Team Summary:
For this week, our team was focused on polishing level one and finishing level two. We did not meet up in person, however we worked on each of our own team roles. Averi finished her assets fairly quickly so she researched and found some background and sound effects for level one and two. Eva was busy fixing bugs and implementing new content to level two. Fahad was creating the diagrams and the document for our beta code hand-in. I was making some monster assets animations and level designing level three content even more. Additionally, Fahad, Averi and I play-tested as well.
My Contributions:
Because everyone was working on their own area of the game, I was focused on creating the rest of the animations for Solis. Aside from the idle, walk, jump, fall, and climb animations, there were new mechanics introduced in level two that required Solis to be re-animated. For level two, I added a picking up animation, which is used when Solis is picking up a pebble from the ground. Moreover, I also created a throwing animation which is used when Solis is throwing the pebble. Apart from the climbing animation for that ladder in Solis’ home, there is a separate a climbing animation for ropes, which I made for level two as well.
After doing the animations, I also added more into the document. Because we did not have enough time to create level three, I pitched the idea into the document for the beta code. To pitch the level three design, I created visualizations to explain the boss battle that will happen. Complementary to the images were descriptions of context for the images on how the boss may look like (map visualization), boss phases (pattern of the boss), boss tactics (how the player can defeat the boss) and boss aftermath (what happens after the boss battle). After successfully defeating the boss, a cut-scene shows Solis seeing and possibly leaving the cave. Level three marks the end of our game. As for the narrative, it will be left as a cliff hanger because we cannot fit the entire narrative in three levels.
Furthermore, I also play-tested two people. Jordan Wong and Aby Aborido were kind enough to play our game and provide feedback about what we have finished so far for level one and two. Both of them were thorough when it came to critiquing our work and suggesting ideas on how to make Dark Ages better.
My Reflection:
Overall, the team was quite productive in their own team roles. I was happy that Averi managed to finish the level two environments rather quickly, without sacrificing asset quality and fidelity. Fahad is able to create our entire document and diagram content. Eva is working really hard on the code (fixing and implementing new content). Although Eva’s code is not perfect, what matters is that she is trying. This is the last week before our final hand-in next week and I am worried that we may not be able to finish our game in its entirety. One possible solution is to simplify level three boss battle to less phases or less complex interactions in order to finish at least most of our expected game content.
