It's been a while since an update and that's because I've just been getting on with it. However to recap what I've been doing the past month...
Essay Completed
I got my essay done and dusted for the submission on the 27th April
Adding Gameplay Mechanics
Since I submitted my essay, I've been hard at work adding all the different gameplay mechanics and functions to the huge level that I designed over the semester. Here's a list of the gameplay elements that have been added since.
Secret Treasure Chests:
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| There are 6 different values of treasure chests that you can find. Ranging from very small to very large. You can find these treasure chests hidden around the level. Treasure chests open automatically when approaching them and dispense "Gaia" the game's currency to purchase upgrades for your weapon. |
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| Upgrade chests function similarly to normal treasure chests, they open automatically as you approach them. However these special chests are a lot rarer and are usually the most well hidden. Inside these chests are health and armor upgrades which will increase your max health or armor depending on which one you collect. |
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| Health Upgrade |
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| Armor Upgrade |
Can't forget jump pads, I love these things. When stepping on one of these you are flung high up into the air. There are two versions of the jump pad, the green one is a stationary one, where the player can control their aerial movement after bouncing. The blue jump pad is an automatic jump pad and will fling you to a specific area, the player will not be able to control where they go when jumping on these.
Locked Doors/Door Keys:
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| Self explanatory, locked door you can't get through. Find the key, come back and unlock the door and proceed. The key looks like a bomb right now because I originally had the idea that locked doors would have a bomb shaped key hole, as you slotted in the bomb key it would start the timer and blow up the door rather than just open it. Way cooler but had to be scrapped as I had to use the time to focus on other things. |
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| One section of the level branches off into a small secluded area, with targets hidden around the place and a treasure chest behind a magic barrier. If the player manages to shoot and break all the targets in the area the magic barrier will disappear, allowing the player to get to the upgrade chest. |
Switches & Levers:
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| Switches are activated by shooting at the red orb on the device to the right, this will activate various mechanisms based on where they are placed in the level, they are used to open doors, raise and lower lifts or deactivate traps. |
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| Levers function the same as switches but require the player to stand next to them to pull the lever and cannot be activated by shooting them. When a lever hasn't been pulled the square light will appear red, after pulling the lever it will appear green. |
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| If the player enters poison gas their health gradually starts to fall for as long as they remain in there. The gas has a purple smoke effect and does not look inviting at all, players will know that it's dangerous. Unfortunately you cannot see how purple it is in this screenshot due to everything looking orange right now, which I'll get to why that is shortly... |
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| Teleport pads can be found throughout the level. These teleporters take you to the Gaia Shop, where you can use your collected Gaia to purchase upgrades. As you discover these teleporters they can then be used from the Gaia shop as shortcuts to various areas of the level. So if the player wanted to backtrack to try and find any secrets that they missed they can use these teleporter shortcuts to return to previous areas. |
Enemies:
While I haven't got a screenshot for them yet, I do have 2 placeholder enemies so far. One of them roams aimlessly until they notice the player. When they notice the player they will chase them down and deal damage when touched. I want this enemy to be a floating alien head with two rayman like hands at each side of the head. The other enemy is a simple turret enemy, this enemy will be an alien in a little UFO that shoots at you.
Alongside adding gameplay mechanics I've also had a go at adding some quick simple art assets to try and capture the atmosphere of the level, as an attempt to visualise what the bigger picture could be if I was a game designer that had access to an art team.
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| To answer the question of "why is everything so orange?" it's because I messed around with the skysphere to get the orange, fiery sunset sorta vibe to the starting area of the level. Once I've built the lighting, interior areas shouldn't look orange anymore. |
To wrap up the update I also had two playtests this month and got feedback from around 15 different people. Rather than ask them to fill out a questionnaire I watched them play and took notes on their gameplay as well as their personal feedback they told me during the play session.
Haste Style Feedback
- A lot of players mentioned they found the sprint speed is too low. (Increase Sprinting Speed)
- A few players mentioned the running animation on the player character isn't very good due to no hip movement. Someone even compared it to Roblox character animation (LOL) This is an issue however as animation plays a huge factor into a character's movement feeling good. (I will try to polish the running animations if I have the time).
- Players really liked the jumping animations, "looks cool", "that double jump looks elegant". Although sometimes the double jump animation wouldn't activate. (Animation bug, will fix, nice that they like the animation though)
- The Aerial Spin and Dive moves are supposed to give the player a little boost in z velocity, however it doesn't seem to work properly until the hover boots have been activated. After that it works fine. (Gravity issue? Hover boots change the gravity so the player falls slower, maybe I missed a value change somewhere in my player blueprint. BUG FIX)
- Once they were working, players liked the aerial spin and dive moves, almost all of them reacted with "whoa" when they first activated the move. They like the animation and the extra aerial mobility boost they get. Some players experimented and realised you can combo spins, into dives, into double jumps and hover boots etc. Whereas others seemed happy to just use one move at a time. (A case of emergent behaviour, the players that experimented realised the movement of the game just expanded for them, and with that, started to pull off more impressive jumps and traversed the environment in new ways. The players that didn't experiment still managed to get by just fine on the normal path)
- One player in particular mentioned they wanted a ledge grab, for that extra safety net if you don't quite make a jump. I'll think about it, but my ledge grab in StarKid was buggy and I couldn't get it to work properly. Not sure I want to invest the time to get it working in this, as well as have a new animation given all the other mechanics I still have to work on. A ledge grab would be good, and I do want it. But maybe I should focus on other things? I might just make the specific jump he was struggling on a little easier. This is a tough one.
- Some players mentioned that the Aerial Spin and the Aerial Dives functions felt like they were the wrong way round based on their animations.
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| The Aerial Spin shoots the player directly forward, it functions as an attack as well as a boost in forwards velocity to make longer jumps. |
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| The Aerial Dive gives the player a boost in z velocity, functioning as an attack as well as a triple jump to make higher jumps. |
Strike Style Feedback
- Players felt like they were moving too slow again. A large majority of them thought this. (Increase movement speed slightly)
- A large majority of the players didn't like the double tap a direction to dash. Some said they would prefer if the dash was mapped to a button instead. (Change dash so it's mapped to a button)
As predicted however, it was a little hard for testers to give feedback on Strike style given a lot of the animations for the character were missing. A lot of them mentioned the character sliding around while shooting looked weird, which it does. (Finish animating as well as figure out how it's going to work!!)
That about does it for work over this past month, it's been very busy and I've had a lot to do. Being realistic everything I wanted to do isn't going to get done as I made the scope of the game a little too big. However, what I have got is a lot and I've learnt a lot so right now I'm happy with it. Plans of action are get as much work done as I possibly can before the deadline. Body of work blog post will be up tomorrow. Time to down some energy drinks, it's gonna be a loooooong night.
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