Hello, everyone. Here's a progress update on some inflation stuff I've been working on.
After some trial and error I got floating movement to work, although the controls still need some polish to feel more intuitive. At first, I tried simply removing gravity, but this obviously caused some issues with other physics objects in the scene. I ended up having to write some code to simulate buoyancy and other forces on the softbody so it could float without influencing the rest of the physics system.
Speaking of physics, I also tried to set up a rope and weight system so you could tether the character to other objects, but alas it gave me a ton of grief and even my best results were pretty disappointing. The forces seem to conflict with each other in increasingly janky ways until eventually the character gets flung out of the map and the game eventually crashes.
I tried several methods and tweaked every parameter hoping there might be a sweet spot, but I could never get it to behave reliably. So unfortunately, I'll have to shelve this idea for now since it's already eaten up a lot of time and still refuses to cooperate. However, yanking on the body with the grab tool feels pretty good and is a fun way to move around.
I'm still working on some new body types to go with the inflation mechanics. At first, I used the round fat body, but it didn't feel quite right as a balloon, so I made a much more spherical version of it for this. I also have this long balloon type in the works.
If you have other suggestions for balloon body shapes I'd be happy to hear them. Adding full body shapes like these isn't too difficult so I could probably add a couple more for this update.I was initially hoping to add a more gradual way of inflating with an air tank similar to the feeding tube, but that would be a bit too ambitious to include in this update. Making full growth sequences is by far the most difficult and time consuming part of development, so I'll have to save it for another time. For now, you'll be able to drag a P-balloon onto the character to make them transform into different shapes instantly. Adding more P-balloons will make them grow until they eventually pop and return to normal.I still need to fine tune a lot of this stuff and fix collisions on the maps to account for a floating character, but I hope to have this update ready around the middle of February. I hope you all are staying warm and I'll see you again soon!