Overdrive mode

Deadlines are looming all too soon in the distance, when you couple that with still changing design decisions it makes for some low sleep nights.  The good news is that we are making progress, our list is down 15-20 items from last week, but we still have ~25 items to go before our deadline two weeks from now.  It is going to be a hectic two weeks, but it is so exciting to see the game finally come together.

From a personal standpoint I got more done last week than I had during the last semester and a half.  I was able to implement the new combat/scoring/health system which required an overhaul of many of the systems we had.  I also was finally able to clean up some bad AI code that was lurking around from our alpha deadline and I should now be able to change up AI behavior easily (if we have time).  Finally, ability to have 2D text 'particle effects' that are needed so that we can have text pop up over enemies when you kill them that tell you how many points you got.  There were other snippets of coding done here and there, but nothing exciting enough to talk about.

Next week I will give an update discussing the feedback the grad students give us about our game.

Its too late to pump the brakes

Team Progress

Currently we have a 32 item list of programmer tasks that still need to be done ranging from small tasks, such as changing the camera distance, to larger items like the menu system.  Our list is accomplish able, but we don't have time to waste.  This means that we need each element to be designed before we work on it, because we don't have time to throw away code at this point.

On that front, things are looking up.  We met as a group on Saturday to talk about animation progress and the art design for our menus.  In addition, today we have one last design meeting with Bob and Roger, which will hopefully end with a definitive decision in regard to all the design elements.

Personal Progress

Seeing as how my blog post was so late last week that I covered some of my items from the current sprint (rain effect), I have fewer items to talk about in this post.  I essentially spent the rest of the sprint performing tweaks to how the enemies work.  

Previously we had decided that enemies should collide with each other, this design decision was mostly made to prevent several enemies stacking on top of each other (such that you cannot tell there are multiple enemies in the same spot).  However, the collisions also mean that they block each other from attacking the player, resulting in a straight line of enemies that the player can just plow through.  To fix the problem we disabled enemy collisions and offset them on different 'tracks' such that there should be enough dimension that they don't appear to be on top of each other.  I also checked off another small feature by forcing our heavy enemy to turn slowly.  The heavy enemy is designed such that he has a shield in the front that blocks most of the damage.  You either need to get behind him or disarm him to deal max damage.  The issue was that the heavy enemy would instantly turn and face the player making it impossible to get behind him.  Overall, I didn't discover some new algorithm or program anything that was all that hard this week, but I was able to check quite a few items off the to-do list.

Its raining blood

Literally.  Not a whole lot happened this week, minor things here and there, but I was able to get a rain effect working in our game.  I didn't have any rain assets to work with, so we are temporarily using the blood assets (hen again it does look pretty cool).  We are also meeting today to go over the character animations and hopefully get a deadline on when they will be in the game.


Until next time.

Making the Combat more fun.

Combat is the crux of our game, I would say it is the mechanic that will make or break our game.  If the combat isn't fun or feels crappy all the special effects in the world wouldn't be able to save the game.  So it is vital that we nail the combat and make it as good as we can; unfortunately we are not quite there yet.  Several people on the team played the game over the break (including myself) and came to the consensus that the combat wasn't fun.  In my personal opinion it wasn't fun because crowd control is impossible, the pacing is too slow, and we haven't figured out the perfect control scheme.  So we quickly brainstormed some new mechanics that should help, mechanics that I implemented this sprint.

The first feature I added is the ability to stun enemies.  It isn't going to be a long stun, more of a quick flinch that the enemy will experience when they get hit.  This is common mechanic in most brawler games and will make crowd control and combos more easier for the player to perform.

The second feature I added was the dash/roll/dodge (whatever you like to call it).  This is another a fairly standard maneuver for brawlers that lets the player quickly move a distance, during which collisions with enemies are usually ignored.  By letting the player move around the environment faster we can speed up combat and give the player the ability to crowd control and engage the enemies as they desire.  This is also a necessary mechanic to kill shielded enemies, because when you attack them from the front the shield absorbs most of the damage (you need to dash and attack them from behind or disarm them with an uppercut).  

The last thing I thought we were missing, a great control scheme, is in progress and we will be playing 4 different methods on Thursday and picking what feels the best.  When it comes to using the guitar controller both our feelings and our play test feedback has been split on whether or not people like strumming to attack.  I personally think that having to strum to attack makes the game much more engaging, but the bottom line is if nobody can figure it out then we shouldn't force them to do it.  Another option is we could just add all the control schemes to the game and let the player pick which one they like.  In that case we stil need to figure out the best option, because if the game feels bad to them to start they aren't going to dig through the options to see if they can make it feel better.

Back into the swing of things

Well the winter break is officially over, meaning a new semester and the second half of development.  I could just talk about how things are going, but I am taking a philosophy class this semester so I figured I should practice trying to make some complex comparison of game development to human life.

If creating a game is like raising a child, the second half of development is the teenage years.  Your kid's attitude becomes more and more frustrating (as programming bugs do).  But at the same time as they grow closer to becoming an adult and leaving to fend for themselves you worry that you haven't prepared them enough (wanting the game to be perfect).  However, every once in a while you take a step back from it all and are proud of what a great human (game) you have shaped. 

Now that I am done trying attempting to make some deep metaphorical comments lets get down to the facts.  We have some rough deadlines this semester, our game needs to be playable from start to finish on February 14th (5 weeks from today).  Its a tight schedule but I of now I am feeling confident.  Jake has 10 levels that he finished the base maya model for and just needs to place the enemies and such in the level editor.  Isaac was a machine over the break, completely changing the art production process, has put out 3 characters, and is finishing the last one over the weekend.

From a programming standpoint we also made some good progress.  Scott was able to get asynchronous level loading along with some other back end features.  I was able to beef up the AI and get several needed camera features into the level editor for Jake to play around with.  We still have plenty of stuff to do, but the pieces are starting to come together for Heroes of Rock.

Until next time...