CAGD 470 - Sprint 5

CAGD 470 - Sprint 5

Production Process

The production process for this sprint felt as though it had a lot more pressure to it due to the limited time we had left. I had to cut a few features from the game due to time restraints such as rogue-lite features and a few of the different enemies. One such enemy was the dungeon looter who's behavior is far different from the rest of the enemies within the game. He would attempt to steal something from the player and would run away; dropping a lot of loot upon death. Most of our enemies simply move towards the player and shoot their specific attack pattern. Cutting this enemy does not alter the core of our game nor really impact the player experience. 

I tried to put more of an emphasis on playtesting this sprint. This revealed a lot of flaws in our game that couldn't be seen without actually diving into the game. I also took the time to play through our game numerous times, noting down any flaws or areas to improve. I then wrote down a plan of action for us and prioritized what needed to be done in what order. This alleviated a lot of the stress of our designer as they felt we didn't have a more detailed plan beforehand. This also personally gave me a lot of perspective of the scope of the project. 

Issues/Problems/Solutions

One of the larger issues we ran into was balancing. No play testers, myself included, could ever make it to the boss due to the very high difficulty of each room. Enemies are very plentiful in rooms and shoot extremely fast projectiles. Nobody could even test if the boss was too difficult because they could never reach them. To fix this, I have our designer tweaking the values based on the feedback they received. 

Another complaint was that there were a lot of graphical flaws such as misaligned walls or visible seams. I also noticed some of the particle effects I made earlier had particles moving in one direction as opposed to following the velocity of the parent object. To fix this, I'll have to go back and put a mask on some sections of the walls as well as change the way particles follow an object in Unity.

Sprint Kickoff

This sprint kickoff I was a little more heavy handed with tasks due to the little amount of time we had left. I would almost say that I promoted crunch which is a bad precedent to set, so I'm going to once again drastically reduce the amount given in the beginning and promote getting them done earlier so that we can have more mini-kickoffs. I would promote that we could have an even better final product if everyone contributes.

Work Completed

To start, I worked on the modular set of walls and floors for shops. I consulted our designer about what the theme they wanted was. What I was told is that the shop should feel weirdly clean and out of place in this typically dirty dungeon. It is also supposed to feel like a place of respite for the player to take a breath. 

Using this direction, I chose to consult one of our other artists props for the shopkeeper's counter. I created the walls in a similar fashion. That being primarily made of wood and with many supporting beams. I also chose to use warmer brown tones to promote that feeling of this being a safe area.

Textured Modular Walls for Shops

I chose to use the same doors as I did for the first floor modular set. This way it would not interfere with how the doors opened in the actual game. I didn't want to cause any errors if the doors were shaped differently. It also keeps an essence of consistency; when you see this set of wooden door then you know you can walk through them to the next level. 

For the next set of modular walls I consulted the designer once again and was told that floor 2 should have more organic feeling walls. There should be curves and varying angles. I started this process by creating a cube and conforming it to previous dimensions so that it fits the level generations system we have. I then put in random cuts into the wall and corrected any Ngons and made it look a bit smoother. I hardened every edge to give it that low poly look. I textured it the same way I have the previous modular sets. Low textural detail, color contrast, and most detail coming from base color. 

Textured Modular Walls for Floor 2

Work Incomplete

The work I left incomplete is the foliage props for floor 2 as well as some of the pieces for the HUB area. Now that the HUB is an established part of our game, I'll have to develop assets for the area.

Current Work

I'm aiming to get the foliage props done at the very beginning of sprint so that our level designer can immediately jump into making levels for level 2 with all props textured.