Hello Hoppers!
So a lot of things have happened since the last update so let me dive into it!
Playtesting
I've sent out the demo to a few friends to iterate on it to make sure that it's playable and understandable without me hinting how to do things. Seeing people play the game and having fun is always wonderful so these past weeks has been a lot of fun! I'm going to go into some things that I did based on playtesting.
Updates From Playtest
So pretty quickly I noticed that when players got scared by almost falling down they pressed every button on the controller and pressing start or select would either restart the level or take you back to the main menu. This could ruin fun moments and was obviously not planned to be in the game later but I focused on other things, so I took my time to integrate the "restart from checkpoint" in the pause screen.
It's been fun to see the testers try to play as fast as possible so the timers in the level select are better presented so you can try and beat the par time on each level, this will probably also be in the final version of the game and not only in the demo.
Teching the player how to play is always difficult, I always want to avoid forcing the player to read any text. Learn by doing, so there is a "ghost tutorial" which is like a short replay system that jumps around and shows the player what to do. So far it's been teaching the player some different moves that I would have trouble with teaching through text. I think it's working very well.
Leg Updates
As some of you know, you can customize the character. Change legs, faces, boxes and also a hat.. but that last bit isn't in the game yet but the code supports it. ANYWAY, I've taken my time to iterate on every leg to try and make the shapes more fun and also have the outline be similar thickness to everything else that's colliding with the player. Just to make sure things feel consistent.
Steam Workshop
Okay so this one is still work in progress but things are good. I can browse existing levels, subscribe and then start that downloaded level without leaving the game which I think is very important for the game.
Remap
Okay so I'm excited for this one, it's working and this is one of the last bigger systems that I had to get working. So you can remap your controller in the game, but now the correct icon is displayed around the character based on what you remapped to. Works for controller and keyboard. I think I might iterate on this visually but at least it works technically.
So to end this update I want to say that Hoplegs is still a lot of fun to work on. I'm having a blast and the support I get over on Twitter, Twitch and my Discord is incredible. Thank you all for this :)
Have a great day.
/Kevin