Magnetized Ground and Simplified Controls

After letting people test out Shatter Ball, I noticed many people were not sure where to touch the screen to launch the ball. Originally, the top half of the screen was for turning the camera, and the bottom half was for launching the ball. You could already turn the camera while you were launching anyway, so why have two different ways to control the camera? Now, you can start launching the ball by dragging from anywhere on the screen, but the magnitude of the launch is dependent on the current vertical position touched on the screen. This means you can start dragging above the ball, and this input will carry over to when your finger is dragged below the ball.

Other small changes:

  • The direction you launch is no longer restricted to the forward direction of the camera, so you can aim the direction while dragging your finger left and right.

  • Camera now collides with walls.

  • Vertical Camera rotation is restricted when grounded, as players do not need to aim while grounded (Still needs some adjustment to smooth transitioning between grounded and airborne).

  • While aiming an uncharged ball, transitioning between airborne and grounded automatically adjusts timescale and the ability to launch the ball. This means you can start moving the camera while airborne and the game will immediately slow down when you are allowed to launch again.

In bigger news, I have finished some of the early stages of implementing magnetized ground. Currently it changes the gravity direction and orients the camera to match the new ground normal. The gravity is reset to normal if the ball remains too far from magnetized ground for a short period of time (This prevents jumping from demagnetizing the ball from the ground). I still need to make adjustments to get aiming working correctly with magnetized ground and to get camera orientation working consistently. Later on I would also like to add in some constraints to prevent riding to the bottom of magnetized land.

Here is a short video showing off the current state of magnetized ground, as well as all the other small changes that have been made.