During the previous week our team placed a heavy focus on level design as well as the new glider mechanic to be implemented into the game. We have also worked at refining the movement in the game to give the optimal feeling of enjoyment and satisfaction when platforming through the levels. Our second enemy the “Eel Turrets” have now been fully implemented into the game and can be used to create interesting platforming challenges for the player. We found it beneficial to switch the turret firing from being script based to being animation based. This means that the turret now shoots bullets based upon animation events which eliminates the issues of de-sync between the turret firing and the bullet leaving the barrel. The new glider mechanic within the game has also been fully re-worked to better suit the needs of the game. Now instead of using physics based movement the glider utilises a custom built movement system to give it the intended feeling of gliding through the levels. The glider features realistic acceleration properties which allow it to speed up when nose diving and slow down whilst banking upwards. It also has a minimum speed value which once reached will cause the glider to rotate downwards and begin a small nosedive. This essentially limits the glider from behaving the way that a plane with a motor would by restricting the amount of time the player can fly upwards at a steep angle. Because of this, the glider essentially loses altitude over time. To counter act this, we have also set up basic air vents which the player can aim for to gain a short upwards acceleration to re-gain height which has been lost. The combination of these mechanics has allowed us to create a fun environment in which the player can experience movement in a different way and will provide a nice “break” from the general platforming within the game. It is important to note that the movement controls for the glider have been set up in a way that makes it easier for the player to control. This is because we have opted to ditch the standard “plane controls” and instead use a system which involves automatically banking when steering left or right. This makes the glider movement easier to handle which in turn will make it easier to play for our target audience of younger players. A new camera system has also been implemented for the glider movement. This camera behaves like an elastic band as it pulls further away from the glider whilst travelling fast and pulls in closer as the glider slows down. This has the great effect of increasing the feeling that the player is travelling faster/slower and gives a real sense of the gliders speed. A lot of time has been spent testing and tweaking the values of both the glider and the follow camera to try create the optimal movement experience for the player. The team also organised a formal playtest session this week in which we received useful feedback about the movement within the game as well as the new glider mechanic. This provided us with crucial information regarding what could be changed to optimise the users experience within the game. For example, people who tested the glider enjoyed the mechanic and felt that it “behaved the way that a glider would”. However, they also gave some feedback stating that the camera felt as though it pulled to close to the player at some points and too far away at other points. We also received feedback that the gliders speed needs to be better conveyed to the player as it can be hard to tell when it is about to reach its minimum speed and begin descending. This feedback helped us identify what could be fixed and as a result we implemented some simple trail renderers behind the glider which become shorter as the plane starts to slow down and longer as it begins to speed up.
In the week to come we will be focusing on level design as well as continuously refining the current mechanics which we have implemented into the game thus far.
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The game’s core mechanics received a lot of attention this week to improve player feel and fun factor. The game now has two more environmental mechanics; falling platforms and flipping platforms. This is another device to add to our toolkit which will enable us to efficiently build interesting levels. Additionally, the jump pad has been improved. The jump pad now shows a spring pushing Klepto into the air! The use of Klepto’s grapple arm has also been expanded to allow him to hit buttons from far away. This opens up more interesting platforming possibilities. For example, Klepto can leap from one platform, hit a button on a wall in mid-air and land on the platform that has been activated by this button. This also brought out an interesting aspect of gameplay which we had not considered before. This comes from the fact that Klepto’s abilities all come from his arm. Klepto can be gliding across a chasm but if he needs to use his arm to activate a button, he will fall. Of course, his arm cannot be a grapple and a propeller at this same time. This generates a layer of challenge and depth and will encourage players to think more about how they control Klepto. Klepto’s magnetic hand was further developed this week. A level was designed to make use of this magnetism mechanic and a rough build was created to get a feel for this mechanic. It’s getting closer to being useful and it is easy to see the platforming possibilities but currently, it needs more attention to become stable.
We also organized a playtest with students to get feedback for our movement mechanics. This goal was to get an idea of how much friction should be present on the platforms to prevent players from sliding off and feeling as if they are not in control. Last week, we had reduced the jump height of the player. This was because, in the vertical slice, Klepto was able to use his double jump to almost fly through the level. However, we soon realized this was getting in the way of fun. With some more testing of values, we found a happy medium; higher jumps with less air speed to prevent players from flying. Next week we will hold another playtest to assess what players think about this change. Finally, Klepto now has a circular shadow beneath him while he is in the air. This shows players what point on the ground they are directly above and makes platforming a little easier. During week two, we worked on a decent amount of new mechanics - like the glider - and also built another level. I built the second level with a focus on grappling, the new enemies (turrets) and ancillary mechanics (doors + buttons and lasers) I structured the level in a simple style, iterating on the mechanics that are presented to the player to make sure they learn them in a particular order. The main mechanic of this level is the turrets themselves, as it will be the first time that they are presented to the player. To introduce the turrets properly, I decided that they should first be presented to the player in a linear, somewhat safe fashion. The addition of the range limiter to the turrets means that players will be able to see the active range of the turret and play around it. This means that the player will be able to clearly see the threat of the turret, as it is completely visible. Level 2 also includes mechanics like ‘the chimney’ - a downward fall through a boxy area filled with lasers, multiple grapple points ‘chained together’, and areas that will most likely need to be fully expanded during the testing period. Level 2 is now at the same stage as level 1, and both will likely be revisited this week as we ramp up our testing, transitioning from just testing mechanics towards a focus on testing levels. This week we also further developed our character controller, due to a few issues that we had. Firstly, I created a test environment with four differing friction values on different surfaces, then created boxes with those same values to jump between