Producer Devlog 04

Hello, and welcome back to the development updates of Leggy the Miraculous Robot Arm. Through this sprint, we made substantial headway and had some really awesome work done. The team worked really hard and completed vital work for the project. In the middle of this sprint, we also ended up having spring break. So, although there wasn't as much work done this sprint, the work that the team kicked out was substantial in moving forward with development. We had a few goals for this sprint. Our number one goal was to get controls for Leggy working. We were still struggling with this system, and Shane has been working so hard on it, but he has pulled through and gotten to a point where we will be able to begin playtesting in the following sprint.

For assets, my primary goal was to have the assets for at least one of each level designers’ levels so that each could have a completed level to present and show off. This was very important to me because I want every member to be represented in the final product, and having 3 levels that have all the assets required is reasonably within our scope and a part of the minimum viable product.

Modeling

Through this sprint, I had Magnus focusing on finishing up Leggy, so that we could move on to assets for specific levels, and Elmer continued to work on getting the assets for the garage modeled and textured. Magnus also worked on the gumball machine that will be used in John’s ‘Gumball Mayhem’ level, and it turned out absolutely incredible.

For this sprint, I ended up having my level designers primarily work on models for assets for their levels. With this class being graded on our dev blogs, I wanted to ensure that they had content to include into their blogs. So, since we were not a point where they would be able to conduct playtesting, they also worked on modeling assets for their levels, as well as working on setting up prefabs in-engine.

Elmer

Magnus

2D Art

Jasmine worked on getting sprites for art that will be used as decorative materials to add to the environment. The target aesthetic is having drawings that appears like the child drew, including a family, Leggy, random doodles, and stickers. She also worked on getting some UI elements created for indicating the rotation and translation of Leggy’s current state. They did some great work this sprint!

 Jasmine

Programming

Leggy’s controls are working!!! It took blood, sweat, and tears to get to this point, but Shane was able to get the controls for Leggy to a point where it is in a state to be playtested and can have the goal zone puzzles set up. Shane has worked his ass off over the past 4 sprints to get this working and we are finally at a point where we can play with it. The morale boost that this generated, of everyone on the team, was on another level of excitement. We are so excited to be at this point and see things beginning to come together.

Joseph got some really good work done with the menus, and setting up the functionality of certain actions. The big thing that we needed to have working was a pause menu, the ability to restart the task, going back to the amount of happiness you had when you started the task, as well as having the main menu and level select function implemented. On top of this, he also got the controller navigation working, so you are able to completely navigate the entire game without having to use the keyboard. These were big steps that we needed to have done, and he did a great job with the way that he implemented several of these things.

Shane

Joseph

Level Design

Although most of the work that the level designers worked on was creating assets for their levels, Marielly did some Man Behind the Curtain playtesting and found that the basic concept of her sorting puzzle was fun! She also got the Jenga puzzle set up, and the pieces modeled and textured, which turned out to look really good!

John worked primarily on modeling assets for his bird house level and Ismael got the paint buckets and paint by number fish picture created and ready to be set up in-engine. Our level designers have done such an awesome job and I am extremely excited to see their progress once they are able to begin playtesting.

Ismael

John

Mariely

Audio

Linus did a next level job with the audio that he got done this sprint. He has been working to compose dynamic ambient audio that changes based on the current amount of happiness that the player has while they are playing. This has not been an easy task, and there have been multiple edits that have had to be made, but they are getting close to the final version, which will be finished in the beginning of sprint 5. I am extremely excited to share the final version of this system with you. The demo that he has finished so far is already awesome and the final version will be next level!

Linus

Production

With spring break being in the middle of this sprint, it did slow us down a little bit, but not by much. This sprint, we had 161 points Assigned, 96 that were completed, and 65 that were Assigned but not moved. We still made great headway and managed to accomplish some very significant milestones through this sprint. As we progress into the next sprint, we will be able to begin playtesting and implementing created assets into the levels, as well as actually setting up the puzzles. I am so excited to see where that goes and share the updates with you in the following blog post.

 Work to show off coming soon....