Production Sprint 2 just begun

We're finally moving onto the second half of production. All looks promising as we chip away at implementing the final features, such as real-time effects, sound, music and animations for our characters. What we've done mainly this week was finalizing our level, fixing platform placements and replacing our rough robot blockout with our finished modular parts. 

The Robot Parts

This week we got round to finishing all the necessary building blocks to be able to bring our giant mech to life. These are mostly simple panels, screws and pistons with minimal geo detail so that the actual stars of the show - the characters and the platforms - stand out with their more detailed models and textures. The parts of the robot as dark grey, to separate themselves easily from the (eventually) light blue background and also to contrast the bright orange platforms.

To be able to scale the parts as we saw fit, we made a triplanar shader within Unreal Engine. This way we won't end up with stretched textures.

The Finished Giant Robot

Assembling the robot with these parts was a unique challenge, as to use up all 17 parts in different scales and rotations to create a coherent shape is more difficult than expected. After a few hours of experimenting with placement we were able to come up with something that's hopefully believable and able to move once we make time for it. 

Besides that we needed to expand the environment and populate it with more props to hide the edges of the map and create a proper backdrop rather than basic set dressing. We also started implementing the colored fog for general atmosphere and separation of the background layers.

RFX

This week, we commenced our work on the RFX of our game and incorporated various hazards, including explosions and ice. Some of them still need to be linked to the logic, but the desired effect is already there. 

Menus

Menus are always a core part of any game , and of course they are in ours as well. This week we added the 2 most needed menus : start and end menu. The start menu is of course the menu you will get when you start the game . It is very simple with currently just an option to start the game or quit the application.  The end menu appears when you finish the game. Once one of the players hits the end of the level it will appear and ask to either restart the level or quit the game. Currently they are just functional without any art to them.

Finishing the Level

We perhaps have gone a little to far without fully realizing our first (and for now only) level. It was mostly just  a place for us to test the mechanics and art with just a blockout of the level . But now it is finally playable , all the interactive platforms have been added and have a purpose and the general layout is there now. The level features multiple paths for the player to travel and go with each having different advantages and disadvantages. 

Below we have the finished level layout and below that a showcase of the intended ways one can traverse it. Of course there are possibly more paths but that is only to know with more playtime.

Respawn

This week, we successfully implemented the feature in our game that allows our players to respawn. This means that if a player accidentally falls a specific distance lower than the maximum height they have reached, they will be given a fresh start and automatically reappear on the last stable platform they were standing on before the fall occurred.

HUD Elements

In addition to the implementation of the respawn feature, we have also made a notable addition to player feedback within the game. This addition involves the incorporation of Heads-Up Display (HUD) elements, which now serve as a means to provide clearer and more intuitive communication to the player regarding the status of certain actions. Specifically, these HUD elements effectively indicate when a particular button or ability is currently on cooldown, ensuring that players are informed and aware of the temporary restriction before they can use it again.

Button HUD

Player HUD

Now that we are done with most of the game's modeling and texturing, we can focus on implementing our user interface, visual effects, sound and post processing of our scene. When it comes to core features we still have a few more to work through these last couple of weeks but we believe the project is turning out and that we're still learning a lot. With this we enter the second (and last) production sprint confident and ready to give our best.