateur game developer.
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