Hello everyone, Sam Boydstun here to discuss another development update on our game Builder's Brawl. We currently are just about at the half way point in the semester long production of the game, and have begun to implement some of our gameplay features. I'm excited to share with you where the future will lead us and how quickly we have been progressing.

The New "Feel"

Previously in Builder's Brawl's life cycle, there was a great emphasis put on creating quality collision interacts between the players. We wanted players to hit each other with boards, push each other into dangerous obstacles and have all of this feel great. Even with a couple of iterations and playtesting, we eventually had to come to place where we made exceptions. Now, in this new production cycle, we can finally right those exceptions by pushing a rag doll system that will drastically change how our game feels. 

Now we have a system that rag dolls the player anytime they undergo a collision, with the ability on our part to also apply a force to their fall. From the simple things like a board smashing a player, to lightning interacting with a player, we now have the ability to improve the overall feel of the game rather than being forced to replace models with other models or animate the players collapsing. Wind now will blow players off the desert level and hilariously they will flail away falling to their death. We really wanted the game to feel better on knock backs as well and this works beautifully to give a more natural feel. 

Other Programming Changes

• Player Raycasting was tightened
• Board placing was shortened to be closer to the player
• Sound design begun - with ambient sounds being fully implemented

The Mushroom Jungle

In this development cycle we were able to fully flesh out our 6th level, the mushroom jungle. It is ready to be fully play tested by the public and added to our level matrix. Currently the level lacks some terrain texturing but otherwise has all of its VFX, lighting and design mostly completed besides a final art pass. This is the only level in the entire game that focuses around a single platform which we dub the "stump arena." All of the mushrooms surrounding the platform emit a toxic gas that will paralyze players and push them to the very smokey death floor. Overall this is also one of our only levels using a high amount of emmissive textures mixed with dark lighting and its really awesome how it came out.

This level will undergo one final art pass to finalize it before the game ships, adding in textures to the terrain, more mushrooms around the outside rocks of different variations and dripping toxic spore visual effects to mushroom around the level. We wanted to create a dark complex atmosphere that players would enjoy. Also there are little pixies that float around the level who take part in watching the action, giving our brawling builders an audience.

Other Level Changes: 

• Added grass and foliage to every level
• Added environmental VFX to Snowy Level
• Updated Lava in Volcano Level
• Updated river water in River Level

The Animation Overhaul Continues

As we move through development, one of the main issues that arose with the game was that many of our animations needed to be overhauled and redone. Some specifically for their look and the way that the new rig we made this semester was breaking them, and others because the programming was being changed.

The board "place" ability  is the only way players build in the game, connecting one board to another or to the environment. The old animation was causing players to put the board to far out in front of their feet, thus if a player was standing on the end of a board trying to build, they would just throw the board off. We fixed this programmatically, but needed an animation that made sense as well, otherwise the player would just see the boards snap backwards towards them. We use some creative liberty here with the actual "nailing" of the board, and hope our players enjoy. 

Here our board slam animation was updated to give a more whimsical feel to the interaction that players will most often us throughout gameplay. Slamming in Builder's Brawl is one of our playtesters favorite abilities and we wanted to make it even more satisfying visually when you smash your friend into the ground. 

A big point in the new development of the game was to push personalities for each of our characters. The new blue character personality is "scared" and our most nervous builder is now born with his own idle animation, ripe with fear and anxiety.



Continuing on the same point with personalities, each of our four characters will eventually have two victory animation that will play if they win a match. We've added another to the purple "joker" character who still remains our sassiest and most playful of the personalities.

The Visual Effects 

Another big point moving through this semester was to get visual effects in our game on a larger scale and allow players to interact with the world around them. Simple visual effects like snow shaking away from trees on the snowy level have begun the process of making our game much more professional and polished. On top of effects like this which are just for show, we also have new hazards on many of our levels that will kill players. Fireballs, acid clouds, angry snowmen snowballs, sandstorms, all of the hazards our brawling builders signed up for in their contracts.  I'm excited to show off those visual effects when they are all hooked up in level, in a weeks time!

On behalf of everyone at the Builder's Brawl team, thank you for reading our development log 8 and for supporting the hard work we are doing here at California State University, Chico. Its been a pleasure to polish and revise this game, and we will continue pushing the envelope moving forward! In the next sprint review I will be happy to present our finalized visual effects and the addition of our 7th level, the Islands!

-The BB Team