Making the "dive valve"

Chris
Aug 5
2 min read

Last week we chatted with our publisher, Akupara Games, about a small new widget we added to the game - the dive valve!

In level design speak, a "valve" allows the player to go through one way, but not back the same way. Some examples: a ledge you can hop down but can't climb back up; a door that closes behind you; a chute you slide out of but can't get back into; a slippery slope; a collapsing floor. Useful tools in a level designer's toolbox for guiding players, funneling players, and locking them in when they need to learn something.

So the dive valve is one of those, but specific to the "dive" ability in Echo Weaver. Here's our blurb from the Akupara dev log:

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"We're pretty far along in development on Echo Weaver, so most of your core systems, tools, and level design widgets are done. But recently, we added a new one: the dive valve.

*Dive Valve (Note: asset is FPO and environment is not decorated)*

Most you probably know of "one-way platforms", a staple in platformers. These are platforms that freely allow passage from below, but not freely from above (sometimes not at all, like in Echo Weaver). The dive valve is the inverse. It prohibits passage from below, but permits from above. To use it, the player must perform a "dive" from above to open the hatches.

*PC performing a dive through a Dive Valve*

This is a useful tool for gating in order to keep a player locked in a region until they understand a concept or accomplish some task. In Echo Weaver, we needed a way to teach dive, so we had to lock the player in a region, not with a lock and key, but with a dive valve. The player must learn how to dive in order to progress. We have a few of these in a row to really make sure the player understands the relationship between the dive valve and player movement.

We've actually been sitting on this idea for some time now, and the biggest reason we pulled the trigger was to finally lock in some of the tutorials and by chance one of the artists had a mockup of, funnily enough, a one-way platform that we thought would be a better fit for the dive valves. In this case, the waiting paid off because we're really happy with the mechanics and visuals of this widget."

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So those are dive valves! Here's a sneak peak of what they look like now in a proper decorated space: