Step 2: The first feedback

I had my final class and playtesting for Agential Worldbuilding through the School for Poetic Computation, plus sent the first drafts of surf_yosemite around to some friends. The feedback was super helpful, even though a lot of it was stuff I already knew was in need of fixing. First and last priority: the restart button. This was bugging me a ton, since pressing "R" would flash you to the respawn point for a single frame... and then you'd return to where you were. Cursor's LLM helped me come up with a fix that continually returns the player back to the respawn for 10 frames, enough to override whatever the FPS controller is trying to do. It doesn't allow for any fun respawn tricks like maintaining momentum to shoot off the start point, but that's OK. 

Other tweaks: added some fog and fixed some z-fighting to help with the view from the top. Also added a texture to the prisms, per Blake's suggestion -- I was skeptical at first since the prisms are this artificial construct within a naturalistic setting, but the new texture helps you get a better sense of speed when flying around, so I'm liking the new granite look. Additional signage and better NPC dialogue should also help with people being unclear of where to go at the start. Now I've got to re-add the other birds that had worked in Unity but crashed when I built it, plus finish all the routes, add some trees for texture, more falling rocks, a pause and start menu, graphics options within a UI... lots I'd love to include! At some point I'll have to call it done, add screenshots and send it around Reddit or elsewhere, but we've got a few more steps before that. Right now I'm just aiming to have a good build by December 1st for the NYU Games Center application.