Summary:
The team have finally set with the art style. The art style has been simplified, the amount of time spend on one panel is very little, where the quality of the art is still high and the aesthetic still suits our original genre. We planned to finish the entire level design first before we could decide how long one level last, so we could start to code around the level design while waiting for the complete assets. This week, we were able to refine some backstory, talking about possible of reward system, collectable, things to be interacted, decide how many environment settings we want, and went on to finalize the layout of the first portion of the map. We are trying to finish the entire level design as soon as possible so the visual artists and the coders have enough time to finish one level.
Contributions:
Besides discussing with the team to give suggestions for the art style, going over the plan document, and the level design, I personally just added small chunks of code for instructions displayed in text. For example, when player stands on top of the entrance to the home area, text is displayed on the screen to instruct what player could do. The text instruction are designed to display when the player encounters something that can be interacted. Of course, if it is possible in time, the visual artists also need to make assets for the instructions to display as an image, rather than just displaying text using code.
Reflections:
Trying to finish the entire level design first help us to see how long one level need to be, and the coders don’t need to wait for complete map to adjust everything. This way, the process is more organized and prevents us from trying to put all assets in in the last two days. If everything goes well, we would have more time to player test and fixed code bugs. While making the entire level design, we are also considering about the puzzles, how the cut scenes are like, and the animations. We are trying extra hard to make the puzzles interesting with the enemies placement and combination of them.