repeatedly, for players to get used to. We then got members of the development team to test the colours, as well as others from outside our group. The consensus was that values between 0.6 and 0.8 friction feel ‘far better’ than lower friction values. These values will be implemented (along with other adjustments to values regarding jump height) together in preparation for our level testing in the future. Playtesting was the way we finished our week. We got a small group (read: 3) of people to test the gliding mechanics, as well as our jumping mechanics. The feedback was overall very positive, something that we were relieved about. Week 3 should involve getting the levels ready for playtesting, as well as making sure that every mechanic is polished and works well. We have some cursory bugfixing to do for the game, to make sure that random issues do not pop up in our progression to the beta version of the game. We have returned from our short break and are happy to announce that we have now entered the Alpha phase of our production for Klepto Space Thief. We have taken some considerable time to discuss and plan the direction in which the game is going to evolve over the next 8 weeks of development before we initiate a feature freeze. One of the major aspects we have decided to focus on over the next few weeks is the platforming systems within the game. To improve the feeling of platforming and moving within the game we have decided to include some new mechanics which revolve around movement. These include some new character abilities such as a helicopter hand to slow descent when falling as well as a magnetic hand to grip onto metallic surfaces which may influence movement such a spinning fans. There is also the possibility of a glider being incorporated into some levels to give players another way to traverse large areas at a time in a fun and alternative way. We have also decided to add numerous new environmental mechanics into the game such as jump pads, see saws fans, time limited / flipping platforms and pressure plates. Essentially over the next few weeks we are aiming to create a completed level design toolkit for the game which will allow us to easily drag in each of our developed mechanics to create new levels with ease. The majority of these new features have already been simplistically implemented into the game as follows: We have also added a ranged enemy into the game as an alternative means of hazard for the player to avoid whilst traversing the levels. This ranged enemy appears in the form of a stationary turret which shoots at the player when the player moves within their range. One of the other ideas that we discussed implementing into the game was the use of a resource system for the player to manage during each level. This was designed to be an energy tank on the players back which would use energy as the player used abilities involving the arm such as the grappling or gliding. The player would be able to refill this energy by stealing energy from battery packs found on the guards backs as well as by breaking crates and finding batteries inside. During this first week we incorporated the basic functionality for this system however decided to cut the idea due to the fact that it was essentially limiting and putting a restriction on the player from engaging in the fun aspects of the game.
This week was all about change. After we all returned from our lengthy break, we immediately began scoping for the next stage - Alpha build. While we were happy with the version of Klepto that we submitted, we knew that we needed to make a number of changes moving forward. The goals that we were outlining revolved around creating environments for players to move around - levels with more freedom and the ability to move around the map. These ideas were ultimately rejected, in favour of a much more linear design. From now on, the levels in Klepto will be designed to be much more linear, and built around a central mechanic (like falling platforms, or timers). Each level will have a few collectibles, which will be used elsewhere in the game. We have a few ideas for systems like this - like playable minigames or cosmetic benefits for players. The types of mechanics we will focus on will mostly relate to platforming, which feels like the best direction to move in for us. This week, we have also been doing work on the character controller. The controller now feels much more reliable when it comes to jumping - when the player is moving and jumps, the distance that the character jumps is much more in line with reasonable level design, in terms of space. Previously, the jump was far too large for levels, making design difficult in terms of tuning how quickly the player could move through the level. The goal for the end of this week is to have two levels fully playable (not artistically complete) and able to be tweaked and adjusted. This is so that we are able to fully test mechanics properly, to make sure that everything about the controller feels smooth. Alpha phase of Klepto’s development has commenced! Our primary goals for this phase were only discovered after hours of discussion which seemed to be going in circles for some time – but we finally produced a clear production roadmap and hashed out a pipeline which would be more efficient than the pipeline we followed during vertical slice. We will be focusing our efforts during this phase on building a Level Design Toolkit. This will allow us to use the same assets and game mechanics to quickly build and iterate levels – increasing the amount of game content and improving the end value of the game. The premise of the game has shifted to reflect this; Klepto now spends the game training in computer simulations so that one day he might actually be a thief for real. Setting the game inside a simulation allows us to reuse assets without having to spend time making each level look like a believable place. It’s also an opportunity to inject significantly more humour into the game because each level is a reflection of the main character who has created this simulation in the game. Klepto’s arm has been given new life with a rope physics plugin. Juane got this new arm working with the character model and I integrated it with our existing grappling system. The arm now behaves much more believably and realistically becomes taught when the grapple swing commences. New to Klepto’s array of abilities is a magnetic hand which allows him to hold onto metallic, moving surfaces such as wind turbines. This opens up many platforming possibilities. I have implemented the core logic of identifying and being pulled to magnetic surfaces. The next step is to integrate this with Juane’s magnetic-chain arm which uses the same rope physics plugin.
Zac and I also spent time refining the basic player movement mechanics – arguably the most important aspect of the game. We decided on definitions for how high and far the player should be able to jump for single and double jumps and arranged a course of boxes which required a player to perform a series of single jumps and then a series of double jumps. These 1x1 blocks were smaller than any platform we would have in the game but we thought that if the player felt they were in control and the movement was precise for these jumps then the rest of the levels would be fine. Spending time defining distances for single and double jumps is another technique which will allow us to produce levels faster as we can be confident in what the player will be able to do. We had one person playtest this setup. The feedback demonstrated that the movement was an improvement from the vertical slice but still needed tweaking to improve precision. The playtester also pointed out that there needed to be more friction on the platforms as it was too easy to slide off. |
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September 2017
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