Hello everyone, once again, Sam Boydstun here delivering an update on the active development of the game Builder's Brawl at California State University, Chico. We as a team are happy to announce we now are finally in feature free development and are moving towards polishing, refining and perfecting the game we have build thus far. With only a month left in the time we have to make the game, the focus now turns to the beautifying and heavy tuning. 

The Feature Creep Ends

For the last ten weeks we have been working hard to get Builder's Brawl to where its at now. Its combat system though simple, finishes with two abilities, board slam and push.  Our building system is fleshed out, works and nicely complements the combat. We have five levels in total and have tuned four of them to this point. Now begins the process of the small things like visual effects, lighting, terrain texturing, and post processing. Also our combat system is undergoing a real concentrated look at it's abilities and things such as their cooldowns, what is the player interaction, and animations resulting from impacts. 

Level Tuning

One of our main focuses this development period was to put into action some feedback we received about two of our levels. Both the Volcano and the Snowy Mountain felt flat in their design and players were not enjoying them as much as our other three. We decided to take a step back, look at what was working on the others and work to implement that design in a creative way here.

The Snowy Mountain (Snowman Stadium)

In previous iterations (pictured below) we received negative feedback resulting to the overall feel of the level. It wasn't easy to pinpoint, but us as a design team felt that the issue was that the interaction between players was all focused around the wood pile and not the gap. Players would battle over picking up a plank, and eventually one would leak out and place it down on the lake. We chose to rework this level to fix the layout and provide more engaging combat throughout. 

The Old Snowy Mountain 

The feedback we received with this iteration was much better and from observations our players seemed to be having more fun. All the combat and action now takes place over the frozen lake around the icebergs as we had intended before. With added flare of the snowmen looking on, we now have the level aptly named: Snowman Stadium. 

As seen from above we also finished painting our snow and ice textures on the terrain. A devoted 2D artist is hard at work really giving our levels their final art passes and hand painting her hand made textures. 

The Volcano (Mount Boom)

In another effort to tune the feel of some of our levels, the Volcano underwent significant changes giving it more engaging gameplay. In the previous iteration most of the fighting occurred over a small bridge leading the volcano itself and once again we want to remove this poor design in our levels. We found that it was much less enjoyable to push your friend onto the side of the volcano rather than directly into the lava. Now the level all occurs inside the mouth directly above a flaming death. 

The Old Volcano

In this new design we give our players more opportunities to make their own path across with the guiding factors of the small platforms. All of the action now occurs directly over the level's gap and its main hazard which is especially important on this level. Coming soon in development will be the visual effect of the volcano's eruption and this level set up will nicely test our players. 

Environment Effects

From the very beginning of choosing to have our builders conduct the most hazardous missions, we dreamed of having environmental effects. We always felt that the humor and light heartedness of Builder's Brawl is complimented nicely by horrible deaths when the players fall into the world's hazards. In our Snowy level we now have an icicle effect that corresponds to the respawn timer of each player. Finally we have our very own Han Solo pose. 

Declaring Battle: The Opener

Now that we are moving into more refinement, its time to shore up some of the smaller details that really give us the presentation we are looking for. Specifically this starts with the way we open up each game of Builder's Brawl. A couple things are all going to happen in succession from a camera pan that allows each player's character to execute a fun color specific animation, to the countdown to the games start. 

Opening Animation 

The Brawler's & their Personalities

Along with giving each one of our four characters a distinct color, we also have chosen to give each of them a distinct personality. For the colors, yellow is our clumsy builder, purple is our crazy builder, blue the joker/trickster and red is our tough guy builder. In the opening animation we have the opportunity to announce each character before the match starts and here we can display some of their unique animations. Further on at the end of the game, each personality will also have victory animations specific to them. 

The Tough Guy 

The Joker 

Once again, a huge thank from everyone here at the Builder's Brawl team for reading our development log and tracking our progress. We are coming down to the end of our semester long development, with only a month, left we are grinding through the small things to complete this game. The team is looking forward to putting on all the final touches and sharing them all with you! Until next time..

-BB Team