To make it more clear that the flowers are affecting the castle, I added light functionality that turns the brightness up or down. That way it shows when the flowers are “on” or “off.” Went to all the rooms and added flowers to make sure they were reachable in every configuration of the room. While testing the rooms I didn’t like the sound of the footsteps on stone so I simplified it since I previously had a lot of random sounds playing.
So far the flowers add a nice aesthetic to the rooms, giving it variety and pleasing colors, but there’s still a lot missing in terms of decorations. I also felt that since the place is supposed to be abandoned, there should be dust everywhere. I didn’t think it would be smart to add dust to every room, so instead I used the status effect visual function on the character and attached dust particles to the player. With this there will be dust no matter where they go. It adds a lot to the sense that there is no one around.
The physics objects can be a bit problematic when the castle is turning so I thought it would be fun to have their gravity turned off when everything rotates. So there will be a bunch of objects floating around the map, it can lead to some fun hijinks. I made sure all the flowers in the stage reacted to the castle starting and stopping its rotation. So you can’t touch a flower while the building is moving.
I then added a save point to each room, it also serves as another light source and another indicator of the rotation of the building.
I have a problem where the player can phase through the building when it rotates, it probably has to do with such a large object turning, it is probably having a hard time detecting where the player is at the same time. It is just a guess and it doesn’t happen often, but it happened enough times while I was testing that I need to find a way to make sure that the player never gets outside the building.
So far I am testing a solution where the flower holds the player in place. It does a good job of making sure the player follows the castle, but it doesn’t look great. I will continue working on this so that it both works well and looks good.
GoldenGratus Games 