With a hang feature in the game, it was time to make what I call the crane. These cranes have a handle instead of a hook that the player can latch onto. We intend to have multiple types of cranes, ones that move left and right, up and down. Basically the crane is a moving platform, but the player can latch onto. So a more difficult and precise platform. While hanging the player cannot move left or right, instead the player has to jump or drop off.

In the example up above, I’ve given the player the full ability to control the crane once attached. This also opens up other possibilities for the crane. The player or crane in general can only lower the handle so far to the ground before it stops. It has to hover a bit off the ground to ensure the player can still latch on since the mechanic activates when the player falls down.

The big challenge with the crane handle is the fact the player’s hand isn’t holding at the X center of the sprite due to weight balance I suppose. Anyway, when the player looks left or right, the X is modified so the hand looks to be in the same position even if it’s a pixel off. Currently the handle is a bit narrow in terms of what can be grabbed onto, so even if you look like you’re on target, you can still miss, just because the hand grabs so far behind the X center, so that will have to be changed into a wider handle, even if we try to keep everything set to fit in grid cells.

STILL HANGING IN THERE

I’ve started to make some paths focused on the hanging mechanic as you’ll see above. Oh yeah and there are cheat codes to change the sky color. I figured that after a few months of beautiful blue skies it’s time to get something fresh until we have more environments.

SOMETHING BIG IS COMING

We’ve been working on something big for the past few weeks.