Sunday, July 10, 2011

It's Been A Long Time

I haven't created a post in a while. This is mainly due to me working hard on Nitronic Rush.
Yes, the car is upside down!
Nitronic has come a long way since our gold submission to DigiPen. We always considered the gold submission to be a beta for us and we are still in our beta phase. Nitronic Rush still needs more levels to become a complete game. It also needs a bit more technology development to feel right to the player. One of these technologies is an arrow or some sort of object on screen that directs the player back to the track if they get off course or fly off the track. There is a chance that flying may be taken out of the main game. Worst case is that it becomes an unlock-able once the player beats the game, or it's only available in certain modes. Flying in the game is just not up to par with the rest of the game and it breaks levels. Players can pretty much bypass anything with the flying. We're working on changing that. Truly, the only thing that can fix flying is the mechanics that it is bound by. Level design can't do much as it would be an infinite process of figuring out how to box the player in to not be able to fly. The best idea, but the idea that would take the most time to implement would be to have flying be a power-up where the player has to get something or go through something to get flying and then they only have a certain area in which they can fly.
Sideways section for the Hardcore Red Level
Outside of our troubles with flying, we did not get into the PAX 10 competition. The entire team's morale dropped when they heard the news. We assume that we did not get in due to the game not being finished and the lack of levels in each difficulty. The problem with difficulties is that people tend to think that each subsequent difficulty is roughly the same in level layout but harder whereas in Nitronic that is just not the case. Each level in each difficulty is unique. I built every level so we technically have 6 levels, but 2 per difficulty. More than likely, the judges played one difficulty and that was it. Because of this, the team and I have decided to move all the levels into one difficulty, except the hardcore levels which are pretty damn hard for most. That gives Nitronic 4 levels to play and possibly more after I finish overhauling the current levels. That's where we are right now. I thank you for reading!


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