Devlog #45: Hype with Rhythm

Been another crappy week for me, but I’ve made some progress in odd places. Not gonna show the new area for spoiler reasons, so I'll show off some more work-in-progress stuff.

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Rhythm Game Mechanics

This week I've been working on a prototype, that's an attempt to change Mac's Hype action into a light rhythm game. I'm still working out the kinks and I want to make sure it's actually fun and a worthwhile change before I add it to the game. I'm having some hiccups so I may end up scrapping it entirely. (Mac going nuts will not be in the final version)

It's pretty simple, and I’d like to make it more complex but I’m having some issues-

The problem comes from how Gamemaker treats audio as separate from the game, so if at any point the game lags or the game window pauses then the music continues playing and desyncs from the game. If all goes well it would stay in sync, but my game isn't amazingly optomised so I wouldn't be surprised if there are frame dips (and possibly consistent ones on lower end hardware).

My makeshift fix is that I set a basic rhythm for the whole track, that even if desynced shouldn’t feel unfair to play. And if I put more focus on matching the shape with some flashy visuals then maybe it won't matter.  I'll keep brainstorming, but for now it’s getting sidelined for more guaranteed progress.

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Hedge maze

This is part of the central area that connects 4 different dreams together, so the player will travel through it fairly often and I’ve been looking for a cool gimmick to add here. Something maze-like was my initial thought, but I couldn’t figure out a way to make it unique until this week.

The idea was inspired by how I reworked the indoor areas in last week's devlog, making a simple maze feel claustrophobic and tight by sectioning off areas to only the walls visible from the perspective you're standing at. 

Right now it's still an early prototype, bu it's going smoothly so far. Talking to my brother about it, he suggested that the player could hide in the hedge when enemies go by to avoid them. And I'm not sure how I'm going to implement it, but I made some mock ups of how it might look and it’s way too funny not to add.

By next week I should have a more polished version to show off.

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That’s all for this week. Still working on that next area to get my brother to playtest it, but I’m having a lot of fun working on the hedge area so I may pivot to getting that done first.

Thanks for reading!