Update April 2023

This month I worked on improving the visuals of the first few levels, most importantly the Wall level. We are completely finalizing the look of the game, and many of the features I am making/improving for the Wall level can be used in tons of other places in the game. Things like the texture and shape of the wall, the size and shape and color of the grass, how much detail to put in the ground texture, etc...

I really like how it is turning out. I think people are going to flip out at how much better it looks. The tree next to the wall looks especially bonkers, especially when sliced.

When I started the game, things were hard for me to make in 4D, but now I am very comfortable with it. I have better tools, and computers are faster so we can have more details. For example, in the case of the wall, we can make the wall out of actual 4D bricks, and also have these bricks be scattered randomly all around the wall: around it in the grass world, and in the desert world. They actually look like they are part of the wall, which helps understandability. In the old trailer I just scattered random hypercubes to suggest this same idea. This looked more messy and confusing. Now it looks more simple and clean, which is another thing that helps understandability!

I always tell the story of how I was surprised at how the game actually became more understandable when I added more visual detail. I was kind of expecting more detail to be more confusing. But instead it helped! For one, it added more visual landmarks, which help players orient themselves in the 4D space.

But there is still a balance between wanting to add as much detail as possible to make something that looks super crazy, and adding so much that it becomes confusing to look at. Especially since this is the second level in the game. 

I think we have struck a good balance now! 

I was playing with the improved collision code from last month, and I think it is mostly good, but I did find a few small new issues which I need to fix soon.

Characters and buildings progressing nicely as usual.

Next month I will keep improving more levels, and do some of the remaining small programming tasks.

Thanks for reading!