Portfolio Update!

I have officially finished updating my brand new design portfolio over on https://www.scottbalmergamedesign.com! Head on over and have a look!

I have been wanting to do this for a long time now, so it feels good having gone through my years of design work and noted it all down.

Sticky Golf: Ball Types and Surface Tags

 Ball Types:

My plan to make Sticky Golf even more exciting is unlockable Ball Types! Each type looks, sounds, and behaves differently on each type of surface. The current Ball Type list is as follows:

• Sticky Ball - Default ball type
• Standard shot power
• Fail hitting Water
• Reduced shot power in Sand surfaces
• Affected by Wind

• Float Ball - A light-weight ball that floats on surfaces and follows the wind's flow
• Standard shot power
• Can land on Water surfaces
• Can land on top of Sand surfaces
• Heavily affected by Wind

• Heavy Ball - A heavy metal ball that doesn't shoot as far, but can break through walls and play underwater
• Reduced shot power
• Can sink into Water surfaces, allowing for additional exploration.
• Fail hitting Sand surfaces (sinks)
• Immune to Wind
• Can break through fragile surfaces

Sticky Ball - Water Hazard

Float Ball - Water Landing

Heavy Ball - Water Diving

Audio and Gameplay Surface Tags:

In order to track what SFX, VFX, and gameplay logic to use on each surface, I made a new Surface Tag system! When a player ball collides with another object, it checks for the Surface Tag component, and performs based on.

This has saved on a lot of additional logic on a per-Ball Type basis. I just have to check against current Ball Type, current Audio Tag, and current Gameplay Tag.

The need to split gameplay and surface tags helps cover some edge cases like Breakable walls that other Ball Types can stick to.


Next Steps:
Now that everything is working, it's time to design how, when, and where players can select their current Ball Type.

Bonus!
I also made bounce pads and passthrough platforms!