GraLL 2, Gravity Switch, HUD, Magnets, and a lot more
Fri, 20 November 2009
It’s been a long time since the last post, but now there’s a lot to say. ;-)
GraLL 2 has recieved numerous updates – HUD, gravity switching, Sounds, Magnets, One-Way screens, Acid, Falling Blocks, Traps, End Point. There might be a few other things I forgot too.
The HUD (the stuff you see on the screen in most games, like ‘health’) is a dynamic one. You can dynamically add and remove tracking for pickup count, icons to show the state of the game, countdown timers etc. It’s completely scriptable. So, if you have an object that’s timed (like a timed switch or something), you can add a line ‘GraLL2.addHUDTimer(5, Ngf.ColourValue(0.1, 0.2, 0.8))’ to get a blue-ish timer that counts down 5 seconds. You can also add, replace and remove icons and pickup counters the same way.
GraLL can pick up a pickup (pun intended) that’ll give him temporary gravity-switching powers. You can invert gravity by pressing ‘G’ (or whatever you set it to in the options). This’ll make everything ‘go up’, of course. Can make for fun puzzles. The camera smoothly rotates into position when the world is upside down.
Magnets attract or repel magnetic objects. GraLL is a magnetic object. Other rigid bodies can be magnetic too.
I added a few sound effects to test the sound system (which uses OpenAL). 3D surround sound works perfectly. You can create, and modify sounds from Python. There’s a prefab called ‘AmbientSound’ that does this. You can put an AmbientSound anywhere in your level, and tell it which file to play, with what gain (volume) and attenuation etc. This will make the environment more interesting with ambient noises (like water leaks, or welding sounds, or whatever), instead of just music.
Acid and Traps are the same as in the original GraLL (Acid – Doun’t touch, can use Crates to build bridges, Traps – Go over it and a bomb pops up in a fraction of a second). Of course, the new dimension feature makes them more interesting. Falling Blocks are like normal floors, except they begin to fall when you roll over them, so be quick! One-Way screens allow you to pass through them only in one direction. The End Point is just what it says on the tin: The end of the level. It’s a yellow ‘evaporating gas circle thing’ (like the pink ones in the GTA games) which when you roll into, you’ve completed the level.
Here are some relevant screenshots. Check out the Flickr page for more.
