As the semester drags on, we find ourselves almost at the end of our project. We have only 3 weeks left before our final presentation and 1 week before Softs. Softs is an all day event similar to playtest day, except instead of showing our project to invited guest, we are presenting to faculyt members.
In the previous year, project teams met with all of the faculty in short 15-20 minute presentations. By now most of the factulty should have an idea about where each of the project or headed. Softs is an opportunity to get feedback on what to do with the time you have left.
This semester, we also have festival, where we will ETC will host a fun evening event to showcase projects from the first and second years. The advice we obtain from Softs will also help us prepare to present our level to the general public.
Finishing our Level
Our level has 4 scenes; the outdoor scene, the entrance to the temple, floor 1 of the temple and floor 2 of the temple. We have a couple of iteration to do on the entrance and floor 1, but most of our focus will be on floor 2. Floor 2 is supposed to be the players payoff for learning all these new abilities. Here they will use all their knowledge to face off against their biggest challenge yet; the final boss.
Once again, this is a stealth game and we don’t have the programming power to go overboard with the final boss. Still we want the player to feel challenged and like this level was satisifying. Therefore, in floor 2 we are wrapping uo different story elements and iterating on the enemy AI to make a harder vampire.
Floor 2 is a really big design challenge because everything has to have been introducer beforehand, and feel harder. We have created this layout:
From here, we have been building out the rooms with found and made art assets. We are also placing the proper obstacles and shadow areas for the player to hid in.
Another challenge that we are facing, is that we won’t have much time to playtest this floor. We will have to largely rely on feedback from previous playtest and whatever information we get at Softs.
Minor Fixes
While half of our team is building out floor 2, the other half is clearing up bugs and inconveniences we found from playtest day. This way we can continue maintaining the hygine of the project while making progress on new material.
Next Steps
Next week will be a race to Softs and trying to finish and playtest floor 2 as much as possible.