Saturday, August 23, 2008

Bad bugs, bad stupid bugs

Yesterday I fixed a stupid bug. Basically, when Zero would jump up onto one of the catch rectangles, it would make a small adjustment and he would appear to "slide" into the correct position. It wasn't the ideal situation, since there are so many of the ledges in the game. I really didn't want to deal with having a bug be visible, and openly irritating, for that much of the game. So that had to go. Sooner, rather than later. So I tried fixing it, and gods help me, the bloody thing just would not be fixed. I tried converting some of the collision code and seeing if it was a Event Handling bug, but it wasn't, and all it managed to do was break the rest of the collision.
Next, I tried set the game to display a variety of variables while the game was running. Eventually discovered that the Physics Modifier wasn't reseting correctly. The physics are a little silly in this case. Basically, when you are falling or generally not on the ground, the physics system calculates a continually increasing speed to simulate the additional velocity - like in real life. Originally there was no modifier and the fall speeds were all constant, but I felt that was stupid. Anyway, it wasn't being reset when you hit the Catch Rectangles and now it is, so now it works.
- Also decided on a few things.
1) The player runs too damn fast. I noticed that the Tester sometimes had issue with the small platforms and I thought that by slowing the player's running speed a little it would make the game slightly longer in the end. So I reduced the speed by 20% or so and it works really nice.
2) The Drop Bit is a little too far before it becomes lethal. I found I could drop off of what amounted to 3 story falls and would just walk away. Not a huge issue, but the distance is important. If the fall isn't enough to kill, then it makes the "danger" of the puzzle inconsequential. No danger, no suspense, no fun.

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