Hello everyone and welcome back to the second production blog for Entoworks! I’m Courtney and just as a refresher, let me remind you what Entoworks is all about. Entoworks is a lightweight turn-based strategy and tactics game where players will be challenged to best utilize their team of up to three entogear (robot bugs) to beat the enemy entogear on a variety of unique maps. 

Our goal for this sprint was to create a functioning prototype where players can get a taste of what the game is all about! It’s a simple showcase for now, but we have much much more in store in the future! While programming is being done behind the scenes, we wanted to showcase some of the art that’s been made in the meantime. This production blog will walk you through our process of creating a digital prototype this sprint along with everything that went right, went wrong, and how we overcame our problems.

Now, let’s get right into it!

Modeling 

This sprint our modelers got a whole lot done! We had two modelers working on character designs and they both did amazing. Jenn made a fierce-looking beetle entogear and finished up her astonishing dragonfly from last sprint. Christian made an adorable bee entogear, the second to be implemented into the game.

Our environmental modelers for this sprint, Kyle, Michael, and Jay worked on nice and intricate detail pieces for the levels. They finished up the models for the Crystal Caves and Grassy Plateaus and started working on the Abandoned Metalworks. Now that the models for the two areas are finished, they started getting them on one UV sheet per biome so that they can texture them next sprint.

2D Art

This sprint, our 2D artists worked hard to create many different essential concept designs and UI for the game. Lily finished off the concept of the bee entogear by coloring it so that our modelers would have an easier time figuring out the color scheme. She then got to work creating a full concept of the moth entogear, the next entogear in line for modeling. She finished off this sprint by creating blueprints out of her 2D line art for use in the upgrade menu in the game. Jonathan on the other hand was working on icons and UI. 

Jonathan created four different icons for actions that can be taken while in combat: move, attack, defend, and special attack. He also did a quick job of creating a full UI breakdown of buttons, a scroll bar, and details to be used in the team, map, and upgrade screens. All of these assets look amazing and our 2D artists did a great job!

Level Design

During this sprint, our level designers Micah and Ryan started off by reworking some of their old levels. Now that we have expanded our game to a maximum of twelve biomes, we needed the earlier levels they made earlier to be simpler so that the difficulty throughout the game could progress slower. They did a great job maintaining the fun and aesthetics of their new early levels and making them fit with the new difficulty rating. They then started working on new levels for some of the new biomes: Voltridge, the Salt Strands, and the Abandoned Metalworks. They perfectly understood what each level should feel like and made each biome feel unique with their designs. The Salt Strands have many open areas that will be filled with water, Voltridge has narrow paths, and every level in the Abandoned Metalworks is encompassed by a cube of walls. I am amazed at how our level designers easily made these levels stand out from each other through small repeated details.

Programming

Now understanding some of the tools given to them last sprint, our programmers were able to start producing more features for the game. Marco got to work in the levels giving the player the ability to move units and creating an action menu that will pop up so that a player can choose to attack, defend, move, or special attack. These actions will be implemented in later sprints but having the groundwork in place is crucial. 

Isaac got started on the menu system so that the player can now tab between menus and pick up items. These two features will allow the player to navigate from the upgrading menu, level select menu, and team menus, as well as perform upgrades, a necessary part of our game.

Additionally, Christian continued to quickly create some phenomenal VFX for the game. He created an attack orb for each element: pyro, electro, sol, steam, and metal as well as a super-charge and death VFX. These couldn’t look better and we’re excited to implement them into the game at later stages of development!

Animation

Now with the first few models done, our animator was able to start creating a rig for our first entogear, the dragonfly. She did a great job making a super intuitive rig to help her next sprint when she can get started animating the flying “walk” cycle!

Sound

Partick made a bunch of unobtrusive, fun sound effects for the upgrade menu. Additionally, he made some awesome pieces for the levels in the first two levels: the Grassy Plateaus and the Crystal Caves. Check out his audio below!

Conclusion

Overall this Sprint we had 219 points assigned and completed a total of 158 of them making our current velocity 110.5 points/sprint. Our goal next sprint is to have a more complete level for the player to play on the next build. We aim to have a fully textured, filled-out level that the player can test out moving around in. The work displayed on this blog was only part of what got completed this sprint and I would like to thank my team for the great work they have done. We hope you’ll stick around and we’re excited to show you what we have in store in two weeks! 

Thank you for reading!