Narrative and Design

In this sprint, Brian was charged with making the first seven levels of our game.  This meant having to create tutorial levels that teach the player how to play our game, which controls do what, etc.  Five out of the seven levels were completed this sprint, although refinement is still needed.  Once those levels are at a more finalized state, the final two assigned levels will be created.  Work was also done to trim the fat from our storyboard. It was realized that 15 unique levels would be much better than 25 semi-repeated levels and would improve the game’s flow.  No fat, all meat, all fun

One thing that went wrong this sprint was the background image of the levels not functioning in a way that was envisioned.  The background stays the same while transitioning from one block type to another (wood tiles, goo blocks, etc.).  Preferably, the background to change at certain parts of the levels but it may not be possible to implement this with what little time we have left.  As previously mentioned, only five of the seven levels required this sprint were completed.  These levels will be created and implemented by the end of this upcoming sprint.

Along with creating those last two levels, future work will include tweaking previously made levels and polishing them up. The levels that aren’t made will be created and brought up to par.  All levels will be made to be aesthetically pleasing on top of being feature complete.

Level Design

The focus of this sprint was on level creation.  The decision was made to cut the plan down from 25 levels to 15, organized into three sets of five.  Using the storyboard has worked well to see how each level fits together in the overall structure of the game and consider the flow of gameplay.  We now have ten levels ready for final polish and QA work, with the final five to be completed next sprint.

We designed three levels from the “Goo” set this sprint. First, “Run the Goo-notlet” is a long style level with multiple enemies and a choice to either fight for a key to access an invincibility item and breeze through the remaining enemies or use brute force to reach the goal.  Next, “A Long Way to Goo” is a flying-style level where the player must use a dustpan gate to open the way forward.  Finally, “Down We Goo” is a falling style level with spikes and enemies to avoid, but prizes to grab along the way.

Level design is becoming more focused, and the game as a whole is coming together well, which is very encouraging.  Unfortunately, time is running short and there is still a lot of design and QA needed to bring the project to completion.  Looking ahead to the next sprint, the goal is to have the game feature complete as well as have all 15 levels ready for QA and final polish.  The biggest challenge will be designing and creating the Xander boss fight finale, but the team is in an excellent position to accomplish this task.

Art and QA

Time was spent this sprint creating new artwork for the Bedroom Levels by creating backgrounds and a new tileset to go with those levels.  Previously made tiles were repurposed to create blocks that would be easily identifiable as breakable for the purpose of communicating things to the player.  A new set of Bubble sprites were created to replace the previous Explosion sprites as the initial sprites did not mesh well with the game’s theme.

Animation work was done on the Vacuum Dragon to replace previous still and awkward movement.  Burn Block tile set created so that it animates instead of being still, giving a clearer idea to the player on what the tile will do.  Started basic animation work for the Final Boss Xander.

Future work will involve finalizing any remaining artwork and animations.  The primary focus, though, will be moved more toward testing and bug finding as the game’s production will be reaching its end.

Making It All Work

New Configurations and Improved Behaviours

The new level geometry sprites created by our artist were configured with appropriate colliders and physic materials.  New prefabs were created with these configurations for the designers to utilize in their level designs.

The Player’s projectile’s behaviour script was edited so that the explosive animation only plays when damage is actually dealt to the enemy.  This allows the player to recognize when they are using the correct ammo versus the enemy in front of them.  In addition to a visual difference between ineffectual strikes and strikes with the correctly selected ammo, there is also an aural difference.  A louder, more staccato explosive sound is played upon a successful and productive strike against an enemy.

One of the continued frustrations has been the delay between colliding with a pick-up item and its removal from the game.  Analysis of the code revealed a timing flaw in how the pick-up sound was played and when the game object was removed from the game.  This has been corrected so that all pick-ups now completely play their pick-up sounds through the AudioManager and are removed from the game immediately upon contact.

Challenges to be Confronted

With the multiple small, but vital improvements to the new artwork configurations and behaviour corrections and improvements, time was not available to complete the audio editing of the recorded enemy sound effects and narrative voice acting.  There is also a persistent timing issue of some enemies failing to find the player game object for the first couple of frames.  This results in null-reference errors, but since these only occur during the first few frames, it does not create a crash-level issue.  However, it is still an issue that needs addressed.  Null-reference errors should always be avoided.

Tasks for the Final Sprint

One of the top priorities for the coming sprint is to complete the processing of the enemy SFX and integrate them with the various enemy prefabs.  The raw audio exists, but each track will need to be parsed, cleaned, and processed before it is imported into the project and applied to the appropriate enemy prefab.

The second top priority is to configure the Animator state machine for the Xander final boss enemy and construct a script defining the behaviour defined in the Game Design Document.  This will be key to providing a fulfilling conclusion to the game.

Minor issues that will be addressed in the final sprint include changes to the game’s behaviour upon the player’s death.  Currently, a UI canvas appears asking if the player would like to try again.  The team has decided that it would be better for the screen to fade to black upon player death and the level be restarted.  In the same conversation about how the game should behave upon player death, it was decided that there should be a Quit button on the Pause UI panel in addition to a Return to Main Menu function.  These will be small, easy to implement features.