This final stage of our production has been focused around optimising the game, finding and fixing bugs and ensuring that it is as visually pleasing as possible. One of the first visual improvements has been the decorating of the new Aztec level select, which can be switched to upon completion of the first world. When switching between worlds at the world select panel in the van, the respective worlds props are enabled. A new cut shot has also been added with a pop up canvas to prompt the player that a new world has been unlocked upon the completion of the first world. We have also spent some time improving the opening camera cut scenes when the player is introduced to a new world for the first time. To do this we have opted out of using manual camera movement through code and instead changed the cameras to use an animator to store positions and rotations at set key frames. This gives us much more control over where the camera moves, how fast it moves between certain positions as well as how it rotates. It is also much easier and quicker to set up these new camera movements which have a much smoother flow and transition then previously. Screenshots have also been taken from each of the new jungle levels and have been used to make the jungle teleporters to be used in the level select. These teleport images are also changed between wild west level images and jungle level images depending on which world is selected. Apart from this I spent a lot of time decorating and baking the lighting for levels 1 and 2 of the jungle as well as fixing a large amount of small and large bugs and issues within the game.
Overall the game is now polished and completed. I am very happy with the outcome - which is indicative of the hard work and effort that we have put into it throughout the year.
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This week has been heavily focused around finalising the new Aztec levels with their mechanics and decorations. To aid the jungle levels within the game I decided to create a water shader with various adjustable properties, which could be tweaked to create different water effects. This water shader has now been used in numerous places and helps add to the environment of the levels that we are constructing. A simplistic fish AI was also created and various fish prefabs were made to swim around underneath the water. This has no impact on gameplay but again helps add to the environmental aspects of the game. The new water is now also used as a “kill floor” for the player which if touched will trigger the respawn of the player as well as crates that the player can pick up. The first section of the Aztec glider level has now been fully completed with assets and incorporates a fishpond like environment for the player to navigate through. One thing noted during playtesting the level was that players would often get confused as to which of the four directional lanes they had been down already. To combat this, we decided to include a new spider web prefab which when touched by the player would create a dust particle effect and destroy the web. These webs were then placed at the entrance of each of the four tunnels so that players could clearly visualise which lanes they had been down already by spotting which lanes were missing the spider webs. Whilst the rest of the group were over at PAX on the weekend I also decided to experiment with some simple combat mechanics as well as a more open world approach to level design within the game. In one day I managed to create a new open world level using unity terrain and also added destructible crates with collectable coins and enemies for the player to hit with a throwable sword. This provided a completely new experience to the game which may be further looked into in the future.
The group attended and displayed Klepto at Armageddon over the weekend and received a large amount of feedback and responses about the game. Overall, the players enjoyed the game with a few players spending up to an hour playing through the various levels. We also managed to reach a variety of players of different ages ranging from school children to adults in their 30’s / 40’s. The older players felt that Klepto was very nostalgic of the old platformer games which they had played in the past, while some of the younger players who had never experienced a 3D platformer before found it new and refreshing to play. During the week following Armageddon, there were a lot of small bugs and glitches which were found and resolved. Apart from this we also replaced all of the old teleporters in the game with the new teleport effect which now holds a separate image/screenshot in the centre to represent each level that the player is about to enter. The new glider level in the Aztec world has also been fully laid out with its obstacles among the terrain and is now ready to be decorated and completed. The main menu has also received an overhaul to create a more interesting running sequence. The main menu now includes a custom “track” which Klepto runs through and includes jump pads for Klepto to jump on as well as a section where he translates from running to flying away from the guard on the glider. With the game in a good state and all known bugs now resolved, we created our final build of the game to take to PAX over the coming weekend. The Itch build of the game has now also been updated to the latest version of the game, which we will be sending to PAX.
With Armageddon coming up on the weekend this week was all about finalising and polishing the build to demo at the showcase. Firstly, the glider level was revamped with some new fire models which have now been used underneath the glider fans in the level. This gives the rising smoke context and provides another visual cue for the player to recognise and aim for. The glider levels lighting was also baked which increased the overall visual appearance of the level.
