3 days before Portfolio Night I am starting to feel how unpleasant crunch time could be. Last week everything was more or less in their way, but now I feel a little worry. Principally because with new merged version new problems have appeared. Issues that were solve before are chasing us again (like the character are not taking damage from each other attacks anymore). I have been running from one place to another trying to solve little problems like that always within my skills. The collider of the outer space rock I asked Carly was not quite right so I reshape it for example. Serving as Ethan right hand has been fun and demanding. I saw a little issue with the background transition between main menu, character select and result screen so we exchange some models, I also asked Kenisha resize the letter for the control screen and for the credits screen too. The cool down for Alexis shotgun was too long so Ethan helped me out fixing that one because the variable was not so easy to find. In general I tried to help as much as I (literally) can. As always I would liked more time to present a complete game rather than the last version of a Beta.
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The Portfolio night was coming fast and our team still had a lot do complete. Ethan just asked me if I can take care of the coins collocation, by that moment I already had a few coins roughly locate on the tiles. After we discussed about it, Ethan wanted a random generation so that way we can give more variation to each match. So I took it my old coins and exchanged by the "coin spawner" game object with the script Ethan made allowing to choose between other 4 random game objects. Which I created: a coins, 2 coins, 3 coins, an empty one and the pick up. This was the easy part, the funny one was setting the specific spots for the coin spawner in a way that make sense with the tiles layout and also encourage the player to choose between upper or ground level. After struggling a little and helping myself with the feedback of the guys I managed to come with a final coin random allocation which make sense in 95% of the matches.
The process of positioning all the platform for every single tile was a awful nightmare. The first step was calibrating characters jump high and making sure they can actually reach most platforms even the highest ones. That was pretty easy. The real problem appears when we tried to match the platforms with the transition of the tiles. As the following tile will be randomly generate we need to make sure a tile could match smoothly with any other tile and with itself. In order to accomplish that Scott had this awesome idea of breaking the platforms in half in the borders of the tiles so we can overlap them whenever the next tile is generate. That worked perfectly fine. But Lining up all those platforms locations was really challenging, luckily Scott and I split this work between the both of us, eve so was really demanding to do.
We ended deciding set only 5 tiles for now. It was important keep in control stick to the small but concrete scope Ethan was asking for in this Beta version. With these tiles I had the idea of forcing players encounters, their navigation through the entire screen and making a division between upper and lower level as Scott wanted to. With all this in mind I designed a "wall tile" which suppose to force players to jump over a medium side wall to land in the upper level or in the ground level if the calculate their jump a little more. This division will be establish by come kind of obstacle which will place strategically right after the pit in the ground level. Scott loved this one just like me. We will use it for sure.
Scott told me that me next main task is going to be helping him with the tiles design and testing. In order to do that, we create a test scene in Unity with all the art and last version of the game we had available at the moment. So Scott started building a few tiles: something simple to start, just a couple of platforms with 2 pits. After we checked it was actually effective when you navigate on it, I designed mine. Trying to take advantage of the upper side of the screen I designed some sort of stairs. Although make sense and passed our initials test plays I still wasn't no sure about it because there was not enough floor to move properly. So in the end I discarded this idea. Good idea but poorly execution...
After finished the general ideas for the items. We decided to focus on the star again so I had to include a little of the other's item effects and make it similar to Mario Kart's golden start. Those galaxy shards are going to provide the player invincibility, damage boost, and speed boost, so pretty basic stuff. As for the character, Scott also asked me to add some real coding numbers to these design. So when the programmers have to insert this logic to the game would be a little easier for them if there is some kind of traduction to code logic.
Scott what me designing at least 4 items ideas to pick one or 2 for following sprints. It was pretty much like design character: explain the core concept of the item, write a few lines about its plot, explain in detail the effect and add a couple of reference images to give the artists an general idea ho may look like. In order to complete this task, I started taking a couple of ideas from Super Smash and Mario Kart series. The original idea was to have our own version of Mario Kart's golden star power-up. I put a bunch of effects: invincibility, speed boost, and power boost but then I decided to split all these effects into differents items. Finally, I ended with one offensive (the meteor), one defensive (the galaxy shard), the star (in which I took the Smash's idea of gather 3 pieces of the item to trigger its effect) and the dark hole (another stolen idea from smash..) with the effect of push opponents the both side of the screen (winning or losing the match depending on the side).
This Sunday I realize that (finally) my teammates have read the character design document. Both Mike and Nikki had some issues with 2 of the characters. The gliding dragon and the close combat Valkyrie were the objects of their questions. They seem very concern about the possibility of these could be overpowered because of the damage and abilities of the attack itself. I must admit that I had my own doubts when I designed the gliding dragon (at the beginning it suppose to be the flying character). I still believe that with a proper test process there is nothing to be worried about. Scott and Ethan made minors changes and grammar correction (which I really appreciate) a few days after I finished it. So I was not completely aware of every single change or know exactly how to answer my fellow's questions. In the end, I just respond with my vision of each character and why I don't think they are OP (mostly because we haven't tested them yet) or in the worst scenario sent the question to Scott. Either away I am glad they took their time to read and critic them. That always help.
I was a little stuck with the main idea of this last playable character. The only thing I want for sure was a woman because our roster needs more variety. So I asked Scott for some ideas and he told me that we probably need a close combat character. With that in mind, I started researching for "women warriors" and quickly arrive at Amazoness. I liked them at the beginning but it wasn't far when I realize her physical design will be difficult because their lack of clothes (Scott was concerned about that too). I ended discarding this idea to go with the plan B: Valkyries. They use to wear armors and their aesthetic in general synchronize (at least to me) better with the game. That was how Mirina (Valkyrie name) was born. She is the Alexis nemesis, also focus on physicals attacks but only close combat with the exception of her Ultimate which is going to be a giant spear crossing the screen. As the weak attack, just a spear slash, special it will be a quick dash (like Mega Man X) and the special is going to be like Smash Bros Fox's reflection shield (yes a lot of copies around here, sadly). Anyways, I would say this is my favorite character (at least in theory).
For the third character, I wanted a flying guy, The idea was to have differents ways to play the game per character. At the beginning, I believed that a flying guy will be awesome because we could use the top of the screen and not only play on the ground. This, of course, would require fill up the top of the screen with traps. But more important find a balance between this ability and the other. I mean, this character could be easily overpowered if we don't work enough on him. Ethan was agreed in the beginning. It wasn't long when we realized that achieve this would demand too much effort, work and time that right now we don't have. So I ended discarding the idea. But then I thought that just changing the ability from fly to glide I still could rescue my character. That was exactly what I did and this one is my favorite. An angel who was expelled from the heaven because of his bad jokes and ended becoming a Demon. A "Deadpool" Demon.
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AuthorI want to study Video Games in a theoretical way. Archivos
May 2018
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