Devblog Week 14: (08/02/2022)

It has been some time since the last Devlog, due to college assignments the team has been very busy and Devlogs were given a back seat.

So, what have we been up to over the last 5 weeks, well we've been busy with other assignments but have gotten a lot of work done on the game.

Level 1 and 2 have been finished to near completion, all that remains is to solve an issue with the lighting being baked into the textures, currently there are too many light sources and the baked lightmap file is far too big. We're really happy with how they look however so we're doing our best to resolve the issue without comprising the file size or the visuals we've worked so hard on.

Level 2 was designed and built over the course of 4 weeks and modelled after a slum area with crakced houses and buildings and a more run down atmosphere. A major component of the second level is a canal that the player must use to hep navigate to the end of the level, crossing over it multiple times in a criss-crossing level design. New textures were made for the old models to reduce the amount of assets used in the game and a handful of new models were made. The lighting was altered to give a darker and murkier feel than level 1.

In other news the player model has been fully rigged and animated, just texturing left to do but we're super happy with the animations as they are.

Of course we've also fixed a lot of bugs, some large and some small. We've added invincibilty frames after taking damage and while using the grappling hook ability. This will allow the player to get a moments respite in the chaos of battle. And on the topic of abilities, we decided to remove the jump ability, it was too much work to get the camera to behave in a manner with which we were happy, the colliders required to make the level escape proof and prevent glitches. We replaced the jump with a stomp that knocks enemies back in an area of effect.

We did some scheduling work and have had to reduce our level count from 5 to 4 in order to have enough time to finish the game before the deadline. This means our plot will have to be redone also and that is on the urgent to do list. 

Finally we have put together an audio system and have lots of audio SFX and music made.

We're happ with the work we got done but we have an alpha playtest to do for next week and are hard at work getting things in line for it to be playable and fun for our playtesters.