Hello again from the Production Side of Trapped!

We are now two sprints into the production process of the game and I am elated to tell you about all the great things that we have accomplished this time. Let's just get right into it then!

2D Art

For 2D, we did not get a ton of new things (which is totally fine) because the things that we did get were able to receive a little bit of extra love from the 2D art team and be more than we could have ever asked for. First of all, Atley was able to give us some more amazing UI art. The image that you see below will be the store screen in which the player will be able to buy power-ups between levels to get stronger and faster. There will be in-game pick-ups but this specific screen will be upgrades that the player can purchase with the currency they pick up within the levels.

Beyond just Atley's UI, we were also able to get a final iteration from David of our final concept for the main menu. I am unsure if I mentioned it last time, but we are planning on having a 3D menu screen for the player and, therefore, David gave us a great idea of where we would like to go with that. If you look later down the line in the 3D department, you will see more of where this went.

Finally, our main character also got a little bit of time in the spotlight. Sadiq was able to get us some images of our character in action and we will be using these images as some initial concept of where we would like our poster to go. Another image that you may recognize here, too, I was able to spend a little bit of time making an image for the itch page so that we could have a little bit of thematic art for our first build. We are quite happy with this image, but it will be refined again by the art team.

We are extremely excited to see where the art team goes next and we have tons of ideas to fuel the fire of creativity!

3D Art

Just as they were able to do last sprint, our 3D modelers kicked it out of the park! We can never seem to give them enough to do because they produce super high quality work in little to no time at all. Starting with Ryan, we are proud to say that he is not only a 3D modeler, but also secret visual effects man. He was not only able to give us a model for the runner enemy that will be roaming about and being threatening, but he was also able to give us a shield for the shielded guard and...wait for it...a particle effect that will overlay the main menu screen.

Next, the man of the hour, Shawn, was able to not only produce a plethora of assets, but we gave him an area where he was able to slow down a little bit and produce something that he would have some more creative freedom over. Therefore, this sprint, he was able to model the wall turret that will shoot in a straight line at the player as well as the containment capsule which will be the "spawn" point at every first level the player comes across. The other creative endeavor that he went on was the continuation of the main menu screen. Needless to say, we are super happy with that as well.

Finally, the main event, Vanessa was able to get the character model for us and OH WOW are we excited about this one! She did such a great job with it and we cannot wait to see it in action and running around the level. Considering that Zach made the concept for that, he was over the moon that it looked just like he designed it.

We could not be more proud of all the amazing progress that our 3D modelers make every single day and we cannot wait to see what else they have up their sleeves.

Level Design

In terms of level design, I feel a little horrible about the fact that a lot of their job is lather, rinse, and repeat (not necessarily that idea specifically, but you get the picture). We are happy to announce that we have another set of levels that will (hopefully) be in the loop when we get that running and those are coming together in Maya. The purple level, though, we are excited to see and shoutout to Jacob on that one because he was able to go into Unity and put in the environmental assets that will make our player feel thematically immersed. It's definitely been a journey, but each time that we see a new level we get more excited.

Programming

Talk about a team of people that need all the kudos in the world: the programmers. You never really know what is broken until everything gets put all together and I want to give a huge shoutout to our programming team for pulling through to get all the things that we wanted in this first iteration of the game. From player movement, to cube side switching, UI, AI, and bug fixing galore, we were able to get it all. Not all of the features that you see below were able to make it into the first playtest, but we are happy to include them in the next one!

Player Movement 2.0 (Dylan)

UI Overlay (Alexander)

Store Page Functions (Dylan)

Store Page UI (Alexander)

Game "Loop" (Dylan)

Crit Strike Chance (Wesley)

Runner Enemy (Christian)

Zach and I are so thankful for everything that these amazing humans have been able to do and we are grateful for them sticking with us in the hard times. We cannot wait to see where the game goes and we hope to add all the features that the players would like to see!

Game Progress

In this sprint, we assigned 217 points in total. Of those points, 86 were not moved, 130 were moved to To Verify, 121 were completed, and 96 were left In Progress. That being said we are still very much ahead of schedule, and, though we are hoping to stay that way, we were given feedback by the Executives that we need to be beefing up the backlog just a little bit. Zach and I have taken this into consideration and, well, we are excited because this means that we can add more features that we might not have previously been able to have!

Another thing to take note of, too, is that there is a new line on our Burndown Chart. Where this green line intersects the X-axis is where our project is projected to finish. At the moment, it is by Sprint 5 and though that might sound like a good idea, we do want to have a little bit of area to reach for the stars.

Next Steps

Just like that, we will now conclude our second Production Blog for Trapped! Again, on behalf of the entire team, we thank you immensely for the support that you have provided by not only reading this, but taking the time to look at our progress in this journey. In the next sprint, we are hoping to not only fix some things in the game based off of feedback from the players, but also to add some more features such as other enemies, more levels, and, fingers crossed, a working game loop to make it the infinite runner we promised!

We hope that you will continue with us on this journey and that you take a moment to playtest our game! Please keep in mind that you will need a controller in order to play the game.

See you real soon! :)

-We Need More Walls Inc. (also known as the Trapped Team)