More Fun and Games

I started this week by donning a wetsuit and stackhat and abseiling down 5, 10 and 15 metre waterfalls in the mountains around Mérida. My first time canyoning was an absolute blast and I’ll definitely be doing it again. Having spent too much time lately with one foot in a river, it was refreshing to take ownership of my “river problem” and boldly walk through the rivers, soaked to the bone and loving every minute.

We walked through some amazing little bits of jungle, but didn’t have time to take much notice of it between jumping into pools, sliding down rocks and the intermittent whistle blasts from our guide… which became the funniest part of the day.

I was feeling a little lethargic this week, so only spent a day and a half on Elevation, but it has progressed pretty well and I’ve been playing it a bit. It’s a little harder than I anticipated, so there’s definitely some tweaking to do. I’ve also realized that combos, which will give satisfaction bonuses, are desperately needed to make the game more fun and have less of a random feel. All the time spent playing card cards on various boats and in various jungles has had a big impact on how I think about games, and the combos I’m thinking of are essentially a Straight, delivering 3 or more people to consecutive floors, or Triples or Quads, 3 or 4 people to the same floor. In order to add some tactics to how combos can be planned, people will fade in when they spawn and take a while to transition between a floor and the elevator. Moving the elevator while people are transitioning will leave them on the floor. This allows you to effectively cancel a move if someone starts spawning on a different floor that you can use in a combo. The main question for me now is where to build the combo mechanism in. I could just put it into the Level class, which is currently updating the people, elevator and timers but it almost feels like there should be an Observer looking after the combos.

Mérida has been and is great, and I’ve been having a lot of fun working on the game, but I’ve been getting a little anxious here lately, I think because I’ve been here so long. I’m hoping to get the game finished in the next week and move on to Columbia on Friday but who knows, Friday is a long way away at the moment.

Luego!