Development Log 4 (14-20 Nov)

We’re onto week 4, milestone 2 and the end of alpha; alpha in the context of game development being content complete. The game has been fully set in terms of level size and mechanics, so now we should only see the game get more polish and shine in the remaining time, along with fine tuning the specific numbers to get it feeling juuuuuuust right.

Important to note is that halfway through last week, we made the decision to scale down the level by an enormous amount. This means the artists have a much smaller load than they did prior, so completion is much more feasible than it had been previously.

Art

The artists this week have been busy making models to fill our level and make it look more than just a bunch of rectangles slapped together. But one of the big tickets that was hit is Hazel textured the enemy, and Polina animated him. Look at this little guy! He's so cool.

Emily drew out a concept for our new layout, which is what the artists are now working with environmentally.

The assets for this are in the process of being modelled now.

These were done by Finn:

And these were the work of Hazel:

They’ve been placing the pieces in the level as they go along, so the level looks far more appealing now.

Programming

The programmers worked on solving a few key issues this week.

Starting us off, Andrew ensured that the character’s arm now follows the player’s aim.

Lachlan gave us some player feedback when the player jumps, hits a wall or the room. He also began implementing controller support and worked with VFX.

And Gary has been working hard to get all the listeners for sounds to play when they should be triggering. Although I'm not sure if the placeholder country music will stay in the end product.

Design

When reviewing our total level size and the amount of progress we had made, we unfortunately realised that we weren't going to be able to complete the game at its then current scale. The designers had to decide which rooms to keep; the level is now four rooms long, including the initial spawn room and the checkpoint in the middle.

This way, we will be able to get significantly more detail and polish in.

To allow for multiple people working on each section independently, we turned each room into a Prefab.