{"author_name":"datacr4sh","cat":"LD #30","comments":[],"epoch":1409025240,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"26583","p_author":"datacr4sh","p_authorkey":"40158","p_urlkey":"62014","p_title":"TETHER: Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #30","p_event":"LD30","p_time":"1409025240","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"40158","us_name":"datacr4sh","us_username":"datacr4sh","event_start":"1408665600","event_key":"24","event_name":"LD30"},"text":"

I wanted to jot down a few of the key ideas that spawned TETHER in its current state, what I learnt from making it, and what might happen to the game in future. You can play it here.<\/a><\/p>\n

The core mechanic of the game is the concept of transferring jump momentum between the two characters, allowing the player to control jump height. This mechanic came about as a happy accident, I had intended it to simply be a single jump, but the way I coded the inputs meant that holding the buttons while a character was landing instantly made the other one\u00a0jump, which visually looked like momentum was being exchanged.<\/p>\n

Before I did anything else in the game, I made sure this\u00a0act of jumping felt really good. This is extremely important to this game especially, since the player is doing nothing but jump, and they really have no choice as to when. The shake, sound and physics of the jump I took a lot of time making, and the game felt the same as it does now from about 8 hours into the comp.<\/p>\n

An earlier version actually had up to 4 jump heights that built off of each other. I cut that idea simply because it was an unnecessary complication to the mechanic. If a player saw the arrow prompts and was suddenly bouncing around at 5 different heights, they would give up after their 2nd death, because they would not understand how they did it and what they’d have to do to replicate the “right” jump.<\/p>\n

Now,\u00a0I could\u00a0just include a separate tutorial\/text wall explaining the game in full.\u00a0Personally\u00a0I consider those\u00a0approaches as bad as movie exposition:\u00a0actors talking to\u00a0each other about an event\u00a0for the purpose of filling in the audience. It’s a visual medium, show don’t tell. In an interactive medium, showing is fine but playing is even better. This is how I went about doing that:<\/p>\n