Design Dev Log 3:

Sprint 3 Complete! Our team has been shredding through tasks and adding important features to our game. I’m so happy we were able to get so much done before our next playtest. We were able to test tons of key game features and now have all the core game features implemented.

Sprint 3:

This sprint was a huge value sprint, I feel like we were able to respond to a lot of the feedback we got from our first playtest and implement it into our sprint. By the end of this sprint, our game was looking better than ever. But that was thanks to our amazing team of course.

A huge shout out to Olivia for designing the 2nd character that we have decided to add to the game. She saved us a ton of time by creating this awesome concept. Not only that it also came out perfect, but Olivia also did a great job of matching the current style we already have going for our game. Our new character is going to fit right in.

We also got our game logo for our game. Atley has also done a good job recognizing the style and the theme of our game and has once again created an amazing piece of work. Now it feels super official having our title ready to be put in the game. It’s going to look awesome on our title screen.

For 3D Modeling, we got an awesome looking main menu screen from Shawn. This was a super important part of the game to me, having an awesome looking place to hang out before you start your run. He spent a ton of time getting the lighting looking good using emissive textures and point lights. It gives our game that polished feel.

Vanessa finished our common guard enemy which I can't wait to see in-game. She captured the aesthetic perfectly. He looks kinda cartoony but also you can tell he is an enemy character. He reminds me of Monsters vs. Aliens(the animated movie). I think he will fit right into our maze ready to chase around our player.

At this point in our sprint, we have been running low on 3d modeling cards so we had Ryan work on some particle effects this sprint. He created some awesome looking effects. We got a cool ambient effect for the main menu as well as a spark effect and a smoke effect. I think these will help bring our game to life and add that extra polish we are looking for.

The level designers spent a good amount of time getting assets into their levels to make them more lively. All three of their first levels have extra assets to help break up some of the monotony of the levels. This also adds some more polish to our game making it look less and less like a prototype and more like a finished product.

   We also got a new block out for level 2 completed so we have more iterations to work within our game loop. I’m happy with how all these levels are turning out. The mazes on all the cubes are unique and every new maze is more satisfying to look at. I’m excited to see that the last few block outs getting completed.

For programming, we got our enemies to level up alongside the player giving them a greater challenge as they progress. I am glad we will get to have some time testing this function because it will need quite a bit of balancing before we can say it is complete. I can’t wait to test it more in future playtests.

On the programming team, I want to give a shout out to Alex for completing so many cards without getting too frustrated with our nitpicking. He spent so much time doing the UI for our game over and over again. This was due to failures with the git hub as well as us sending cards back because we wanted something changed. But in the end, it was worth it and completely paid off.

 We also got our power-ups in the game now the players can pick up temporary boosts in the game that will help them for a short amount of time. We have a health power-up that replenishes health, a damage power-up that increases the damage, and a speed power-up that increases your speed.

Conclusion:

Once again I am extremely happy and proud of my team’s progress. Everyone is doing a great job of staying committed and getting their tasks done. We are almost done with all our core game mechanics and now we will be moving on to more polishing tasks in the near future. I'm getting really excited to see the finished product of our game.