Team Progress This week was centered around approaching level 2 and 3 with caution, carefully considering the drawbacks and shortcomings of our implemented features thus far so that we wouldn't repeat the same mistakes. Level 1 was also revisited as the team discussed what we could potentially do to improve it based on the critique given. Generally, a lot of what was talked about revolved around how we would go about structuring the upcoming environment in such a way that it is more complex, challenging, interesting, and feasible than that of the level that came before it. There's a lot that can be done with the underground setting that the 2nd level is in and this is something that will need to be explored further before we could move on to creating assets and coding gameplay for it. Aside from this, our lead coder was able to address some issues with the Alpha Code and one of our level designers ideated and completed sketches that showed the beginnings of an increase in gameplay ramp. My Contribution This week, instead of focusing on creating assets as per my usual role in the group, I mainly assisted in planning out the next level of our game along with my team members. The improvement of our gameplay was of priority this week, as we have all mutually felt that we should have achieved some level of quality gameplay experience by now. I still managed to create and improve some assets from our game that we plan on keeping in the final product. Additionally, I began sketching the immediate area the player would spawn in upon entering level 2 for the first time and I intend to complete the final version of that map segment today. I was also able to finally draw an introductory cutscene for our first level, which will serve as the prologue that players will need in the beginning to grant them the context and motivation to complete their primary goal in the game.
Reflection A pressing issue that we've had to deal with was coming up with defining features for our game that provide players with the much-needed fun gameplay experience that's generally been missing from our prototypes so far. With these features, we would also need to compress all the content we intended for the narrative and pacing into just 2 more levels as it is all that we have time for for the rest of the semester. Ideally, with the narrative-driven game that we've proposed at the beginning, we would want to tell a compelling story in at least 4 lengthy levels that provided players with intense challenges and dark moments. However, with what time we have left for the course, we must now adapt and refine by focusing solely on what can be done. There is still a lot of substance missing from our game and I think that this is something we can only address by really communicating with one another and working hard to do what we can, without dwelling too much on what could've been done.
