Our first week was mostly about the group deciding on the direction that we want to take the prototype. After changing the prototype, we were moving forward with, there was a brainstorming session. Mechanics and additions were discussed, as well as a potential narrative context for the game.
The decision was made to move away from restricting the team to a general office section, and more towards instanced environments. The initial concepts that were discussed revolved around ideas of museums, scrapyards, and the final, tutorial idea of a prison. The decision to move in a nonviolent direction - avoiding using weapons or combat altogether – means that our mechanical design discussions revolved mostly around gadgets. The goal for vertical slice is to implement a few of these gadgets, as well as creating a play space for the players to experiment with tools. In the first week, I implemented a gadget system. As part of this, I had to examine and add all of the XBOX controller bindings, which was challenging in the cases of the triggers (in determining which axes they use) and the D-Pad. Once these changes were in, I was able to create a gadget framework, which let players toggle between usable gadgets. After this, I implemented the extendo-hand, a concept for a gadget that involved ‘firing’ a hand. This hand enabled players to pick up items from a longer range, allowing them to stay out of sight of the enemies. Conceptually the extendo-hand is quite interesting, because it offers opportunities to let the player take items from out of the sight of enemy NPCs, allowing them to remain hidden while acquiring items. I really like the idea of the extendo-hand and I can see it being used both to hilarious and useful effect later on in development. Currently the hand ‘returns’ to the player if it touches an object the player cannot interact with. On the Friday I also implemented the jumping mechanic, and made sure that it felt right for the existing character. Jumping as a mechanic is something that will be quite important for our game. Because of our decision to switch to a 3D platformer style of game, jumping must ‘feel’ good. The jump functionality itself is quite simple, and the presentation of the jump will be tuned to these values to ensure that jumping feels ‘satisfying’ in the game. To go along with these jumping mechanics, I also created a small, basic environment to play around with the character. This play area will be useful in the future when we move forward with the new gadget we have decided on – the grappling hook. During the week we made the decision to focus on the robotic arm that the player character possesses, meaning that we have some restriction on the gadget tools. Rather than creating a bunch of independent gadgets (ala Ratchet and Clank) we have chosen to focus on making ‘tools’ for the arm. The grappling hook was the first result of this idea, and on Friday both Dylan and I created basic versions of the hook. In the second week we will further develop the tool and it should be finished by the end of week 2. Jumping values will have to be tweaked later on, to make sure that they feel appropriate for the new character. The character will most likely be shorter, meaning that we will have to alter jump values to an area that seems more logical for the character.
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