The final week of our Beta development has now concluded with a full playable version of Klepto, featuring 5 levels to be unlocked and played through. The final week was a fairly slow week in terms of production as the majority of the team attended the New Zealand Game Development Conference. This conference took up the majority of our production time and as a result a large focus was placed on polishing up the final build of the game and each level within it.
The conference was a great learning experience for the team and provided great insight to different approaches which could be used for existing features within our game. For example, the cinematic shots which occur within the level select are currently hard coded and slightly "jittery". From the conference we learnt that this issue can be easily implemented using a new feature in Unity known as CineMachine which allows for easier and smoother camera transitions and set up than the current implementation. With this knowledge gained from NZGDC we now have the ability to further improve these current features in the near future.
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This week a large focus has been placed on level design and building as the team started creating and finalising the final levels to be used within our first world of the game. Level four has now been completed and represents the first world in which the player is introduced to the glider mechanic within the game. The level is designed in a way which requires the player to first work their way up to the glider by climbing up the centre of large pipes with various challenges along the way. Once the player has reached the glider they are then able to soar high above the ground as they travel through a canyon before plunging into a cave near the end of the level. Because this is the first time the glider is introduced, much thought had to go into the placement of objects throughout the canyon to help the player get used to the controls as well as the concept wind gusts. Once the level had been completed some serious playtesting was conducted with participants who had never flow the glider before to stress test the difficulty of the level. Overall the feedback given was very positive with all participants saying that they thoroughly enjoyed the glider. Players were also happy with the control scheme and the way that the mechanic behaves in the way that you would expect a glider to behave (stalling at the top of arcs). The first level was also rated as a perfect introductory glider level for new players since its learning curve makes it fun and slightly challenging. One of the major problems found during the playtest was the fact that players did not always choose the path that was intended whilst flying through the level. To solve this problem, the path was defined more clearly using rocks and other props to give players the illusion that certain areas were not meant to be accessible.
Other than this the level select room has now also been fully furbished to represent the first worlds theme of the “Wild West”. By using the wild west props, the level select now gives the player a clear indication of which world they are currently in. This week a large focus has been placed upon the level select room currently within the game. This room is designed to act as the information hub for the player to track each levels progress, choose levels to play and view rewards within the van. Building off the previous weeks saving and loading functionality, this week, new canvases have been added to each level platform within the level select. On loading of this level these canvases now populate with the level information saved on the external JSON file to show the player stats such as completion times, completion percentages, secret tokens collected and medals earned. Each level platform now correctly displays the stats relating to that particular level in the currently selected world. These information panels have been set up to display only when the player is within a certain range of each level platform. To restrict players from accessing levels which are not yet unlocked, we have designed the level room in a way which requires bridges to be built to each platform when the level is unlocked. In order to keep track of which bridges have been built and which have not, the external file has now also been set up to track whether each level platforms bridge has been built yet or not. A cinematic shot has also been set up to show the first bridge of each world being built to help guide the player where to go. Apart from this when completing a new level and returning to the level select room, a check is done to see whether or not the next levels bridge is still required to build or not. If this is the case, then another cinematic shot has been set up to show the bridge being built before saving this data to the external file for future reference. Each level which has their bridge registered as built on the file also automatically appear when the scene is loaded.
On a whole the games entire progress can now be saved successfully and loaded again for the player to continue where they left off. All level stats appear to load and display correctly, and the level select now appears to function as it was intended to. Saving and loading is a very important underlying mechanic which allows for players to maintain their progress within a game. Up until this week there was no way for the player to continue where they left off as not too much consideration had been placed into this feature. It is however one of our design goals which is why a large emphasis was placed onto it during the week. A framework has now been set up and connected into the game which will allow the serialization and saving of game data to an external file using JSON. This data can also be read from the file at any point and used to populate in-game information.
