Keeping the Flow

After the lecture today I talked over my concepts with my classmates and we tossed around some ideas. A couple I thought were particularly good that Mark suggested were the addition of a ground-based 'slide' move which has the same key as the aerial boost move. This relationship in execution of the two moves would connect their in-game function. Both are used to move quickly as a dodge or to keep speed up but both have a set motion which the player must commit to, meaning the won't be used willy-nilly.
The other idea I liked was a remapping of the controls on the keyboard. Mark suggested I use the space bar as the jumping key and the shift key for the boost/slide as both keys are commonly associated with such manoeuvres. This would mean both he player's left and right hands need to be used to control the character which is a fairly standard and comfortable set-up.
Another idea discussed was that in the third tier of the world the enemies shouldn't just disappear but broken versions of the should be hanging around, either for use by the player or as an obstruction. An example could be a piston-fist (as I so lovingly named those big grinning engines) that has fallen from its roof mount and is forlornly pumping upwards which a player could use to launch themselves into the air.
As far as camera goes I would not want it to move up or down at all, merely across. If there are plenty of pitfalls in the fourth tier it would become frustrating if players were unable to tell whether or not there is a platform below them to fall on because the camera is too high. For this reason the on-screen character would need to be relatively small so that several heights could be reached. Then again, if I wanted the difficulty to increase this idea could be disregarded entirely. I would need to implement a camera that knows when to move based on the player's height in the level.
In terms of animation I need to keep in mind the idea of 'how' the character moves the way they do. There needs to be some kind of game world reason on how they can slide, double-jump and boost they way I intend them to. Looking over my initial concepts, despite the tree man with the leaf-afro being my favourite I feel the black stag skull dude with the voodoo staffs is my best one to work with. His appearance is mysterious enough that players won't question as much how this character moves so athletically and the double-jump and aerial boost could be explained by the staffs on his back. He could even be holding them as he goes. With the addition of some hoodoo magic graphics he could look sweet as he traverses the map.
In fact the more I write about it the more my mind is making itself up.