Hello everyone,
Here I am again – sorry for the long break after my last post. First of all, I would like to thank you! Thanks to your support, I am now a Twitch affiliate. But of course I haven’t been completely inactive in terms of content lately, as my last nine streams prove.
First of all: I will remain spoiler-free here and in the following blog posts. However, this does not always apply to the Twitch highlights. There, I have displayed a spoiler warning at the bottom right whenever mechanics or solutions to puzzles are mentioned.
Here are the highlights:
Second plateau of the first level completed
A big progress I would like to inform you about is my first level. Here, the second level is ready to be explored by Fluff. The bell tower, which now also contains a bell, is of course still the central feature. However, as the level otherwise looks very empty, I have added further elements. Here is a small overview:
First puzzles integrated
To stimulate the brain cells of you and Fluff (if it has any), I have integrated the first puzzles into the game. Fluffs are distributed at various points in the level and can be collected. This mechanic will (hopefully) become clear to you by the time the green Fluff greets you behind the gate to the second level. The next ones will not be so easy to reach, that much is already clear. To stay spoiler-free at this point, I’ll only show you pictures of one puzzle in the long shot, the rest you’ll have to find out for yourself!
New game mechanics: Follow!
In Fluff Adventure, it is basically possible to switch to found Fluffs and control them. All well and good, as long as you don’t have to move lots of Fluffs to the same place! Otherwise you would have to move each one individually. To avoid this admittedly monotonous work, I have built in a follow-up mechanic. This allows you to instruct another fluff to follow another fluff. The following fluff uses an AI controller and the navigation mesh to automatically find its way back to the fluff it is following. As long as they are not under the player’s control, they will not perform any breakneck platforming maneuvers. The following mechanic is still active even if you no longer control the fluff you are following. This means that you can even let fluffs run after each other in single file. Here’s a video of what it looks like in the game:
One final Blender tip
When modeling many parts of the puzzles, I wanted to use the Geometry Node, which can cut off corners of objects and which I have already presented in a previous post. However, the function was in another project and I was looking for a way to save it somewhere. And indeed, there is such a possibility!
Blender Append
… is the miracle cure at this point. The various geometry nodes can be stored in a separate Blender file and then loaded into another project via File → Append if required. Very helpful!