It's been a while since our last update, and that's because the team was hard at work releasing the Mixtape Dreams alpha build! Now that we have released our alpha, we have a lot to share regarding development over the past few weeks.

A large chunk of our time was dedicated to getting the movement feel right. Since platformers are all about navigating terrain, we knew that movement would make or break the game. It had to be fun to move around, even if there was nothing interesting in the level. After a lot of tweaking, we were finally able to tweak our base movement to feel right. The player quickly accelerates to full speed, and also quickly decelerates to a full stop. Jumping is instant. For jumping, we give the player enough hang time to help them stick their landing but not so much that the jumps feel floaty.

The core of our game is based off of switching between distinct tracks that provide the player with different movement options. We had to put a lot of work into making sure each track felt distinct and useful. As we briefly discussed in the last devlog, we chose the green track to be full of energy, providing the player with fast movement and dashes. We decided to give the blue track the ability to double jump and wall jump, as that would enable us to provide more verticality in our levels. While testing, we found that we could use the blue track to double jump, then switch over to the green track and dash to reach places that we couldn't reach before! This was a lot of fun and we plan on allowing players to use this technique to find optional collectibles. Finally, we gave the red track the ability to destroy terrain. Although the red track does restrict player movement, it allows them to open up new pathways and explore new options for navigating our levels.

Being a Metroidvania, we needed our levels to be non-linear, and provide progress by giving upgrades to the player. Initially, we wanted to give the player each track throughout the game. However, we received feedback that since track switching is such an important mechanic, we needed to introduce it early. Now, we've settled on giving the player the 3 tracks during the tutorial. Throughout the game, players will  finding upgrades to the tracks that further enhance the player's movement options. At of right now, the green track can be upgraded to give the player a dash and the blue track can be upgraded to give the player a double jump.

The next thing on our list is controls. We needed a keyboard only control method, and we needed to consider which keys to bind and what actions they will perform. Since the basic movement options are pretty simple, a jump and a track specific action, we decided to bind those actions to Z and X which are commonly used in indie games. We had trouble when it came to switching tracks. The two control schemes that we considered was to give the players a menu to pick a track, or to assign a key to each track. On one hand, we didn't want to overwhelm the player with too many buttons. Especially since there are 3 tracks, we didn't want players to memorize the button for each track. However, giving players a menu to switch tracks may break the flow of the game. In the end, we decided to bind shift to bring up a menu to switch tracks, but we've since gotten feedback that this control scheme is awkward, so we will spend the next few days revamping these controls.

On the level design side, we put in a lot of work getting the tutorial level ready. We wanted to not interrupt gameplay as much as possible during the tutorial, so we put messages like "Use the arrow keys to move" on a billboard in the background. Sadly, due to time constraints and the level layout, we couldn't do this for introducing each track. For now, we put a temporary UI when the player gets a new track, but we will definitely try to find a way to tell the player how to use tracks without forcing them to read UI prompts. We have been considering adding an NPC in the tutorial level that demonstrates each track's power, so we can show the player what happens instead of telling them.

Sadly, as we're getting more complex levels, we've realized that our current asset workflow doesn't work too well. Our artists, Kim and Selena, do their 3D modelling in Maya and export their models into Unity. However, we've had trouble getting materials and lights to import properly. Some materials and lights don't appear, and the ones that do import are usually buggy. Our team has been researching into the scriptable render pipelines that Unity offers to see if we can resolve these issues.

Like with the levels, getting the player animations to look right has also been tricky for us. Getting transitions between animations to look natural has been difficult, especially with regards to jumping and falling. We've tested a few different falling animations, and we're still not entirely satisfied with the results. We are planning on iterating and fine tuning the animations and transitions until we get something that looks and feels good.

With all that said, we were able to demo our alpha build last Thursday! We got some great feedback, especially regarding our controls and movement. We'll need to tone down the green track a bit and change the track switching controls for the player. We'll also need to focus on UI work, as the current UI is pretty bland. Finally, we need to add more Metroidvania elements to our game, such as a minimap and collectibles.

Our next steps are to definitely gather more feedback from other playtesters, and to make sure that our levels are not too confusing. Especially since we are trying to incorporate getting lost as part of the game, we need to make sure that our level design is able to give the player hints for what they can do, and what they should do next. There is a fine balance between letting the player get lost as a mechanic, and making the player frustrated because they can't progress. The tutorial still needs work, and we'll also need to complete all the levels before we reach beta. We've also pushed back the timeline for introducing enemies in the game, but that is another mechanic that we are currently working towards.

There's a lot of work left before our beta build, but we've been going strong for the past few weeks. With the alpha build, we can finally see the many hours of planning and work coming together. Releasing the alpha was a big achievement for us, but we still have a lot of work that needs to be done. However, we are confident that we are ready to take on any challenges that lie ahead!