We came back from Spring Break ready to continue on our level. This week we made a lot of changes to our character abilities in the level and also started working towards completing the blockout for the other acts.
Two of our teammates were working during the Spring break as they were heading to conferences during this week as well as the next week. We managed to divide the tasks among the members and stayed on track with our decided plan of action.
What we did this week?
Programming:
- Gameplay:
- Added slow motion to vision change.
- Removed the double jump and made it a special moving enhancement only for vision change.
- Added VFX to double jump in vision change.
- Fixed the VFX range problem for vision change.
- Added damage to craft attack and AOE attack.
- Removed the crouch as we think it is not necessary.
- Improved the animation blend space for basic attack and craft attack.
- Fixed the camera rotation of the checkpoints.
- Made the falling bridge in Act 5 (not polished yet).
- Fixed some small bugs in the game.
Level Design:
- We blocked out act 2 and created a golden path loop, aiming to create a puzzle.
- We blocked out act 5 and is currently working with programmers to design a cinematic action phase that requires level scripting.
- We made structural changes to Act 4 as in I have added a small squeezed passage before the building is revealed and tried to make the composition better.
- We implemented the puzzle interaction and now you have to teleport all the statues to specific places to get the new ability.
- We added a few floating pieces inside the map so that the floating platform feels more natural to the scene.
Art and VFX:
- Environment Art
- Organize art team meetings to reorganize and write narratives
- Reclassify scenarios into “wilderness”, “ruins” and “complexes” based on narrative and level design blockouts.
- Reworked environment and prop references based on the themes of “Lost Civilizations under the Sea” and “Magic”.
- VFX
- Reworked vision change material
This ability is comprised of two parts: materials that perform a dissolve and reverse dissolve effect, and a post-processing material that creates the on-screen effect.
- Double jump effects
This visual effect is composed of Three parts: Jumping ripples, jump spark effect and the movement trail.
Jumping Ripples Effect
Material Node
Currently, there are some issues with the ripple effect due to the way the texture is manipulated. These will be addressed and fixed in future updates.
Jump Spark Effect
Jump Particle Trails
Double Jump in Action
The jumping spark effect is sampled to spawn only on the character’s feet, signifying the magical enhancement of the jump.
Originally, the trail effect was achieved using a ribbon renderer, but the outcome was unsatisfactory. Therefore, we switched to spawning particles along the path for a better effect.
Production:
- We reflected on the feedback form we received from half and made a priority list of remaining tasks.
Some challenges we faced and their solutions
Programming:
Problems –
- Gameplay:
- Falling bridge: We were not very sure how to make this falling effect look good in the game. Besides, we found that the player might always look forward and could not notice the whole bridge falling apart behind.
Solutions to the problems –
- Gameplay:
- Falling bridge: We found the destructible mesh may work well to solve the physics simulation problem of the bridge and we decided to change the camera position when the player is on the bridge to make sure they can see what is happening behind them.
Art:
Problems –
- How to present the theme of magic through the construction of the environment was a big challenge for environment art.
Solutions to the problems –
- The artists in the team decided after some discussion to create FX in the scene, such as the magical residue that surrounds the pillars.
- Initially, the dissolve material was implemented using a mesh distance field. However, we soon discovered that this method is only effective on a small scale, whereas our goal required a large-scale action. The mesh distance field approach also imposed more constraints and undesirably impacted lighting.
- After exploring alternatives, we switched to using a sphere mask, which proved to be more directable and less resource-intensive.
Production:
Problems –
- Our presentation had left some audience needing clarification on the theming of our level and how different elements could come together. We realized there are extra effort that needs to be put in and design changes to be made for everything to come together seemingly.
Solutions to the problems –
- We are listing design changes and new tasks that will allow everything to come together.
Things to do for next week:
- Decide on tasks for bringing the whole level together in a cohesive whole.
- Improve the falling bridge section of the level.
- Implement a dialogue system so that the narrative can be conveyed to the player.
