Dev Blog 5

This sprint we focused on finishing up our major features, as well as implementing art assets such as animation and 2D art. We had hoped to do this earlier but production issues and internal disputes came up that caused production delays. 

Firstly, the major feature we began production on was the stagger feature. This was the final gameplay feature that we were adding. The stagger feature is essentially a way to make hacking enemies easier at the expense of making the body you are inhabiting weaker. Essentially, every time you damage an enemy, stagger begins building up on that enemy as a numerical value. Once the stagger amount goes over that enemy’s stagger threshold, they will become stunned and unable to move or attack for 2 seconds. 

This allows the player to hack them more easily as they are no longer able to evade the player or retaliate back at them by shooting. However, in order to stagger an enemy, they need to be shot first and thus damaged. This will make it so that if the player does inhabit that body, it will now have less than full health. With player death now being much more consequential, this makes occupying a damaged body much more risky. The player now has to choose between damaging an enemy in order to occupy them more easily, or try and hack them while they are alive and able to fight back. 

This feature was meant to be implemented earlier but the programmer I had assigned to that task was transferred to Aftershock Simulator right at the beginning of the sprint. This was really annoying because we had just received great feedback for the game that really justified the inclusion of the stagger system and now we couldn’t implement it. Giving the work to another programmer was not an ideal choice because having a programmer work on code that isn't their own often results in errors and messy functions. 

Next, we implemented most of the art we had finished. This included animations, models, and 2D art. The first thing we implemented were the third person enemy animations. The light body has a nice walk cycle that accentuates its agile build. Dylan also worked on making first person animations for all 3 frames.

All of the frames’ weapons bob when the player walks, have a bit of recoil when the weapon is fired, and bounce when the player jumps. All of this first person animation helps give life to the player as they are moving around shooting. While first person animation may seem trivial, they serve to make movement and shooting much more responsive and satisfying. Obviously in a game based off of moving and shooting, this is really important. 

For models we implemented a lot of modular pieces into the tutorial level. All of these modular pieces were made by me in a bit of a rush. I wanted to stick with the roman/classical theme we had with the prototype tutorial levels. 

The primarily white and gold color scheme helped sell a sterile, pristine, perfectly clean look to the environment which will factor into the level’s dreamlike aesthetic due to it being a simulation. We will be adding more lighting sources and props next sprint in order to really make the tutorial feel more polished.