The main delay for this level was designer’s block. I knew I wanted a level with sunset harbor graphics, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with such a level. Early on I decided on implementing oil water, which basically works like the water in “Rusty Bucket Bay” in Banjo-Kazooie: you lose oxygen faster & don’t regain your oxygen till you return to land ( as opposed to just leaving water into the air, which only stops it from decreasing, but doesn’t replenish it ). But then I had trouble figuring out what to do with said oil water.
Round that time I also wanted to have pipes you could walk through that maybe went down into the water & kept you oxygenated, but couldn’t figure out how to make it work well. This game uses block-based collision, & whole blocks were too thick for pipe walls. Plus, I wasn’t sure how to make them show you will the oil water still hid everything ’neath.
In the process o’ making this level, I developed numerous sprites, ’bout all o’ which are used in this level: window monsters that fall from their hidden place & roll after you ( also taken from Banjo-Kazooie ), a machine that shoots pikes out o’ either end, Octopigs that hop & shoot oil balls @ you, an iron wall that forces you to swim down & hit a switch to make it lower, a water spout that causes a barrel to rise & fall, & crate platforms & harmful hooks swooping back & forth in a half-circular motion. In my defense, half o’ these are tied to the oil water: while the spout is just fancy paint o’er a rising & falling platform, the pike machine & iron wall are basically ways to challenge your ability to maneuver through oil water & get out before drowning. So they didn’t seem too thrown-in, I brought back the window monsters & pike machine @ the beginning o’ the level into the end o’ the level, too, just with a trickier pattern ( the water spout glorified rising platform & swooping platforms are too generic to need much extra use — there are plenty o’ moving platforms in other levels ). I also planned to add mo’ Octopigs @ the final stretch, but cut that part out as I found it too difficult & stretched out a level that was already going a bit too long. Part o’ me wishes I kept the ladder up to the keycane wherein you have to dodge the shots o’ Octopigs; but I already have ’nough o’ that in “Good Ship Lifestyle”.
I don’t consider this my best level, but I s’pose it could be worse.
As an addendum, I’ve recently created a website dedicated to this game at https://www.boskeopolis-land.com. So far it’s still very simple, but I plan to continue updating it. For example, I hope to create some script that will scrape these posts & create a list o’ links to them all to make them easier to find.
