Devlog 3

Albus:  

I was sick for about a week, but I was able to come back again this week to create the level concepts.  I also took time to research good level design. Also wrote up some pseudo code for the general flow of the first level to share with the rest of the team. 

Ashleigh: 

I had continued to sketch ideas of how the background could potentially look – this time, however, I had needed to make the sketches more coloured in (look more ‘filled’), as if near a somewhat completed version of how the final design could look: the idea would remain the same of there being a past and present. To help myself, I had looked over at the Pinterest board that was made – creating a colour palette (or colour scheme) of the images colour, and it would result in the palette being a huge help for me to be able to understand the sort of vibes we would be going with. In the process – two colour palettes were made regarding both the past and the present, and sketches being made. 

Daniele: 

This week I set out to complete the bones of the Powerpoint, look into the player model and look into what shaders would fit with the game.  

I made sure all of the questions the rubric asked for were answered and got ready to add a bit of everyone's work; leaving the completion of it for the next week when there are more completed concepts. 

Kurtis having worked with 3D before kindly gave me a base model to work from, I introduced myself back into using maya and learnt new things such as creating faces using live surface and quad draw. Now that I had played around with it I will recreate something I am more confident in 

I noticed while making other prototypes how essential post processing is to the visual aesthetic of the game, this is when I decided to put in some time to research what shaders to use for the game to compliment the post processing effects. I looked into toon shaders and found this video that quickly went through how it works and how to create it. 

Kurtis:  

There were issues with desync in the last prototype, so to simplify it we decided to only let the player teleport at specific locations. This stops any issues with clipping and desync, while also letting the player drag objects and teleport with them. There are a few bugs to be ironed out, with the main issue being the test controller I'm using not being able to teleport, but the actual controller has a RigidBody, so it will work fine. 

Sarah: 

This week, I was tasked with building upon last week's work and implementing functionality that allows the player to grab onto objects and push or pull them. I was again taking reference of how this feels in Inside. I went into this naively thinking this would be relatively easy to implement, however this was unfortunately not the case.  

That being said, pushing objects was straightforward enough to implement. I used physics and colliders to allow the player to apply force smoothly when walking into movable objects. The real challenge I had came with the pulling function.  

Pulling had more requirements than pushing. Pulling needed the object to stay close to the player, as it is being held at an arm’s length. After experimenting a lot, I was struggling to use the same physics as I did with pushing. I ended up shifting to using transforms to move the object instead. By keeping the object’s position relative to the player’s transform, I had far more control than I had with my physics-based attempts.  

I went through several iterations of this script, testing different methods of positioning, movement smoothing, and collision detection. In the end, I’m happy with what I have done, and I now have a solid base for other interactions, such as smaller items for the inventory system. 

Oleksandra: 

I kept creating HUD visuals such as the inventory slot, the health bar and other additional buttons. I tried a few different forms and styles, and I decided on the one which felt the most balanced.