Beta - Log #2

Cinematic Camera

A system to capture important moments in the game, to take control away from the player’s in a brief moment to highlight some information that is potentially critical to the narrative, or in order to hint at a way to solve a puzzle, or as a reward when they solve the puzzle, seeing the tower/shrine activate and interact with the world.

Bell Area

We created our second puzzle area for our game, which is required to activate the second temple/shrine. A series of bells need to be struck in a certain order that will be revealed to the player through the birds added last week, and through some color coding on the bells (wip). One of the bells will need to be lowered through another small exploration styled puzzle.

The Artists

Aidan

After further input from external sources, I updated the ‘churro’ structure again, messing with timings so that the tower would appear more ancient in its movement. To accompany last week’s ‘mural hint’ are the assets actually required for the puzzle. Using last week’s photoshop file that helps me manipulate our runes, I was able to make three chipped cubes that correspond to the mural hint’s symbols. These cubes also have emissive maps for when they are active on a pressure plate. After taking lecturer’s advice to try other colours for the emissive glow, we decided blue is cliche for a reason, because it complements the orange hues of our rocks - and appears the least science fiction.

I also began work on updating our newer puzzle. Bells. We had my bells from vertical slice but now we have downgraded it to a smaller puzzle with similar mechanics. I have blocked out ‘arms’ that will hold the bells out from the stone and plan to add coloured cloths to help pass the obstacle.

Connor

Over this week I continued creating assets wanted for the next area of the game. An asset was needed to pass over the pathway to the bell puzzle, in order to lower the final bell. So I created a bridge using several bricks with different normal maps.

I then went on to creating a waterfall for certain areas of the map, originally intended of the inside of the large, main temple. I created the mesh, necessary maps, and a custom shader to animate a scrolling texture and cut out transparent areas of the waterfall. I also created a splash particle emitter for the base of the waterfall and a ripple effect.

I began to create some decorative set pieces for the beach area. I chose several types of shells and a crab to animate, to liven up and populate the beach.

David

This week I started fleshing out more of the map, adding a back area for the fourth tower as well as getting the terrain closer to the final pass. I began experimenting with grass and foliage to replace out currently placeholder billboarding grass planes. I want to devote a good amount of time toward the foliage in the game because I feel that it is a hugely important aspect of the level bringing so much life to the scene. I also started on a first pass of a grass terrain texture to add a bit more variety and texture to the ground and make the grass pop and add more volume to it.

The Programmers

Hadley

During this beta phase we had a couple of extra playtests done to get a feel for the how player’s would respond to the controls of the character and the camera. This meant some tweaking of both scripts (as usual). On top of which, the addition of a couple extra features for the character controller. The first being a “hard fall” where Safa will play an animation, stopping movement and dropping the hammer head for a small duration as a way of ‘punishing’ the player for falling for an extended amount of time.

A bulk of this week was spent incorporating the cinematic camera from the previous week, laying out tracks for the camera to run over for future implementation. This allows the cinematic camera to pan across the targeted location, then align itself back up to the player’s view.

Jose

Although the game is still going a bit slow, it feels good to have more areas to explore, and for bugs to slowly get phased out. This week, I worked on the following:

• Fixed the push bug which would make cubes travel further than Safa when pushed.

• Added Aidan and Connor’s props to the bell puzzle area.

• Worked with Aidan to implement rope hinge joints - failed- but thanks to Aidan managed to properly implement them in the end.

• Made the pole holding the high up bell be lowered when hit by the hammer.

• Slightly tweaked Izzy’s code which made the bell sounds play when hit, to send information to a puzzle manager which determines if the notes were played in the right order. And when they are, the tower activates.

Izzy

For the 2nd week of beta phase, we decided to brainstorm the third area for puzzles, there was a change in terrain and we had to shift the 3rd area into a brighter side of the map as it was initially covered by the tall shadow of the tower. We have decided to create a labyrinth for the third area. I also got assigned to create and fix some animation for the bird and Safa. I created an animation where the bird shows that they are chirping and provided an animation that shows Safa a different landing for when Safa jumps off a high area to make it have a better feel. In the end of the week, I was also assigned to fix some character animation from the feedback of the lecturers.