Greetings Puzzlers!

The first week of final development has passed, and a lot of progress has been made. As usual, we'll discuss this progress in this weekly dev log.

Levels

As of today, I have created 62 levels so far, pack 1 and 2 are done, pack 3 still needs 2 levels, and pack 4 has 4 ready levels. So I still have 38 levels to go D:

Changes Through Feedback

I've been looking through some feedback I've received through the previous versions, and got some more feedback from a friend who played it for me. I came up with these few changes to adress some issues you've been having with the game.

1. Shoot/Jump mode is unclear how you will travel
   For this, I made a raytracing system that traces down a path you might travel in each frame. I made it as precise as possible, while that part could still use some work, and as performant as possible. There's a certain balance I had to choose between those 2, as too accurate tracing can impact performance, and going for too much performance will make it extremely inaccurate.
2. Score calculations
   To counter some of the alternatives people have found to finish a level, I changed the way score is calculated. I ditched the extreme rounding of numbers, and scaled the score up to 1:1 scale with the lights, instead of grid scale. I have also added another aspect to score calculations, which is an extra score from 0-100 based on how many connection you have correct.
3. Skipping level summary
   The summary screen is animated, which was ofc done for a more "professional" look. Some people wanted to be able to skip this, so they don't have to wait forever to see if they got everything correct. Now, if you click somewhere randomly on screen, you can skip the animations for each line.
4. Dead lights color is unclear
   Dead lights take the same rules as normal lights, so they need the same color to travel to. Since it has a different graphical form, it is impossible to know what the color has to be. In order to adress this, I made the hover-over circle turn into the color the light actually is, so if you hover over it, you'll know.
5. Not enough helpers
   To adress other issues that made some things unclear, I have added a number of helpers and indicators that will help you solve a level. First of all, when you hover over a light, it will show you how much power that light has left, telling you if you still need to use it, or if it will max your score for that specific light. It will also render all possible connections from that light, based on it's remaining power in a light gray color. This should help players better understand how to finish their level correctly. Another usefull change, is the mini-tutorials in some levels (the text that displays on screen to explain mechanics to you) have been spiced up a bit, and some have been added to help you better understand all the available mechanics.
6. Slow score calculations
   The last thing you would want, is to wait 5 minutes for your score to be calculated, this has been a thing for a long time and so I decided to speed up this process, so you don't have to stare at your screen for a while anymore.

Level Editor Tools

To help myself to make levels faster, I've added some new tools to the editor to speed up level creation. For example, I've added a ruler that allows me to measure the range a light would need, and instantly update it into a light. Previously, I had to calculate every single light by hand, which takes up valuable time. With this new tool I can quickly go over my level and update all lights to their required ranges.

Hidden Achievements

I've added a new type of unlock, hidden achievements, these will show as "Hidden Achievement" in the unlocks menu, and will give you no information whatsoever about how to unlock them. When you unlock them, it will show how you got it.

New Mechanic: Invertor

I'm still planning out some more mechanics, this makes the game less boring, gives it more veriety and makes it easier for me to make more levels. This new mechanics, The Invertor, inverts all lights colors in the scene, while you keep your color untill you hit a light.

Week 2/3 starts now!

This week is the final week of level creation, I need to get 38 levels done by Sunday, and update all other levels to work with the new scoring calculations. Next week I will have 3/4 days to polish my game further, and fix some issues that are still around/that I might find, to get the game fully ready for its release on the 27th.