Levels, Levels, Levels...oh, and some new features.

It has been so busy at work that I have hardly had any time for my own projects.

But, I am still plugging away at these things. I found some time recently to set up some more levels in Overnumerousness, and a few more game features. However, sorry folks, none of this is in the demo.  These are main title updates only.  :D

Adding new levels is long and tedious. I  need a faster way to design them.

I added the following features this week:

• Negative Pickups - Blue pickups that decrease your number.
• Stable Tiles - A floor tile that does not disintegrate after you use it. This opens up more possibilities for levels.

These are small new features but allow for more level designs.

I was also toying with the idea of adding a fan to some levels. Depending on the fan's direction, it would blow the player one tile per move without decreasing the movement value. 

Along the way, I  also challenged some AI to design levels for me. I know it sounds like a cheat, but levels are so tedious! The results, however, were not particularly useful.

I tried:

• ChatGPT 3
• Google Bard
• Bing Chat (which I think is ChatGPT4 under the hood)
• Unity Muse

In all 4 cases, I gave the same prompt and explanation of how the game works, and how the level files are constructed. The AI then attempted to design 1 level each.

In all 4 cases, the levels were, in their raw forms, unusable. The AI was not able to create a path from start to finish, and in every case created a level that missed blocks along the way. Pickups were random, as expected, and the only way to use the levels was to edit them first.

They did make some interesting patterns though, so I have included edited versions of the AI levels within the game. Each one is labelled as such so players can see the results for themselves.

To make them playable I had to add some blocks, change pickup values, and in one case add the goal somewhere.

Now, back to actual work. I hope to get more time soon to finish up the levels so everyone can enjoy this game.

I wish there was some way to turn this into my main job. - Not the level-creating part, of course. I think I'd rather hire someone for that. But making the games is fun.