Hey Everyone! I'm Billy Thao, the Producer for our game Elementalist and I'm excited to be back to share our progress and  work our team has completed in sprint 4 of our production cycle. For sprint 4, our priorities were focused on making sure all characters were completed. This included programming abilities,animations for characters, and creating level designs maps to fit gameplay of these characters. We focused heavily on design aspects and made sure it was fun for the player. 

We currently pushed out a playable alpha build on our Elementalist page for down if anyone is interested!

Sprint 4 Breakdown

Total # of User Stories Assigned: 72

Total # of User Stories Moved to Verify: 54

Total # of User Stories Remain in To Verify: 3

Total # of user Stories Moved in To Complete: 51

Total # of User Stories remain In Progress: 18

This sprint has been interesting as all of us on the team were affected by unforeseen circumstances regarding COVID-19 but the team kept working on through with the many changes that our team went through as for the development and our personal lives. The team kept it held down and still managed to get a lot of work done!

2D Artists

For sprint 4, our 2D Artists worked on more concepts for the bosses and grunt enemies for our different worlds. We also finally worked out a design that our designer was happy with for the main cover art for the game. 

Grunt enemy for Scorched Earth

Grunt enemy for Lost Sands

Dragon Boss for Scorched Earth

Lost Sands Boss 

3D Modelers

As for our modelers,  they worked on creating models for multiple things that ranged from enemy models to environment models. They also worked on different world hubs for our level select.  We were able to work together and figure out different ways to solve problems that came up to get what we wanted. For example, We wanted a modular block that could have moving textures and that was done with a simple script for the material.

Quick Sand Block

Lost Sands Grunt Enemy

Scorched Earth Grunt Enemy

All world Hubs 

Rock and flower models

Programmers

As for our programmers, they worked on making sure all the characters abilities and skills were working to design and fun to use. They also worked on obstacle scripts for our levels for special blocks and obstacles in our levels.

Earth Character Bury Ability - allows earth character to bury himself into the ground.

Disappearing Floors for Ghostly Gallows Levels

Sand Pit Floor for Lost Sands Levels

Hover Ability for water character - allows water character to hover by spraying water from its feet.

Level Designers

As for our level designers, We focused on creating all the annotated maps and designs for each room for all the remaining levels. Development went slower than usual with designs being remade and going through a new verification process but work still got completed. 

Lost Sands

Scorched Earth

Ghostly Gallows World Hub

Animators

As for our animators, their focus was on complete animations for characters and the different enemies in our game. they also worked on 2d animations for lay on top of our animations as well! They also fixed some animations issues we had by breaking animations into more parts.

Ancient forest grunt enemy defend animation

2D earth bury animation for earth character

Water jump animation for water character

2D Hover animation for water character

Bury animation for earth character

Overall, Sprint 4 was a success despite the many challenges and unforeseen events that took place. I'm proud of our team and the amount of quality of work being completed during such stressful time and it amazes me to see how dedicated everyone on the team is.  Our goals were met for this sprint and we look forward to develop more things for this game in our upcoming sprints! The team has put in the hard work and effort to create something we all can enjoy and we are proud to produce this game for all the players out there.

We're excited to keep sharing and posting updates for you all following along the Development of Elementalist. I'd like to thank you all on behalf of the Elementalist Team and share our upcoming work in progresses with you all.  We appreciate your time following along and supporting us!

Cheers!
- Elemental Studios