Week 4 - Fitting the Pieces

This week was very much about starting to move on to new parts of our game, with the basic implementation of everything the player needs (bar animations being added to Unity) being completed, the level system being worked on in full swing, the first enemy animations being worked on, as well as the first environment art. We also completed the first pass of the GDD, fleshing out most of the concepts we had already laid out before.

The full basic implementation of the player combat was finished following the creation of the enemy core last week. Hitbox interactions with other entities was created. The framework was designed to be as flexible as possible so a minimal amount of work would be needed to apply the system to other entities besides the player. With this system came a system to apply damage and knockback to the target. For player-specific interactions, a pogo jump when using the downwards air attack was created, so that the player doesn't just hurt themselves if they attack downwards and gives them the opportunity to follow through or move to a different position. Finally, the fireball projectile was finally implemented, dealing more damage than a standard attack.

At the same time, work on the scene loading system was worked on, with transitions between scenes needing to be fixed, as there was a bug with the player being cloned every time they swapped scenes.

This was fixed and now the scene transitions work as intended, so additive scene loading can get started for the first playable build.

With all of the player animations being completed last week, we started working on other art assets for the game. The first one that was made was the Ashen Vessel, based on the concept art created last week. The Ashen Vessel was made much larger than the Kindling, and was given contrasting colours to give it a more distinct look, as well as making it feel more important and imposing.

After this, the first draft of the HUD was created, showing the Lifeflame of the Kindling; the timer/health system that acts as the core of our game. The idea is the flame gets smaller as your timer runs down, though the red bar will also run down at the same time. This just gives it more of a symbolic meaning.

Next, the first pass animations on the first basic enemies of the game were created, to help define the overall look and feel of enemies and dictate their direction going forward. They may not all be fully implemented in the first playable build, but they exist. The enemies are the Ash Bat, Hogash, and the Small Golem.

The final task that was worked on this week was starting the environment tiles for the starting area, to be implemented once level design implementation starts being worked on fully.

Outside of tasks for the game, we also worked on the GDD, coming up with the functional flowboard, core loop, and narrative flowboard.

Alongside these diagrams, we also came up with more concept art of the look of the game, particularly for the four areas of the game.

Over the next week, we will continue to be implementing the core features needed for our first playable, namely the level design, the timer, and the upgrade mechanics. Once these features are finished, we will have all the core features needed to have a core loop. From there, it will just be creating the remaining enemies and levels, and continuing all the art. Four weeks in and we already have a pretty good portion of our game done, but there is still a lot more to go.

Until next time.