Platfomer Tweaks and Collectables

I've been continuing my work on my platformer game. I'm using some basic Box2D physics and my player object, which was a rectangle shape, kept getting caught on some tiny edges where my floor pieces were connecting. They were at the same height so really there shouldn't have even been anything to get hung up on, but apparently its something that other people have been having trouble with as well. I fixed it by making my character object a hexagon instead, with a point at the bottom so that now instead of getting hung up on those little pieces, the angled surface at the bottom causes the player to just bump over it. So, that's fixed up pretty good now and the game is playing like I want it to.

I've also been adding in some coins type objects for the player to collect. They are actually like diamond/gem type things that are scattered about the sectors and some are worth more than others. The value of the gem is randomly assigned when they are spawned, with the odds of being a low value gem being much higher than the other ones.

I've also added in a threat in the way of a wave of lava that is "chasing" the player. I'm not sure if I'll stick with the lava thing (although it does tend to freak me out in video games) but right now it serves as a reason for the player to be quick about navigating the various rooms and collecting gems.

The gems are pretty easy to collect, but since there is the constant threat of a lava wall that will make grabbing them harder to deal with. There are 3 type of gems: Green, Blue, and Red, which are worth 1, 3, and 7 points respectively. So, maybe the red gem is worth going out of your way for as you leave the green ones behind.

Here is a screenshot with some crazy place holder graphics. The player sprite I'm using is the character from Androidan Summer Games, and all the platform/wall/floor types are different colors so I can tell which piece is which type of object. There is a repeating star background within the "tunnel" the player is running through, and I plan on making the blue background behind the tunnel some sort of scrolling background. The gems are actually pretty good for programmer art, but they don't stand out super well against my carnival colors backgrounds.