Moldering is about exploration, and knowing this I’ve been tweaking the controls to get them just right. As a design decision I’ve limited the character’s movement a great deal and increased the overall gravity pulling down on the player. Movement is a lot tighter, quicker, and reactive, and the player has a greater sense of control. However, he’s not as powerful as he used to be.

I originally had the player jumping really high and moving really long distances in the air with ease, but it seemed broken and “floaty”, so I toned him down quite a bit. He doesn’t jump as high or as far now, but rather he seems like he’s one little guy going up against big odds, and I think that’s a good tone for the game.

As a result of these changes I’ve come to the conclusion that having a ledge-climbing ability will be a good way to give him just enough maneuverability. The player won’t be able to jump as far or as high, but will be able to grab onto those ledges that are just within reach and pull himself up onto them, or jump off of them.

With this ability, we’ll be able to design some interesting platforming levels. For example, consider a vertical tunnel with grooves in both walls. The player can grab onto and jump back and forth from these grooves, but the grooves will be small enough that the player won’t have enough space to pull himself up into them. These areas will allow the player to perform successive wall jumps by jumping back and forth from wall to wall. It will be the only way to get up.

I’ve implemented the wall hang. Next, I need to work out how the controls work.

-James