Producer Devlog 2

Hello everyone! Welcome back, Angeleen here. I have some pretty cool things to talk about, and to show. Overall this was a really good Sprint, we got some awesome progress going on. There were a few bumps but we overcame them and continued to make improvements.

The goal for Sprint 2 was to create our first working prototype. It needed to be able to be playtested with working mechanics. Our core gameplay loop is essentially just pogoing and shooting. The goal is to platform and those are the available resources to use. There are a few other things like, enemies and health involved, but those are more of side mechanics to make it feel a little more complete. But back to our goal, we created our first Sublevel (6 total) being the Tutorial. In this Tutorial we showcased basic movement mechanics, and taught them how to platform with their available gun and pogo.

Pretty straight-forward and simple, but let's see how that turned out. I will say first, these are split into sections so I will only show a few, skipping over the beginning stuff like teaching how to walk and jump:

This section was to teach the Player how to pogo. It looks simple, but we found through data that this area was actually quite difficult. This could have been avoided, but it fell due to improper playtesting and movement mechanics that needed to be refined. That's basically the same reason for any other part where it was difficult.

Then we have the ending area where the player uses both their pogo and gun to platform through: 

This part was actually a lot easier to do, so it worked out a bit better. Overall with the Tutorial Sublevel, it was a decent start, but from feedback we've found out how to better utilize this teaching process and create a more fluid level. I wish I could go into detail about it as I am writing this in Sprint 3, but I will let you all know more about this in the next devlog. It is very exciting and I think we have a much stronger foundation for our level design moving forward.

Aside from the Tutorial, I'd like to point out some of the awesome work that a few of my team members have done. I'm very proud of them and I can't wait to plug this all together and see how it looks. 

Starting with Keana, she's one of our animators, doing it specifically in 2D. She's created art for the legs, and has now animated them! Here's what they look like in a quick showcase: 

[WIP formatting issues with MP4]

Next I'd like to show a small collection of models with textures from Mateo and Ciela. This will give a good view into the style of our game:

We're going for this dreamy-splotchy style. Super simple, but some slight detail with that splotchy effect. We also really love the enemies, we weren't sure how the faces would turn out but Ciela did a good job making them! 

That's all the work I'd like to discuss currently. There was definitely a lot of stuff behind the scenes and many other things created. But the purpose of that sprint was to get a working Tutorial, and keep development going in our other target areas. We got some really useful and helpful feedback, I'm confident that in this next Sprint's prototype we will have much more fluid gameplay to show off, and for you all to see!

Thank you & I look forward to the next one,

Angeleen.