Production Blog 3

MARRED » Devlog

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Hello, my name is Sam Keeley and I am the producer for the student-led game MARRED. I am back with a production update from our 3rd sprint. The goal for this sprint was to have the behaviors of the game’s enemies finished, begin implementing UI assets, and have more levels available in our second build. While the points completed were not as high as the last sprint, the team still did a great job in sprint 3. Now let’s move on to showcasing the work done!

Special Development Days:

Since the team does not have a dedicated Audio person, I decided that it would be a good idea to have a Saturday afternoon, where we just recorded sounds that could be mixed for the game. A few members gathered at my house and we set up recording equipment by my desktop. We gathered household objects that could be used to resemble the sounds we needed. Some examples of sounds were the microwave spinning, smacking a bobblehead close to the microphone, swinging a plastic baseball bat around, and shaking keys and a box of spare change. While these sounds still need to be mixed together before they make it into the final game it was nice to have a day where we valuable work done while having fun.

The other special development day was our motion capture recording session. In order to make sure that our animator will not be working on walk cycles for the whole semester we decided it would be best to use the campus motion capture lab to save time on animations in addition to the fact that both me and our animator, Abi, have MoCap experience haven taken the class previously. Jen and I talked to the professor who runs it and their TA to work out the logistics of this. Although those currently in the motion capture had priority for the lab, we were able to get a recording time one Friday morning. Luckily for us, this was all we needed as we got all of our walk cycle, run cycle, and melee attack animations recorded in this time. These will be cleaned up later and make their way into the game.

Programming:

Our programmers are still killing it and continue to impress me with their work. Jake, our combat programmer, was able to finish 5 out of 6 enemy behaviors before the sprint ended. Not only that, but he overhauled how ranged enemies will work in the game. Before, ranged enemies used a raycast to attack the player, but this made their attacks impossible to dodge. Now all ranged enemies will shoot fast-moving projectiles. Additionally, the enemies in the game all now have the chance to drop items of different rarities. These can be different ammo pickups, health pickups, or if the player is lucky, an upgrade. While the upgrades are not in the game at the moment, the system that will spawn them in is working. Lastly, all weapons were given a unique reload time that will correspond to the length of their reload animation.

Josh, our other programmer also did great this sprint. He was tasked with attaching the 2D UI assets to code so that they can appear in-game. First was having on-screen effects fade in and out depending on if the player healed, took damage, or had their shield health increase. Additionally, a permanent red effect was also added if the player was at critical health. One thing that really impressed me was that the low-health screen image had a breathing effect to it. Josh also created the health and shield bars with the assets provided so that they would turn on or off depending on if the player gains health or took damage. The scrap icon was also implemented to tell the player how much they have. The last UI effect made was a slight camera shake when the player takes damage so that it feels more serious.

Along with the user interface additions, the destructible box was also completed. These boxes are meant to shatter and fade away and have the chance to drop loot. I am really excited to see this feature in our next build of the game as I think it looks fantastic.

Texturing:

This was the first sprint where our 3D models started to be textured. Payton who will be our primary texture artist moving forward got started by texturing all of level 1’s walls and unique environment pieces. This includes the manmade metallic walls and the cave sections that will be used for larger rooms filled with enemies. After level 1’s walls were completed Payton began texturing the weapons starting with the rock pick. I was impressed with how good the rock pick looks in the retro art style so I am excited to see what he is able to do for the rest of the weapons.

The other texturing work was done by one of our 3D artists Tyler. After finishing the models for what we have been calling our “core” pickups (ammunition, health, scrap, keys) she textured them with the same art style. While the scrap texture needed to be sent back, only small changes were needed so all of these textures were done before the sprint 3 deadline although they did not make it into the second build of the game. They will be present in the game’s next version, however.

2D Art:

The focus for 2D art this sprint was to make buttons and some menus for the game. Our 2D artist, James, got started by creating buttons with the same stylized background as the gun icons for consistency. Multiple buttons were made for each possible menu screen with red ones being used for main menus and blue ones for sub-menus. As of right now only the title screen, level select screen, and sub-menus are created as after the most necessary menus were created priority shifted back towards in-game 2D elements. The first of these was the red indicators for boss attacks: one for a lunging jab attack forward and the other for a slam attack. I think James did a fantastic job with both of these and I am excited to see these be implemented in future sprints. In addition to the boss attack indicators were images that will be compiled to create a boss health bar. Lastly were two locked symbols: one for showing locked levels and the other for doors.

Modeling:

Since there was a shift towards texturing in the sprint, not as many 3D models were completed, but we still made progress in that department. First Tyler finished up modeling the core pickups by creating keys and a battery that players will need to find and use in the game. In addition, she also created a box with separated pieces so that it can fall apart and be destroyed in-game.

Jen also contributed heavily to 3D art this sprint. They were able to create 3 character models, one for the player avatar, and 2 for the human enemies in the game. All 3 of these models look great and while we have decided to wait before these go into the game I have no doubt they will look good in-game as well. Although the player will not see their avatar in-game, it will be present on the main menu screen and the arms have been separated to create an arm rig for our animator. The legs will also be separated so they can be shown when the player slides.

Jen also began to create environment art for the 4th level. Since our final level takes place outside of the mine, walls are not necessary, but trees and rocks are. So 3 variations of trees and rocks were created towards the end of the sprint.

Level Design:

While our level designers are doing a great job so far, we are beginning to have problems with assigning them work that will not be blocked. In an effort to combat this, going forward all of our 3D artists will be working on modeling environment pieces as soon as they are done with their current chunk of work I have assigned them. That way our levels can be put together with the appropriate wall assets before they are textured.

This isn’t to discredit the work of our level designers however as they have exceeded our expectations. Annotated maps for 3 smaller levels were created and 1 of them was able to be blocked out to be tested in the second build. Our level designers also placed all of the necessary props, enemies, and enemy spawners in each blocked out level.

Another issue that we did run into was that levels 1b,2b, and 3b, were far too wide and will need to be shrunken down a bit. The design will be mostly the same, but hallways and large rooms will not be as long. So far, piecing together the walls, floors, and ceilings of levels 1a and 1b has taken longer than expected so our level designers may be finished by the time level 2’s wall models are finished, but I am unsure right now when exactly this will be done.

Going into the next sprint keeping the level designers busy with relevant work will be a high priority for me as a producer.

Animation:

While we recorded our motion capture data in the middle of the sprint, it will not be cleaned up until the next sprint. Since the player will be seeing reload animations more often than anything else, this was the highest priority for our animator. Abi got started making an arm rig with Jen’s arm model and finished it relatively quickly. Next, she created a swinging animation for the rock pick weapon. While this weapon uses a raycast, it has the most important animation because without it the player will have less feedback when using the weapon. The other animation that was completed was the nailgun reloading. Although this animation looks good it needed to be sent back because a hand was in the wrong place. I do not anticipate the reloading animations taking much longer to complete and I like what I have seen so far.

Sprint Statistics:

As I stated earlier we had fewer points completed in this sprint than in sprint 2, but I still believe that the team did well as a whole. Our Sprint 3 statistics are: