Production Blog #3 - Shapeshift Dungeon

Hello again world!

Welcome back to yet another production blog for Shapeshift Dungeon! We have completed Sprint 3 with our second playable digital build. The focus of Sprint 3 was to address as many issues as possible from our previous feedback in Sprint 2 and to introduce the next set of high quality features for our game. We are proud to have done exactly that and have begun the process of turning our prototype into a decent game. In total for Sprint 3, we had assigned a total of 173 points of work with 111 of that moved to verify and completed. That left 20 points still in progress and 42 assigned, but not moved. As you can see by our burndown chart below, we are moving at a fairly consistent pace and a healthy barrier remains between our wishlist goals and our momentum. At this rate of progress, we will have every necessity completed and have prioritized parts of our wants list completed as well, but with room still to grow in the future and room to excel. With that, we've increased our scope by about 90 points of work this Sprint, mainly coming from player playtest feedback. We are especially grateful to our playtesters for providing this feedback which has helped us shape the game's direction and helped to identify problems early on. 

Modelers:

Once again doing great, I'm especially proud of 3D art team for their continuous improvement this Sprint. Devin's character is now finished, retopologized, textured, and ready for gameplay. He even made a really awesome sword that features some complicated organic shapes and is very exciting to attack with. The finished character has a lot of personality conveyed in his finished look and we couldn't be happier with it. Likewise, Chance and Jose have done a fantastic job of working on the props for our game and added a lot more variety for our level designers to work with. Our 3D artists have taken great steps to ensure that all props remain stylistically similar and work well in the scene and for that we are very grateful.

Finished Character (Devin)

Player's Sword (Devin)

Chains (Chance)

Torch (Chance)

Programming

Our programmers worked very hard this Sprint, not only to clear up any bugs and issues found in playtest, but also to keep new features and new content added to the game. Justin built an item reward system that allows the player to receive rewards after completing each level. He also worked diligently to add some environmental hazards and update the level transition sequences. From Alex, we have an in-engine item editor that allows us to add stat modifications to in game items. This has allowed us to rapidly prototype new items and new mechanics for the game. And from Joe, we have a fantastic restructuring of our enemy AI which should be a lot more scalable for future enemies in the game, allowing us to quickly add and modify behaviors as we require.

Item Rewards (Justin)

New Items (Alex)

Item Editor (Alex)

AI Improvements (Joe)

Level Design

Our level designers have continued to be shining stars in this project as they have been able to receive player information directly from the playtest builds along with level-specific feedback sent automatically via email from within the game. They were able to use playtest data to create a prioritized list of design changes to their levels and then adjusted accordingly once those changes were approved. Both Marc and Branden also got into work with Unity's Visual Effects Graph to make awesome new effects that are unique and bring life to our game. In addition to that, Marc and Branden started on levels 15-25 with new blockouts and annotated maps that use information from the previous level playtests. Finally, Marc also improved the lighting and adjusted the post processing settings for the level so that we can better see map details and height differences in the game.

Playtest Level Feedback Log (Marc & Branden)

Laser Beam (Marc)

Torch Fire (Branden)

Level 19 (Marc)

Level 18 Map (Branden)

Lighting Update (Marc)

2D Art / Animation

Our 2D Art team seems to have found their groove this Sprint and has made significant improvements to their work flow. We're very excited to see this growth, both on a personal and a profession level. Alexis has nailed an art style for our item sprites and has done a fantastic job of going through several iterations to find the best one that matches our game. Likewise, Tanya has created some cool new UI art and even concepted our upcoming Goblin enemy for our 3D artists. It's been very satisfying to see our game transition away from empty placeholders to a more unified art style with high quality custom assets from our Artists. Similarly, Armando has begun animating the player attacks and has made the enemy attack animation much more exaggerated so it can be seen from a distance. We are very happy to see this team continue to grow and can't wait to see what they finish next.

Magic Wand (Alexis)

Flame Crown (Alexis)

Battery (Alexis)

Goblin Concept Art (Tanya)

End Screen (Tanya)

New Enemy Attack Animation (Armando)

Player Attack 1 (Armando)

Overall, we made a lot of great improvements from this Sprint compared to the previous two. We made crucial progress on each of our core gameplay systems in functionality, aesthetic, and design. We have always prioritized quality over quantity and we can really see that in all of the assets made for this Sprint. I'm especially proud of the individual improvement made by several members on the team who have really stepped up and earned a great Spring Break for everyone. Our philosophy on break is that the break is a break and that our team should make the most of it to relax and rejuvenate themselves as they prepare for the second half of the semester. We've opened up the possibility for those who want to learn new skills or to help their grade, but made it clear that no work is expected. This is only possible thanks to the great efforts made in Sprint 3. Our team has done a great job for the first half of the class and we're very excited to use this momentum to carry us into the second half. Thank you so much to our playtesters for giving us great actionable feedback and data. As always, be sure to check our accompanying Designer Blog 3 and our newest playable build. Shapeshift Dungeon 0.2.2 is shaping up to be a fantastic game.

See you next Sprint!

Arjun Gambhir
Game Producer