Movement, hills and character selection

Hi blog, long time no see! Terribly sorry, but at least I have some tasty updates to share today and hopefully over the course of the weekend.

So, as every reader of this blog knows it is now possible to walk around the level with one of the characters. That build can be found HERE. Hooray!

How this works:
Each chunk of ground is an area. Each area is divided up into a series of zones connected by bridges (splines). Bridges are either jumps, ladders or walkways - basically anything that isn't just normal ground. In this build, the zones have different textures. When the player clicks on a walk-able spot the game uses raytracing to determine which area and zone the location is in by reading the mesh and material of the clicked polygon. The game then calculates how the character can walk there and which splines (bridges) to use. Magic!

Now, this build has a number of issues; the ladders don't have any collision, the camera isn't great, it hurts to look at the thing... But the movement is solid, which is a HUGE deal. Hooray!

I've also created some placeholder background elements to make the game a little bit easier on the eye.

...naturally, most of them aren't even visible in the actual game.

Oh well. It's very likely that I'll have to work out some kind of solution for the camera later, anyway.

Next up is the character selection. I've added a second character to the Unity scene, and now I want to throw the HUD in there too and create a selection mechanic.

Another option is to also allow the player to move both characters at the same time, but this adds a lot of complexity to the movement functionality. So for now, I'm sticking with one character being active at a time. Wish me luck!