A few weeks ago, I updated the crusher with a larger button and the ability to crush cars going through it that weren’t dragged. A downside of this is that players who were in the crusher vicinity when a random car went by got crushed and wondered what happen.

I was reminded of a solution to this problem when watching a documentary on people playing Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out blindfolded and about “tells” to indicate when a punch was about to happen. The crusher only had the red button, but what if it retracted as if bringing a fist back before a punch? Adding in spikes later was a second tell but currently that happens so quickly that it might not count.

During testing, I had to display the states to see what was going on. I know there’s a debugger, but this was easier to narrow it down to the four variables and not be shifting my gaze between screens. The crushers don’t crush if nothing is there and revert into place, which complicates things. 

For the spikes, I added in another collision detection area to keep them separate and the code simpler as they are mainly for show. 

These collision detection areas turn invisible once the game starts.

Some bugs that need to be worked out still include:

• Keeping the recycling button red when the crushers are retracted to indicate caution or danger
• SHNNNK noise happens to often
• Player truck being crushed when going through slowly broke when I added in these changes

In some of this footage, you might notice the cars bouncing around more. This was spurred by one of my friends asking for some noticeable difference when a truck was driving over statue rubble. I put a slight rotation to the vehicles and trucks, and it doesn’t look too out of place with their pivot point near the tires Y location. Previously, I had a slight 1px bump but being more exaggerated is better.

This rubble bounce happens when grappling too, and is about 1/3 during normal driving. I could potentially make it even better if I separated the tires from the sprite but that can be a project for another day.

Finally, I added in reeling with the right analog stick! A feature I had been wanting to do for a long time to make it more like Mario Party and fishing. Reeling by spinning the right stick may also remove some of the disconnect people had with it on the L-trigger button. The reel controls aren’t perfect yet, but if you take it for a “spin” let me know, thanks!