UPDATES FROM THE TEAM
LILIAN
The UI issues are now almost complete. I edited the gameover overlay but it’s still a work-in-progress. I also decided to grey out the character portraits upon death/disconnection to give better visual indicators that a character is out.
Moving on from UI, I worked on the bug where sometimes the player is not visible on camera because the other players are too far away. The original camera logic computed the centroid as the average of all player positions. After the change, the new logic instead assigns a 50% weight to the local player such that it is harder for players to lose track of themselves.
In addition, as feedback mentioned that the desert map was too empty, I added a few decorative elements like shrubs and cacti.
CHUYUE
I didn’t work on many huge issues this week but I closed 6 small ones! One was to standardise the fonts in the game, which was a small thing but helps our game look much more cohesive.
ZHI HANG
One of the feedback we’ve received is the lack of substance/interactivity for our Desert map. Therefore, the team decided to add a dynamic obstacle to add some variety for the level - the tumbleweed. While most of the tumbleweed illustrations online are “line” art which only consists of long and curvy lines. It was only after finishing the first design that I realised that this “line” art style doesn’t seem to fit well in our game’s aesthetics. Hence I opted for a paint-like sketch:
Hopefully, this would blend well with the environment but would also be distinct enough to signal to players that it is an interactable object.
I’ve also reduced the Cactus’ air attack combo down to a simple jab after realising that a single tap of the attack button starts a 3-hit combo.
ROBIN
This week we received feedback from other teams. After evaluating all their feedback, we had to prioritise to figure out if we can implement their suggestions in time for STEPS. One common suggestion was to make the crane less powerful, since the current build allows players to spam the crane’s light attacks repeatedly, and it covers the entire map. So now, its projectiles travel faster but only cover a smaller distance. The crane light attack animation is also made longer so it cannot shoot feathers that quickly. Another change was to increase the cactus light attack knockback factor since in the current state, the knockback on the cactus’s light attack is not really noticeable at low percentages. We wanted to make the punches have more oomph, so increasing the knockback values should make it feel more powerful.
YU CHUN
Minor changes from the beta version as we were focusing on our research presentation on accessibility. But nevertheless, there are still some fixes here and there. As the levels and game environment still feel a bit still, I’ve added an animated cloud that flows over the environment, the main menu title will also animate now. The message in the game will now disappear after a certain duration. I’ve also attempted to add in the tumbleweed, however, it’s taking longer than usual. At the start, it doesn’t call the isTrigger function when it hits any platform in the game. But now, it is calling the function even though the objects seemed to be purely environment. This feature is becoming way harder than it seemed.
GABRIEL
This week I’m back to working on music and SFX!
Here’s the updated track for the Desert stage:
I’ve also coded the music to change when the Game Over popup is displayed. I’ve used placeholder tunes for now while I work on creating the triumphant tune for the winner, and the solemn tune for the other players.
I’m also trying to improve the SFX of our characters, such as modulating their pitches so that they won’t be so ear-splitting.