Level design has been slow as usual. I may be a level designer, but I've always been a slow worker. I'm also in a bit of a creative slump. So what do I do when I'm in a creative slump? I work on "non-creative" stuff like problem solving and programing and whatnots. I don't remember if I've mentioned this before but I've actually gotten a lot more confident and capable with my programing.

If you've been following the game's Twitter, you'll know that I've been working on a bunch of stuff like getting characters to be able to walk around and whatnots. Things that allow me to make the world a much more vibrant and alive place. I want my game to have a number of little things that happen and change over time, the most notable of which is the characters.

I want to have things like characters showing up and talking to each other during only one of the couple of times you pass by an area, or showing up to offer hints if you get stuck in one area for too long. You can already see a fully functional prototype of one such event in the game right now with the two shorthands that appear on the way back to Doodle's apartment after finding the crowbar.

While I don't plan for a lot of on screen NPC movement in my game, I want to make sure this system is able to support a lot of this kind of stuff so that I can have more creative freedom in case I need it, as well as be proactive and have the functionality I need for certain scenes I have planned before I've actually begun working on them. I also want to make things simple and be able to control a bunch of different stuff with a lot of the same stuff. Being able to use the same trigger on two very different characters that do very different things and have very different levels of capability makes development a heck of a lot easier.

Other "non-creative stuff" includes more gamepad rumble support and many bug fixes. Here's some notable bits from the change log:
-Fixed a bug that made hidden signposts still glow when using the periscope.
-New and improved reflection cubemaps and fixes to reflection environment.
-Force feedback effects for controllers added.
-Improvements to cherry bomb audio spatialization.
-Angelic filter now supports full opacity at maximum interference level.
-Fixed a bug where rapidly hitting the item button caused the periscope animations to flicker and the colors to stay on after putting it away.
-Fixed a bug that caused Doodle to re-hook a handle as soon as it was unhooked.
-Adjustments to boiler room monkey-bar gap.