Room with a View

June 4, 2021

It was waaay back in 2019 when I first added balconies into the Sleuthhounds: Cruise game. At that time I had intended for there to be a puzzle wherein the Sleuthhounds would climb down from a balcony on an upper deck to a lower one via a ladder. Over the course of development, that puzzle dropped away as the game’s narrative changed.

[Balconies form differnet floors of the ship were originally layered.]
Balconies form differnet floors of the ship were originally layered.

Having no more story requirement to be able to see the upper and lower balconies at the same time has changed my approach when coming to finalize the balconies. While not especially hard, having what amounts to two rooms stacked one atop the other adds extra technical complexity. It was far easier and consequently far faster to rework this area into separate rooms.

[With no need for layering, the balconies are now standard, separate rooms.]
With no need for layering, the balconies are now standard, separate rooms.
Click to view larger.

I do somewhat miss the having two layers of balconies together. One of the side effects of having such a room was that it helped to establish the setting. Instead of a series of separate locations, this was a place where it was easy to see geographically had different areas of the ship were related. However, I have several other locations that accomplish that and the boon to development time by removing the unneded complexity outweighed that small relational benefit.