Blog Week 4
This week we have Armageddon. The final build is ready to roll, so not a lot of art has been done this week. We’re all really excited to show the game off again and get some more feedback. Kids have often been the best source, as they are so brutally honest. For the Armageddon build, we will just be focusing on the Wild West World, the Jungle World isn’t far enough along to be ready to show yet. We’ve set up a debug menu to access each level with the hit of a button, so it should be easy to give people a taste of each section of the game quickly.
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For the art team, it was getting ready for PAX where we were could to display our game at the MDS booth. There were not a lot of touch ups in terms of art, just filling up the world which Corne and the programmers were able to do as the build for Armageddon was going to be the same build we would take to PAX. Dillan was able to change the title screen to be more captivating by adding different variations of Klepto being chased by the security guard. He also was able to fill out the world with more props in the earlier levels.
The 6th week of the gold build was just refining and optimising the game to be able to work on the PS4. Again, there was little to do in terms of the art side of things as soon as we got back from PAX, most of the artist needed to work on other assignments. 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.
This week, we divided the team up in order to both finish off the Wild West world and also get cracking on the Jungle world. I started off the week with research and some quick concepts, and set to work making plants and platforms for the levels. Juane also made some plants, such as grass and vines. As well as this, I started some tests on the skybox, testing out how to layers things, and which colours would work the best with the colours of the new world. I made a new flat, cardboard tree for the Jungle world, and Scott replicated my tree perfectly and made two more, whilst I was busy re-texturing Klepto for the final time. Juane spent a lot of the week fixing things, optimising things, and testing things out, and he was largely responsible for the tutorial sign guy.
Corne built a modular train-rail/minecart track set to be used to flesh out the levels a bit more in a final art pass. This week we really wanted to get all of the assets we had made implemented into the game. We also made a reasonably simple change to the tutorial section, by adding a new character, the tip sign guy. We had the sign rigged up so that it would follow the player as they walked by, and we added some googly eyes for him to stare at the player with. I also made some glow in the dark stars and planets for the skybox, which juane made fade in and out, and float around in the sky, which looks cool. Some cardboard clouds, and a cardboard moon are the final things I made this week. This is the final weeks work before we show at Armageddon PAX, so this week was a big one. This week I finished the last of the Wild West mine props. The track is modular with start and end pieces with a middle piece that connects them. The track switch is an additional level prop to give a bit of character to the levels. I started working on a rock material for the Jungle levels. The first 2 Jungle rocks i made were textured with this procedural material. I also re worked the In game UI elements for the grapple hook. These were not working as intended and added confusion to players in our play tests. The new UI elements allow the player to be fully aware of whether or not they are in range and where the grapple point actually is when off screen.
More implementation on assets this week as we start fixing up the first levels a little bit. This meant making the leaf blower a little easier and more readable. We remodelled it and gave it animations to put into the level with. Also got the fire animations in that was just two mesh floating in a circle around each other. A pretty easy fix for a fire particle but really effective with it came to our game. Also went on to animate the talking sign that would help the player through the start of the level to make tutorials a little more obvious. Another thing that I worked on was animating a grab animation that would be masked so that his right arm would pick up the box instead of the box magnetising the player’s hand.
This week I junked an entire level concept.
