This sprint has been quite an eventful one!
To start off, I revamped the pole-vaulting mechanics for this sprint’s playtest! I started by creating a new enumerator that would allow me to create different “stages” of the pole vault.
The first of these states is the “Ready” state that the player begins in. In this state, you can see a red line trace that shows where your pole is going to be planted. In the previous version, this was only visible when the player held down left click. Now, by pressing left click, the player “plants” their pole and enters the next state.
Pole Vault Ready State
Next is the “Planted” state. In this state, the player’s pole is anchored to wherever the line trace connected to when they entered the state. If the player moves too far away from the anchor point, they go back into the Ready state. But as the player moves closer to the anchor point, they move more slowly. This is to simulate the resistance of the pole “flexing” as the player moves closer. Upon release of the left mouse button, the player transitions into the final state of the pole vault.
Pole Vault Ready State
Finally, in the “Vaulting” State, a physics impulse is applied to the player coming from the direction of wherever their pole was planted. This state only lasts for one frame, as the impulse is only applied once, so I could have just had it trigger at the end of the Ready state. But it made more sense to me to have it be its own separate state. Doing it this way also allows me more control over the force applied in case I decide to modify how it works later.
Pole Vault Vaulting State
After creating this new movement system, our group had our second playtest! The night before, I was the one to package the project. Sadly, when trying to merge my group’s branches together, I faced a long list of conflicts and had to make the decision of whose features to include in the playtest. I chose my own branch with the new movement system over my producer’s UI and my lead designer’s tutorial level because the movement mechanics are the core of our game, and with their recent overhaul they were the most important thing for us to test and further refine.
We received positive feedback in this playtest! We had six playtesters, and their ratings of our game were about the same as last time. However, when asked how this new movement felt compared to the old mechanics, all of the playtesters who had played the previous iteration said that it was just as good or better than the last one.
Alongside positive feedback on the new movement mechanics, we also received some feedback on how to improve it that I would like to implement.
Currently the pole vault does not take into account your speed, meaning that you’ll get the same boost from getting a running start as you will vaulting from a standstill, which doesn’t feel very realistic. Secondly, I think we need to do a better job of teaching the player how the controls work, as it seems some testers didn’t understand the new movement mechanics.
Going into our next (and final!) sprint, I want to spend the remaining time we have polishing the movement so it feels as smooth and intuitive as possible. I feel like I’ve learned a lot during this project and I’m very excited to see how our finished prototype turns out!
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