Hi, this is my fourth blog post, in which I’ll be mostly talking about fixes that we are working on, provided by the beta playtesters feedback. I’ll focus mainly on the teleport, a game mechanic in our game that allows the player to move to a certain position.
At first, the teleport that we had in our game was very simple, the player pressed the right mouse button and main character gillis would instantly move to that position. Since the camera is always following the main character, the player felt lost when teleporting. So after the first playtest, we implemented so that the camera would smoothly move towards the player after the teleport.
During the beta playtest we noticed that the player still felt lost and was not comfortable using that game mechanic.
This week I have been working on polishing and fixing the game for the best user experience, one of the tasks was to change of the teleport mechanic so it was easier to use and to know the location before and after the teleportation better. We still wanted to keep the possibility to teleport wherever the player wanted in the boundaries that the game allowed. Instead of changing how the teleport works, I decided to give more information to the player, where the teleport was allowed and where the main characters position would be. To fit this accordingly, I implemented so while the player hold the right mouse a silhouette of the player would appear at the position after the teleport, and when the button is released the player would move to that exact location. I think that this is a good solution for this problem, but this could create some conflict with the boundaries, since we want the player to follow a certain path.
Right now, I’m thinking of implementing different types of silhouette, diving them into two, a grey one, that tells the player that it is ok to teleport and nothing interfere with the new position, such as objects or boundaries, and a red one that tells the player that is not ok to teleport. This idea comes with some flaws such as the restrictive feeling that it gives to the game, that would lower the quality of the player experience. This is something yet to be playtested and could not be implemented at all.
Team nazgul development blog 
Hello Gabriel!
It has been a pleasure to read your blog post and I think you have written very well. Reading your text, I followed a clear and schematic structure where is explained chronologically the implementations of the player transportation that you have been working on. I also understood clearly the problems that you have encountered while developing this mechanic.
I would say that the only little detail that I would like to know better is when you implemented the silhouette and you had problems with the boundaries. What it a problem of collisions checking and logic for not teleport the player where he shouldn’t or something else?
I would also give you an advice regarding the colour of the silhouette. The thing is that your game has a lot of bright colours and objects like enemies moving around the screen which makes the player confused when has to “search” where the teleporting silhouette is. Since the grey colour wouldn’t be that visible, I think you should make the silhouette having a sort of flashing colour when can be used, in order to attract the player’s eyes to the new position. Where the player can’t teleport, the silhouette would be grey or with a dark colour, so that the player will just look for the flashing silhouette and know easily where he would go.
I hope it can help,
Good luck!
Steven Kolankowski
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