The Abyss! (and some other changes)

So it's been a little while (how's it been 12 days already?). I may or may not have been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIV recently, it's quite fun and if you enjoy MMOs I would recommend it. Also had some other things come up in my life which shan't be named here, which have either distracted me or dulled my motivation to carry on working.

I've gotten some more playtesting done, made some minor adjustments and started work on the newest area: The Abyss. Attached to this dev log is a little teaser, for you to play the very start of this new area. Note that there is no lighting or other effects added in yet - as I'm still in the block mesh phase of things.

Two significant changes have been made which I'd like to mention in this dev log.

The jump has been reworked. 

Rather than setting you velocity to a constant value upwards when you hit jump, it is now derived based on two values. A desired height, and a distance at which you'll reach this height. While this change doesn't really affect how you're going to be playing the game it makes it a little bit easier for me to place objects within the scene. 

The player's acceleration due to gravity is also calculated on the fly. This value is derived from the jump height, and the time it takes to reach the peak of the jump.  Along with this, after a predetermined amount of time, your acceleration due to gravity is doubled*. These changes are made to make the jump feel more natural and less floaty - a common piece of feedback I've received thus far.

The camera system has received some more fine tuning.

It seems the camera adjusting itself based on obstacles to the side wasn't really liked. I've removed this from the game. It still exists in the code, perhaps I'll repurpose it in the future. But for now, this doesn't happen any more.

Another change, though much simpler in practice, is that spawn points now have a desired orientation. No more having to spin around to figure out which way you're supposed to be going after you miss a jump. Though this could probably use some fine tuning, especially in certain situations where a spawn point has multiple points of interest around it, I feel as though this is a nice QoL change for you, the player. 

Again, thank you for your continued support! I am still working on this game as much as I can, and I plan to carry on doing so in the foreseeable future!

-Wauchope

* subject to change.