UPDATES FROM THE TEAM
LILIAN
I have been working on improving the UI aesthetics of the game. Before this, we had a functional but rather barebones UI which didn’t look great during the playtest. I spent time drawing full body renders of our current two characters and cropped out the heads for character icons which are used in the character selection menu and in-game overlays. I also adjusted the colours and fonts according to Aik Peng’s Figma mockups.
CHUYUE
This week, I have added minor features that improve the UX of our game. I am also working on fixing the way we interpolate our characters over the network so the in-game experience is improved. Currently, when characters jump over the network, the other players see the jump as ‘floaty’ and distracting to the game experience. However, the interpolation can’t be removed altogether as the game would look very choppy. I have decided to try to implement a minimum move speed for interpolation so that the floaty effect doesn’t occur.
ZHI HANG
Upon confirmation of the Cactus’ final design, I started working on the second (and final) revision of the Cactus’ animation frames. Thanks to the quick coloured sketch done by Lilian, I was quickly able to draw out a consistent style (and its colour).
We decided to change the flower pot to a box instead as we want to inject a bit of humour into our game. Since our Cactus character is a melee-based fighter and we have given it boxing gloves, we want to have a simple wordplay as its description: A boxer who boxes in a box.
This transition from concept draft to final design taught me the importance of using layers in Photoshop. Since this phase is a complete revision of the Cactus design, I had to redraw every single sprite. Thankfully, I could assign one prop to a layer. From there, I could simply duplicate the needed layers (eg. hat and arms) and modify the body and make some slight changes to the arms to get the desired orientation. This certainly saved me a lot of time since I don’t have to redraw everything from scratch for each frame. In the end, I am very satisfied with my final piece! I like the comic-book art style of the Cactus (I tried to follow the design Lilian drew while trying to fit Aik Peng's art style as well. I just have to draw out the remaining few actions and some additional frames for telegraphing.
Next, Aik Peng, Chuyue and I will focus our efforts on adding the juice for our game - VFX!
ROBIN
After receiving peer feedback, there were several bugs that I had to sort out, such as ensuring projectiles would be destroyed properly on all clients, as well as characters falling through moving platforms. After fixing these bugs, I had to figure out how to allow characters to jump through the platforms, by removing raycasts shooting upwards. This allows us to design more vertical levels which might have a more dynamic layout than our current maps.
YU CHUN
This week, I added a basic options menu in the game. The menu allows players to adjust their volume and key mappings. Currently, the options menu is a prefab and it's only available in the game. Next week, I will look into adding the options menu into the main menu as well. As I am not good with design, my teammate Lilian will be helping me touch up the options menu.
GABRIEL
Due to popular demand, the off-screen player trackers are back. Yay!
I’ve also colour coded them with the HUD colours for each player so that they look prettier.
In addition, many of our playtesters felt that our game attacks didn’t feel impactful, and suggested that we should try implementing hitstop.
Therefore, I’ve started experimenting with adding hitstop into our attacks. Currently, I’ve been tweaking our combat system to include more information when an attack connects. For example, we can now figure out the exact location of the attack, which ties in nicely with our new hit-splash VFX!