So, right at the very end of last week, we had a team-on-one. We got a lot of good things out of it, such as a new work schedule, getting to know one another better, and figuring out some basic ideas as for what we're going to do with networking in our game.
For networking, we're planning on having a competitive mode and a cooperative mode. In the competitive mode, there will be two players with two separate scores, and they will have the ability to use certain power-ups to hinder their opponent's progress. In the cooperative mode, there will be one combined score, and the players will use power-ups to help one another. That's the basic plan for now. We're still working out details as to exactly what we're going to do. The new schedule and ideas on what to do for networking were probably the most helpful things to come out of the meeting. It's always feels good to have some kind of a plan and a grounding as far as what needs to be done next.
Speaking of next, this next week is our Alpha presentation, and we're all hard at work getting everything in that we plan on having in. We are finally getting the art assets into the game, and it's looking better and better by the day. There's some tweaking that we have to do to the engine in order to get the graphics to look as they should, but that will be done by the time Alpha comes by. The sound is still being played with so that it sounds as great as it can.
On the tech side, there's been a lot of work to engine. All of the component structuring was completely redone, several memory leaks were completely fixed, and many of the last minute hacks from First Playable were removed, so the engine is looking a lot better these days. Another thing that's in the works is something our physics programmer is playing with. He's working with fluid-type physics in order to give our game some really awesome-looking ink-like special effects. We're not exactly sure how we're going to apply them yet, but our first thought was to try using them with enemies to make them look cooler.
We've also finally started doing playtesting. We've had two full sessions so far, and we're having another one on Monday. We've gotten a lot of good feedback as far as how apparent certain mechanics are in our game. We've discovered that some players don't necessarily make connections between the kinds of power-ups. Also, they'd actually like to have more control over what power-ups they have. That was actually the very idea that I started with in designing this game, but it was sort of axed right after our Prototype Milestone because of the size of our team at that point. So, that's something we'll most likely be bringing back in one way or another. I'm looking forward to doing more playtesting once our art assets are completely in.
I finally have some screenshots that I can share of what the game is looking like right now with some of the art in. These are very early shots of our transition to the new style, so there's a lot of elements that are missing. We are getting them in very quickly though. Anyway, enjoy!
New player ship with the ink trail, new large enemy.
New bullets, new enemies, new power-up.
That's all I've got for now. See you after Alpha at the end of Week 5. Wish us luck on our first milestone of the new semester! Peace.
Sincerely,
Alicia Yeargin.
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