Dev Log 10 - Team 5

23 /07 / 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?

During this last full week of July, Team 5 has been busy in preparation for the beta presentation. One of our most notable features is the inclusion of the updated 4th iteration of our level, this time adding a section to test the player’s vertical climbing abilities within an open cabinet and a finale where a massive horde of cockroaches are shocked at once by an equally massive static charge. 

Sound effects have also taken the first step to getting implemented, as the player character, doors, enemies and generators are all capable of playing sounds. However, due to a lack of sound assets only the player is so far capable of producing sound. Additionally, both the sound effect and music volume are now controllable through a menu slider found within the starting screen.

A new system that shows controller inputs to the player has also been developed. The specific image shown to the player depends on the action the player needs to perform (like jumping or shocking) and on the controller the player is currently using (either keyboard, Xbox, Switch pro or playstation controller are compatible), allowing the system to pick a button or input that represents the specific controller’s button.

Speaking of the player, their static charging and shocking abilities have been refined as well, as the shock radius and number of consecutive shocks can now be increased by picking up a battery upgrade found within the level. This is how the player can create such a huge static shock in the finale mentioned above. Finally, animations for the player character, including crawling, jumping, falling, and getting hurt animations are also now implemented onto the player character, and will play when and only when those actions occur.

What are our next steps?

Our next steps we’ll take is to continue adding polish to our game, both by cleaning up our game’s looks and by incorporating the feedback from all the previous playtests and our upcoming beta presentation. We’ll be adding in the rest of the player’s animations, the enemy model, updated UI and camera controls within these last 2 weeks, with the animations and camera controls taking priority this week. We will also continue to clean any bugs or unintended behavior from our game, such as how the player gets an extra midair boost when touching an enemy right after jumping, or how they can sometimes get stuck or barely move when climbing carpeted surfaces. We are also wanting to improve the UI of our game by adding options to change the audio volumes in a separate options tab and allow the player to quit the game from the title screen.

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

Communication is key! Even if we are individually working on different areas, showcasing or reaching out to the team about a specific way of design or flaw right when it’s immediately noticed is important, as it will give the team time to think and develop strategies to solve those issues. For example, the level’s 4th iteration was completed the day before the presentation, and once the pr was in we quickly noticed it was very frustrating to navigate through the tight cabinet section due to the myriad of walls the camera could clip through, blocking the player’s vision. Our level designers had suggested implementing a feature similar to a spring arm from Unreal Engine, but due to having a day and a bit left creating a spring arm functionality from scratch that felt good would’ve been next to impossible. 

Thankfully, one of our discovered strengths that was shown off during this was how each of us had different skills and thought processes that were able to help solve this issue in time. For instance, some of our artists went to create a see-through door to help with player visibility, while others who are more programming oriented focused on the spring arm, and another was able to make the springarm ignore the door the artists made to prevent it from clipping inside. Thanks to the combined ideas and solutions, we were able to drastically reduce the negative impact the tight cabinet space had on gameplay in time for our beta milestone.