BGP – Magnetic Objects

This week I worked on a number of things, ranging from the game’s Health-pickups to additional assets for the level. What I chose to focus a bit on however was the Magnetic Objects. These are quite a fundamental part of Scrap Pirates since the game is built around using magnetism to interact with each other (since the game is 2 player co-op) as well as these objects in the surroindings.

The Magnetic Objects of Scrap Pirates

First of all the Magnetic Objects can be split into two, namely the box/crate ones as well as the wall mounted ones. The difference between these is that the wall mounted magnets are immovable and lacks collission while the crates are both movable and has collission, allowing players to manipulate them and not simply be affected by them.
The Magnetic Objects all have the distinct pattern for their active parts in common, allowing the players to recognize them easily.

There are three “levels” of these Magnetic Objects as well. To differentiate these levels I mainly used the magnetism color coding, adding additional fields of this color to the objects to indicate an increase in power output. To illustrate the unused magnetic output I chose a rather darker brown as it would create contrast for the magnetic colors, especially in value.

The first of these levels is the Inactive Objects, which do not emit a magnetic field of their own. Wall mounted inactive objects will essentially have no function at all as they are affected by nothing the player doeas and will not affect the player in any way either. They can however be activated by switches/timers etc.
Inactive crates on the other hand will react to the player’s magnetic fields based on their color. If the player activates a red magnetic field, blue crates will be attracted to this field while red crates will be repelled. This allows players to move the crates to use as platforms etc.

The second level is the Active Objects. These emit a magnetic field of their own, and will function very much like when the players interact with each others magnetic fields. For the crate type of objects this means both the player and the crate repelling or attracting each other depending on the polarities uesed.
For the wall mounted however only the player will be affected by the magnetism, the wall mounted object remaining static. This will therefore be fixed, dependable points to which the players can be pulled or from which they can repel.
This also means that Active Objects will be able to interact with each other.
To illustrate an object as being active the middle node of the active object will be lit, as shown on the spritesheet above, as well as a magnetic field being shown surrounding it.

The last level is the Supecharged Objects. These function essentially the same as Active, just that the effect is greater. These objects are illustrated by the center node as well as the surrounding circle being lit, basically filling the object with the magnetic color, which will hopefully make it easily recognizable from the standard Active ones.

We may add an additional sheen or pulsating effect if the Magnetic Objects tend to appear dull, or to enhance the visuals of Active/Supercharges Magnetic Objects.

Additionally this friday we had a playtesting session within the education, where students and staff could try the different projects. Overall the feedback was pretty good regarding our progress so far, but a couple of comments has made me rethink the design of the base tiles that I wrote about last time. I tried making them diverse and flexible at the same time, but they turned out a bit limiting for certain configurations, and not entirely as visually pleasing as I had hoped. So I’ll have to think a bit about if it can be altered without having to impact the level design and implementation too greatly.