The Hammer of Hope

At long last, we've gotten a Composer. Having done some chatting through the sorcery of internet I think we're on the same page for what we want, which is good news.
The downside of course is the other emails I get to send. Having spent a lot of time trying to apply for things I know all too well the, "We're sorry, but..." email. I hate those. I get the impression with every one of those that I have to send that I've ruined somebodies day. It's the part that I really do not like to do. I like even less to dwell on it, so...

-In other news I was considering exactly how the hells I'm going to do the traps in The Castle. Part of me thinks to just go in and use variations of the code that I've been scripting with. The other part thinks that I should just build a function for each trap and feed it variables, since that'll be a lot more efficient with computer resources. So I think I'll do that right after I get the geometries into ThiefEd.
What I've designed for are 3 different kinds of traps from the Classic Traps Emporium down the street. So we have spinning neck high blades (that must be ducked under), spikes from the floor/walls/ceiling which must be avoided and bladed buzzsaws that travel to and fro which have to be outrun or dodged.
The first two (the spinning blades and spikes) can have a variant of each other from a scripting standpoint. Basically, they run on a timer. If you are standing around (or not ducking in the case of the blades) when the timer reaches a certain number (or range of numbers with the spikes) then you get wasted. When the timer will probably then reset. Nothing too fancy there.
The Saws are harder though. Basically they too run a timer, from 0 to whatever and each cycle that timer is reduced or added to and the saw moves. When it gets where it's going, it turns around. I would rather it run on a single (reusable) variable if I could though. Hmm, functions for another day.

- I've retooled and polished up the second level. I had to nerf the enemies to do it though. Basically I don't have all the art installed for them yet, so the system falls down when they hop in. So I turned them off and got to work. Tweaked the level layouts and whatnot. There were puzzles designed from before I made the changes to the physics system and how far you can drop before the cold, sweet embrace of death takes you (it's like a hug from sorbet!). It had also rendered some of the puzzles impossible, so that's better now. The new checkpoint system seems to be working better too. I die and I get to try again whilst avoiding additional shenanigans. Hooray!
While playing around in the second level I'm glad to see that it holds up. Given an option I would probably tear the whole thing down and do it again, but it's good. All of the experience I've gotten with pacing and structure during the Cliffs Saga are in their proto stage here. I'm finding it an interesting, and quite playable, artifact.

-Finally, the machine that is Google has found my previous nonsense about being #1. It's cut a little odd and says something like, "nobody reads this" or somesuch. While technically true, I'd rather readers (Hah!) find that out themselves after, um reading (double Hah!). So without further ado:

We're #1 for "Indie Confessions" now! That's good considering this is the actual development diary of an actual indie game studio.

The ball's in your court GoogleBot.