Rush 2

oh well, it might turn into level 3 ...

At last, I have a second level matching the "rush game" design that accidentally arose from the "non-tutorial" level 1 crafted last december. This one won't be 4-years-old-friendly, I'm afraid, but there are still plenty of safety nets and alternate faster path for trained daddies. This is somehow giving it some Sonic flavour more than Mario spirit, but without making it roller-coaster looking where you can't figure out how you could perform better. Here, the closer you are from the bottom of the screen, the slower you'll progress (and the more likely you're to be in trouble when the ink will rise faster).

Et voilà enfin un second niveau pour le jeu de course contre la montre l'encre avec Bilou proposé par Piek suite à la disposition du niveau de prise en main construit en décembre dernier. Il plaît moins à ma grande de 4 ans, qui le trouve déjà trop effrayant malgré les "sécurités" rajoutées ici et là. Sécurités qui ne sont efficace pour la plupart que si l'encre reste gentiment à son niveau le plus bas, et qui sont disponible uniquement un bref instant pour une montée lente de l'encre. Bien sûr j'ai gardé des passage plus corsés dans le haut du niveau pour les papas pressés (et pour échapper à l'encre une fois qu'elle monte d'avantage). On retrouve un côté "Sonic" avec des chemins plus rapides mais plus techniques et d'autres plus lents mais plus accessibles ... sauf qu'ici on a en plus la convention "en haut = rapide, en bas = sûr (s'il n'y a pas d'encre)".

I still have technical issues, though. A couple of curious movements may still make you stuck into walls, despite the basics of my game engine are to avoid such situations.

I'm also very close to the maximum number of "OAMs" the console can handle. If you stun all the bladors in the level and drop them in places where they cannot recover, the barrier of 128 OAMs will explode and things will start to disappear. The solution is simple and has been post-poned for a while: manage dynamically the monsters of the level, freeze some that are off-screen for too long and start using those that are getting in-range. This is video game programming 101 since the start of scrolling games (only 10 live monsters in a game of Super Mario World while you may have 10 times more monsters on the map) but the superior processing power of the DS allowed me to be "lazy" up to now.

I'd still probably be nowhere if I hadn't quick-injected a screen copy/paste feature in LEDS. Level 3 will definitely be easier to make if I take time to ensure attaching GOBs in LEDS never break the level script (e.g. by making the attachment instruction always appearing after the two involved GOBs are created :P)