Devblog Week 9: (13/12/2021)

It's nice to sit down and catch you all up once more after the week is over and the next one has begun. This week is really important for us as a team as it's when our vertical slice is due for submission which we've talked about in the past but we've never actually explained what a vertical slice is. A vertical slice of a game is an early prototype of the game that shows off pretty much all of the games mechanics and features, even in an incomplete state so that others can see what the game should be like. So things like inventory systems, combat, shops etc, evene if incomplete should be present, even as static images. This is just to show how the game should look in it's completed state and ours is due in 3 days and there's a decent bit of work left to do.

This week we've been just moving forward with our sprints which have been running overtime, causing a decent bit of stress which is something we've tried to avoid and we're learning from this and making sure that in future we do our best to avoid this.

So how have things progressed?

Well we have 2 audio tracks nearly done, sadly our audio team member fell ill so we lost some time there but they more than made up for it and over the next 2 days we aim to have both audio tracks in the game. We looked at examples of other steampunk music in games but most of it was too cheerful for what we needed so we had to get creative. We have one exploratory soundtrack that sounds a little bit dark and mysterious at the moment but we're hoping to reduce the creepiness for the final version as we don't think it fits the game so well and the story we're trying to tell. We also have an action theme that's really starting to come together too. For those of you familiar with audio mixing here's what we have so far.

Now, how about world design? So as we've discussed in the past the first level has really been a nuisance for us and sprouting lots of issues, we're happy to say all these issues are worked out at this point it's just about bringing all the pieces together into a whole that we're happy with. So we've managed to get all the models fixed up and are currently replacing them all in our scene and check how unity like that, this should take no more than 2 days, it'll be boring but worth doing. From there we can experiment with lighting and testing light baking times and other elements that add to the atmosphere. Once we get the buildings replaced we'll take some time to look into other games with lighting similar to what we want and try to uncover how they did it.

So a similar story happened with the models for the constructs, as you might've seen in past devlogs, something happened that caused our models to triangulate and double their poly counts after importing into unity, we didn't know if it was a unity issue or an issue with our softwares. Nevertheless it was an issue and we had to fix it. Now the constructs are all fixed and about to be given their basic animations which we hope will make the game stand out so much more.

So about animations and the rigging with the character. The rigging is looking super good and we've started work on the core animations like running and shooting. Taking our knowledge and expanding on it with the help of tutorials we're enjoying the challenge that comes with getting these animations right. We just got started on the running animation and during it we saw how long the gun was and decided to scale it down a bit to make it more chunkier so it fits better in Rosalyn's hand and add's a more chibi look to her too. We currently have the beginnings of the run animation in the works.

UI

So, during our playtest we got some feedback, the most notable of which related to the UI and how it blended with the background thus not drawing players attention to it. Taking this feedback we redesigned the UI to have a brighter and more brass shade to it to really make it stand out and pop.

There was a lot of small minor fixes that we also worked on such as fixing the camera so it didn't jolt when the character jumped, making it quite jarring for players. We had to make an implement some steam fixtures throughout the level rather than the cute anime girl ball we had as a placeholder. Some dialogue needed tweaking and refinement. A camera chake function was implemented as well as camera colliders and combat zones throughout the level. While none of theses are particularly interesting we've learned that doing the small things really eases the workload on others and brings the game much closer together.

So, what's to be done?

Well, mostly it's just finishing things off for the next three days and ensuring we're happy with the build. We hope to have everything in Unity for wednesday and spend thursday working out all the issues which will inevitably occur. Then on friday show off our work to our college peers and some external professionals. Once this is done we'll have a decent chunk of time to work on our alpha but for right now this is super important to us and we want to show the game as best as it can be come friday. Thank you all for reading these blogs, it's been an intense experience for us but we're learning loads and we don't plan on stopping any time soon!