Wow! This took a little more work than I expected, but I like the improvements I've made to this game.

I recommend playing at least the new version before reading this devlog. Shouldn't take long--it's pretty short and sweet c:

Movement tweaks

First off, I'll discuss the changes I made to the tornado's movement. In the original prototype, circling the mouse around the tornado would move you a set amount of pixels every frame that the mouse was moving. I altered that in this new version, so circling will increase or decrease the tornado's speed instead, and take into account how much the mouse has moved. Throw in some friction and a max speed limit… Now the tornado gradually speeds up and slows down, and you can’t instantly change directions. It feels a little more uncontrollable--just like a real tornado would be (if you moved them by drawing circles around them, at least). I also set some boundaries, so the tornado can't go off the sides of the screen anymore. And finally, I got rid of the tutorial text and added a simple indicator that flashes after a few seconds, if you haven't moved yet.

Changing the tornado's movement helped me uncover a few bugs that had been hiding from me. Simply put: things now go the right way when you run into them. The people and cars no longer reverse their direction if you catch up to them after throwing them. (My partner thought it made more sense for the tornado to fling things in the opposite direction it hits them from—i agreed and made that change too.)

Beginning part (Structure)

The biggest change, though, is that I added a whole first part! I wanted to add structure, without necessarily making it another arcadey score-based game (as I've done with a couple other projects in the past). This beginning part is simple, but I think it adds some interesting context beyond the original’s blunt “wreak havoc” instruction. Of course,the decision to make an entirely new first part meant that my development time turned from “minor tweaks and improvements” into “creating new problems and solving them” very quickly.

One snag that popped up early was making the wind point toward the mouse. At first it seemed simple: take the angle of the line pointing from the wind’s position to the mouse’s position, and apply that angle to the wind itself. That worked perfect when the level was the same size as the screen, but once I increased the level’s size and had the camera follow the player it created issues. The player’s position was calculated in relation to the whole level, but the mouse’s position was only detected within the 800*600 game window. The game would compare the actual position of the wind to the relative position of the mouse, and things went haywire. My fix was to have the wind centered at all times, and compare the mouse’s position to the middle of the screen instead of the wind’s position. Once I created camera boundaries for the level, I just had to apply the same amount of offset to the mouse’s position that I applied to the camera. It works! (I’m sure there are bugs to be found, though.)

Another thing that stumped me was getting the cup to stop rotating when it hit the ground. My current solution is a little slapdash, because I kept trying different things until I figured out what I was actually doing wrong. I was basing the cup's landing position on the value of its "rotation" variable, and doing the math as if that variable were constrained between 0 and 2π radians. Buuuuut I didn't ever set that limit to constrain it. Whoops! Once I solved that, it worked like a charm. I feel some of my other, smoother ideas for landing would actually work now. But this jam has a time limit, and I wasted too much time on this as is! I'll have to fix it as I continue to develop after the jam.

Drawing the speech bubbles was pretty fun to implement. I draw a few different shapes to the screen, essentially stacking them on top of each other in the right order, then draw the text on top of that. Maybe not the most elegant solution, and nothing to brag about either, but I enjoyed that process.

Music and Sound

My last goal for this jam was to make a background track. I had some ideas for the style of music I wanted, but I didn’t end up working on it this past week. Turns out that making a new part for a game is pretty involved work! Between that, my job, and other obligations, I ended up not having much time for anything else. This is one of the first things I'd like to change as I continue developing “Control Yourself”. At the very least, I'd like to add some sound effects--the complete and utter silence I have right now is a little awkward.

Conclusion

I think I bit off a tiny bit more than I could chew with the changes I made here. Tornado movement was easy: I knocked that out first and did so quickly. The structural changes quickly ballooned, and ate into any time I could have put towards writing music. That said, I'm really happy with where this game is headed and I can't wait to keep working on it. Thanks for reading and playing!