Other than this most of the time was spent on building and playtesting the final build for the Armageddon showcase. One of the major bugs encountered was the construction of the level select bridges after exiting different levels. Because of the new asynchronous loading system, the saving and loading manager was not functioning correctly between scenes and this was causing the issues when loading into the level select. It took a large chunk of time to find and resolve this issue however, it has now been fixed and is working as intended. We also used Unity’s profiler to try and determine the cause of the major FPS drop in the glider level. Upon doing so we discovered that the trail renderers on the wind particles in the level were causing the game to drop between 120 and 140 frames. To increase the frames during the glider level, the wind particles were changed and as a result we now have frames of up to 200 during the gliding sequence. Apart from preparation for Armageddon, I also started building the new Aztec glider terrain which will act as the canyon for the player to glide through. This glider level will differ from the first one encountered in the wild west as it follows a much more “curvy/bendy” path as opposed to the straight linear path found in the previous level. A new system has also been implemented to allow the player to disconnect from the glider and continue platforming. This allows for more diversity when building levels as it gives us the opportunity to design levels which have multiple platforming and gliding sequences. Finally, the week ended with us displaying the game at Armageddon and receiving lots of feedback on the game. Overall the feedback was very positive with most people finding the game fun and a couple of people playing through the entirety of the game for periods of up to 50 minutes. With the feedback received form Armageddon we are now ready to fix some of the issues and continue developing the game over the next week as we prepare for PAX in Australia. This has been a very productive week for the team with a variety of major improvements and mechanical tweaks making their way into the game. The new plasma barriers have now been incorporated into the game and act as the electric fences with the exception being that they kill the player upon contact. The players death animation has also been implemented into the game and is triggered when killed by plasma fences or turret bullets. Some of the players facial animations have also been added to the game such as the “wind face” when using the helicopter hand. The glider levels have also been improved by creating a new floppy drive pick – up which can be used on the glider sections to guide the player in the direction that they are supposed to be following. It also gives the player something extra to do whilst flying on the glider and provides a slightly harder challenge. The respawning of the player has also been improved to use a circular, cartoonish styled screen fade before respawning the player at their previous checkpoint. This works well as it helps to hide the player model from teleporting to their new destination and provides more feedback to the player when dying. Other than this, we have now also implemented asynchronous loading between scenes into the game. This simultaneously loads the next scene whilst a screen is displayed to cover the view of the scene from loading. This stops the abrupt loading of scenes, which previously existed and caused the transitions between scenes to appear jarring and sudden. This level transitioning has also been paired with a new screen fade that fades the screen to black before loading the next scene, providing a much smoother transition. This loading screen now also features a loading bar that gives the player an indication as to how long the game will take to load. The following week will be a busy one as we prepare and finalise our build to show case at Armageddon on the weekend.
With the addition of the new Aztec world into the game, the functionality of the level select needed to be modified in order to accommodate for the changing between worlds. This has now been set up in the van where the player has access to a lever which allows them to cycle through worlds. A camera shot has been set up to show the player standing at the lever as well as the door with the worlds name above it when interacting with the lever. When changing worlds the van doors are closed and the theming of the level select is changed to represent the new world that has been selected. For now, all of the Wild West props are disabled with a single call and all the Aztec props are enabled. This creates a delightful experience for the player when they walk out of the van and the new theme is revealed to them.
The save and load manager also needed to be tweaked to ensure that each time the world was changed the stats of each level were also appropriately loaded from the save file and changed. This also meant ensuring that the correct bridges had been built and the available levels teleporters had been activated. We also needed to ensure that each world was only accessible once the previous worlds 5 levels had been completed. This accessibility is now checked by the save load manager before changing the worlds. The teleporters in the level select have also been updated to hold an array of level names to load. In this way the save and load manager can now decide which level to load for each teleporter depending on the currently selected world. With the functionality of the level select now completed, the addition of new worlds will be quick and easy as all aspects of world selecting, new world additions and new level additions have been made completely modular to work with the existing core aspects. A new glider level is also currently being designed and built for the new Aztec world. The beginning of this level has now been built and resembles a gauntlet styled puzzle for the player to solve. It features four different paths for the player to traverse through, each with a unique and different challenge/puzzle to face. The player is required to grab a cube from each of these paths so that they are able to unlock the glider, which is visible to the player through an electric fence. After a short break, we have now entered the gold phase of Klepto in which we plan on refining and tweaking our existing mechanics that currently exist in the game. The purpose of the next eight weeks will be to achieve the highest level of polish possible for the game without the addition of any new major mechanics or features.
After recently attending the NZGDC conference and joining a workshop on using Cinemachine in Unity, we decided to attempt the incorporation of the cinematic cameras from Cinemachine into the game. Currently there is a variety of camera shots and cuts, which are used within the level, select which are hard-coded to move the main camera to create cinematic shots. Cinemachine would make these cinematic shots much smoother and more controlled than the current implementation. A fair amount of time was spent on implementing this into the game during the last week, however we were unable to utilise it because it appears that we would have to replace our current custom-made free look camera with a virtual one from Cinemachine. This would interfere with the rest of the gameplay currently set up and as a result, we have decided to drop the idea for the time being. The level select functionality has also been slightly modified and some minor bugs have been resolved with regards to levels being accessible before previous levels had been completed. The glider movement has also been tweaked due to an unexpected movement behaviour, which was discovered whilst playing. Because of the multiple types of banking and rotations of the glider there was an issue causing gimbal lock to occur when banking downwards and to either side. This would result in the glider actually banking in the opposite direction, which made downwards movement feel unrealistic and hard to control. The rotations have now been changed in a way that allows rotations related to visual feedback to occur separately from the rotations that actually cause the glider to bank and turn. The electrocution animations and sound effects for the barriers have now also been implemented into the game when the player touches the electric fields. The player is also forced back from the fence after a few seconds of being shocked. |
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