Dev Log 4 - Team 5

24 / 06 / 2024

Michael Poulos, Theo Huang, Nehchal Kalsi, Kevin Le, June Oh, Noah S Henry Bezerra, Ethan Micallef, Griffin Hook, Zachary Taylor, Tan

What have we done so far?

Currently, we have the following implemented (but not complete):

• Jumping
• Slithering
• Rolling (the ball form)
• Shocking with electricity built from carpets 
• Dust bunnies & Cockroaches (the enemies that can kill the player
• The players pair (the game's objective and end state)
• Simple wall climbing

This week, the team has developed a new level which features the above. This provided our short experience with some much needed visuals, challenges, and player engagement opportunities. The team has also developed a plethora of fixes and new ideas. 

This week's player character changes include:

• We removed ball movement due to multiple concerns, but the main issue was its complexity in making it feel good. Furthermore, rolling into a ball isn't something that instantly comes to mind when you think of a sock.

This week's bug fixes include:

• This week, we focused on improving the player experience by adding helpful tips for the sock's abilities, such as "press space to climb" and polishing the movement feel. However, we ran into the following bugs.
• Jumping gets disabled sometimes after getting hit by an enemy (fixed)
• Sometimes, the static shock ring is slightly visible to the player at all times (fixed)
• Sometimes, the static charge won't charge on the carpet (fixed)

New mechanic concepts developed this week include:

• Generators an object that exists in the level that will change the states of objects when the player's static shock ability is used (for example, when a generator is shocked, a door will open)
• New carpets and shocking mechanics

What are our next steps?

As required, we must have our feedback session with Elias. But we also have to refine our "30 seconds of fun." It is commonly stated in the game industry that if you can create 30 seconds of fun in your game, you can essentially stretch that out into a whole game. As of now, the game is functional but not very fun. It is up to the team to investigate new ways of adding enjoyment to players and test our changes.

A more specific next step is incorporating healing the player into the game. We believe limiting the player to four harts without getting them back is too restricting and can lead to unnecessary difficulty levels.

What are important discoveries we've made along the way?

Jumping is still bugged. It feels obscure, and we need to research new ways of designing it.

The camera needs work. We initially intended the game to be 3D, but it's looking to be more of a 2.5D game now. We'd need to choose which one we go for sooner rather than later.