The revolving platform idea that I came up with last week didn’t seem to be particularly interesting or allow me to do interesting things, so I decided to dump it. This was after spending the first two days of the week continuing with the concept, which I then decided was neither intuitive or fun and dumped it. This process was rather unusual - it represented a decent amount of work, and I had to come up with a replacement level that offered the same type of interesting mechanic. My plan over the next three days was a level that was built around rotating platforms, with different types planned. This will be used alongside pressure plates, gates, and the other mechanics that we already have present ingame. I’m pretty happy with this process to be honest, because it’s a case where I have been happy replacing content I have worked on with new content, if it doesn’t feel like it is up to the same level (or above) as the reset of the content in our game. Although the change took time, I wasn’t happy with how the level slotted in among the rest of our levels. In addition to this, I also altered the second level in the first world, removing some platforms that moved in-out and replacing them with static platforms. Some other platforms and walls have been added to force players to finish puzzles, as there were exploits that allowed players to move past the gate in the second half of the level. I fixed some other bugs in platform systems, like making sure that crates moved along platforms (an issue that is interfered with the first level in the jungle). Next week should be hugely productive, as I have the blueprint for the level (as well as the basic blockout) ready for puzzles to be dropped in and tested. Next week should be all of the time needed to develop the rest of the level, and then by week 5 the first two levels on my side should be done. 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. At the beginning of the week (Monday/Tuesday) I went back and corrected some issues with the first level - namely, the pipe puzzle that I had created initially was not entertaining at all, so I removed it and replaced it with a smaller, concise platforming puzzle. I also adjusted timing values and platform placement to fix one of the puzzles in the later area, which was far too time consuming for the reward that the player received at the end. I’m generally happy with the result of this level, but I will probably revisit it in the third week and correct some issues that It has regarding how mediocre it feels currently.
Part of the issue that I have developing levels currently is the grappling hook. While the hook is fun to use and traverse the environment with, it limits level design somewhat in terms of how the environments have to be created. If the grappling points are present in the level, they generally change how the level is set out. Because the points allow players to traverse distances quickly, the distances are usually quite large. This means that larger levels have to be created, which leads to larger, emptier areas that are devoid of content ( somewhat more than I would like, in a lot of cases). In some levels, the grappling points are used quite well (such as the descent in level 3) but on the whole those areas should be rare, and make the player feel like they are set pieces to be enjoyed at particular stages. It is worth remembering that while it is our core mechanic, it should not be overused (for fear of all levels feeling the same) and instead should be used sparingly (such as the first part in the current level that I am building) to allow the player to traverse gaps or move around before going back to platforming. After that, the rest of the week was more about developing my level design skills than anything else. After the first week’s level, I was ready to improve the techniques that I was using to make sure the level did not feel similar to many of the Wild West ones. The result by Friday was something that I was very happy with - a revolving platform centre that leads the player further and further up the tower, requiring them to repeatedly walk across the centre section. This section took a while to get right, and I tried multiple different combinations - a multiple stage climbing structure that required the player to rotate it was not only too complex but also felt very samey, with the player looking at floor tiles for the majority of the time as they climbed up. I have plans for the rest of the level, which will include more creative and interesting platform applications, and a bit less of the grappling hook mechanics. In addition to this, I also fixed the Application.quit() bug that we have had for a long time, which prevented us from closing the application properly. The fix involved contact with the developers of obirope, who provided us with a patched version of their dll files that fixed the bug. After returning from our break, we decided to rescope the work that we had planned as we move into the gold build. The goal initially was to create three worlds, each with 5 levels present. We decided to cull the scope down to only two worlds, to make sure we can complete all of the content in the time we have left.
The remaining 8 weeks include two key appearances for us - appearing at both Armageddon and PAX Australia; we will be making sure to get feedback and opinion from as many people as possible while we are out in the public eye. The entire team is looking forward to this information, as we will use all of these new perspectives to make the game even greater. For this week, I worked on the newest level - our first jungle level. This level introduces the ‘megapad’, a pressure plate that is twice the size of a normal pressure plate - and requires twice as many crates. The megaplate will always require only two crates, and allows us to create puzzles where the player understands their objective immediately - that they require two crates to proceed. The two-plate puzzles will remain, and we will be able to use these independently to create solutions to puzzles where the plates are in completely different locations. This level has four side areas, which forces players to move around the level, solving the different puzzles. The plan for the second week is to create another level - and this time to change the approach to design - the first level is linear, with a group of different side puzzles hanging off the main corridor. The level in the second week may contain a linear approach, but avoid so many of the side areas in favour of creating a more concentrated experience. |
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