Currently the saving and loading feature has the capability of saving data including each levels completion status, time completed, pickup completion percentage, medal earned, as well as whether or not the secret token had been collected or not. This data will allow us to determine which levels and worlds can be accessed from within the level select room as well as which mini games can be played within the van. It will also allow the player to keep track of their times and completion status for every level and gives them the opportunity to replay the levels to achieve better scores. Currently we have implemented up to three save slots in which new games can be created from the main menu. There is also the option to select a save slot to load from the main menu. This basic set up will now allow the player to track their progress. We have also added a new form of collectable for the player to run around the levels and find, the floppy disk! Klepto must collect these disks in order for him to increase his computer memory to run his simulations. These collectables within each level are used to determine the levels completion percentage based upon how many were picked up. This week has been the final week of our alpha phase of the game in which the team finalised a playable alpha version of the game. This alpha build consisted of a level select hub in which three levels could be selected and played. With the majority of our major mechanics now implemented within the game, this week a heavier focus was placed on playability, making each of the mechanics feel as good as possible as well as debugging. One of the things that previous playtests had suggested was to increase the feedback received when crashing the glider. To tackle this challenge Juan and I worked on making the glider model able to break into many pieces when crashing. By using some explosive forces and the new glider model which is split up into smaller fragments, we were able to create a crash which gives more feedback to the player and gives them a clear indication that they crashed the glider. A big emphasis was also placed on the “holo room” which will act as the level select within our game. The new model was placed into the game and the rings within the sphere were set up to spin. The teleporters were also placed in the scene to allow the player to choose which level to play. The three levels within the build were constructed using our level toolkit and each incorporated 2 – 4 main mechanics to focus on. The level that I created utilised the mechanics of turrets, grappling, jump pads as well a glider course as the final section. Other than this a large amount of time was spent on optimising code as well as debugging some serious issues within the game. Some of the challenges tackled included camera improvements when grappling and platforming near walls, glider usability and feel, as well as fixing a serious issue related to the new “rope arm” which caused the game to crash when loading a checkpoint for the player. The majority of the major bugs that we are aware of are now resolved with a few small optimisations and fixes still required.
In the week to come one of the things that we will be focusing on is improving the use of our JSON saving and loading system as well as planning and setting up the structure for our game save files and data to be saved as a whole. Week three has been a busy week for the team as we have now started finalising the mechanics within the game and been preparing them for use within multiple levels in the future. One of the major focuses this week was the improvement and finalising of the new glider mechanic within the game. With the main movement system implemented from last week, this week was more about making the glider look and feel as good as possible. This included a lot of playtesting and tweaking of values for both the glider and follow camera to get them feeling as satisfying as possible. The new glider animations were also implemented this week which now cause the glider model to bend its wings according to the direction of travel. To give more feedback to the player we also made the glider react differently according to the speed that it was travelling at. For example, when travelling faster the gliders newspaper and frame wobble more and wobble less whilst travelling slower. The glider can now also collide with objects which cause it to crash and respawn the player at the last checkpoint. We also attempted to make the camera shake when travelling faster however this ended up looking more like a mistake rather than an intentional mechanic and as a result we have taken it out for the time being. Other than this, some more effort was also placed into the cop chase mini game during the week. The main aspects of the mini game are now set up and allow the player to drive the van around whilst trying to avoid the police cars. The police cars successfully track and seek the player’s car and attempt to apprehend them by driving into them. The player can be caught if hit by one of the police cars. The mini game is designed to be funny yet entertaining at the same time and this is aided by the unrealistic car crashes which occur when the police cars crash into one another. To give the player the incentive to drive around the map we have also incorporated a fuel system into the mini game which causes the players car to use fuel as they drive around. The player can refill their fuel tank by finding fuel barrels which spawn at different locations around the map. Some more playtests were also conducted during the week to try and receive feedback on how the glider mechanic feels and reacts to player input after improving it during the week. To do this a simple race track styled course was created for players to steer through checkpoints along the way. Overall the feedback was fairly good as players found the glider fun and interesting to use. There were also no responses which said that the glider was hard to use. However, there was some feedback given which stated that the up and down movement of the glider felt slightly awkward to get used to. All participants were also happy with the speed of the glider and felt that it did not need to increase or decrease. One response also stated that the wind updrafts which cause the glider to lift upwards could be improved by increasing the feedback to show the glider is actually being lifted upwards. This is something that will need to be addressed in the future in order to improve player enjoyment of the glider.
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. 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.
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September 2017
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