CAGD 377 - Sprint 5

 CAGD 377 - Sprint 5

Development Process

The development process during this sprint went well, but time management is something that still plagues our team. I'd prefer if all of us, including myself, could get work done earlier to save ourselves from last minute crunch. We need to pick it up this sprint if we hope to see a proper game being made.

Problems/Solutions

One of the problems we encountered last sprint was not being able to get published due to a violation of device and network abuse policy in the Google Play Store. To fix this issue this sprint, our programmer updated the version of Unity to the latest version. Before, we were getting errors saying that the version we were using was unstable and, after thoroughly researching the issue, we came to the conclusion that updating Unity to the version with the network patch should fix the issue, and it did.

Sprint Kickoff

This sprint kickoff we had a lot of different priorities which included: currency conversion, saving and loading, getting updated graphics for blocks and minerals that fit our theme, and implementing player feedback.

Work Completed

For this sprint, I worked on getting an intro screen made that introduced the player to the context of the game as well as introduce their objective. Many play testers questioned what their goal was. As the game designers, it is easy to forget that you have to explain to the player what they need to be doing and how to do it. For the makers, it's easy to understand what our core gameplay loop is, but for the player it is not so intuitive. This screen pops up when the player first starts a new run.

Introduction Screen

The second thing I did this sprint was create the models and textures for the various minerals that will be present throughout the first planet. I created two distinct minerals models that represent ore and crystalline formations. I used these as bases to texture the rest of the minerals; 3 crystals and 3 ores.

Mineral Textures

From there, I took these into Sampler to create a normal and roughness map. I exported them as sbsar and applied them in Painter. I took the finalized textures into unity and created prefabs for them in Unity.

I also created a main menu screen for the game which I tried to make reflect the space theme. The play button is red so it stands out the most as what the player is mostly going to be interacting with. I broke this screen down into multiple parts to then be reassembled in Unity. The dimensions should all be the same, so implementation shouldn't be an issue.

Main Menu Screen

Work Completed by Others

Some of the work completed by our programmer includes a mineral to credits conversion system so the player can spend them in the shop. They also created a saving/loading system so that progress is not lost when closing the app. The final few things were implementing the player character, implementing the newly textured blocks, and adding a credits screen.

Some of the work completed by our designer includes a sand hazard that does damage to the player and enemies, sound design details, bomb particle effects, and block breaking effects.

Some of the work completed by our modeler includes enemy concept art for all enemies in the game, creating new textures for the blocks on the first planet, and making some marketplace assets like the app icon and poster.

Current Work

What I'm currently working on is getting 2D icons for the minerals for the mineral to credits conversion screen at the end of a run. I've already made significant progress on this, so afterwards I'll be working on the options screen UI.