Devlog 8: Production Sprint 2 - Middle

Programming

Hi all we back with another week of programming. A lot of visual overhauls have been done this week. The menus and energy bar don’t have the dev look anymore. We also had a major bug with FPS dependent movement but that one is fixed in this update.

Start countdown

When the players now press play, they get locked up for 10 seconds to test their movement. They can destroy each other in this arena but can’t fall off the map. After the go is displayed all safety is gone and the race has started.

Finishing

When the player reaches the end of the track, he will be able to enter the candy store (mesh in progress) and finish. There he can wait on the other players and secure his position in the race.

Death mechanic

The death mechanic (a top-down missile shooter) is not yet finalized, but it has undergone a nice tweak. You can now switch between players by using your joystick or LB/RB. This fixes a major issue where players were getting lost on the map with no guide to show them where they were.

Particle effects

The particle effects for landing and ball breaking have been implemented. The particle effect for sprinting is also ready, but it has a major bug. Therefore, it has not been implemented yet.

Menu

The main menu has received some new visual updates and now includes a controls option. This option displays all of the necessary controls needed to play the game, and the corresponding image is also available on the main page of the game. Additionally, the game can now only be started when there are 2-4 players.

Energy bar

The energy bar has had a visual overhaul and now works with a mask in the baby bottle. When you are sprinting, the bottle turns green. This means that you are ready to destroy someone’s ball. When you try to jump and don’t have enough energy it will flash red.

Art

UI

This week, the creative team members focused on UI development. They successfully created various buttons such as Start, controls, and more. Separate versions were designed for when users hover over these buttons and when they are not hovered over. Additionally, the entire Start Menu was completed as part of their efforts.

In this start menu, players can view the number of connected players and receive an assigned color for the duration of the game. By pressing the controls button, an image is displayed to familiarize the players with the game controls.

HUD

The creative team made significant progress on the game's HUD (Heads-Up Display), enhancing both functionality and visual appeal. The HUD provides players with two crucial pieces of information. Firstly, players can easily track their race rank, which is displayed at the top left corner of the screen. The first player's rank is highlighted in yellow, while the ranks of other players are shown in plain white. Additionally, the HUD features a clever representation of stamina using baby bottles. Each player's baby bottle color corresponds to their in-game elements such as their diaper, ball, and other elements. As players progress, the baby bottle fills up with milk, allowing them to monitor their stamina levels.

Decoration

Progress was also made in the decoration aspect of the obstacles. The modeled chains will be procedurally placed along the entire track to create the impression that the track is suspended from these chains. Another decoration model created was the Checkpoint flag, which will also be placed procedurally but with additional programming. The flag will appear once one of the four players passes it and will remain visible for the duration of the game.

background

The end of the track and the goal of the game is one of the most interesting pieces to make. This week the store at the end of the track was modeled and textured. The little rustic candy store holds the precious golden candy, the price all of us racing for. Further developments need to be added to make the candy light up and some effects have already been added to the side to celebrate the winner of the race. The midground buildings and been added to the game as well now.

Sound

Hey everyone, it’s the middle of the second sprint and most of that time I’ve spent the week on figuring out how to calculate the volume of an audio source based on the closest player to the audio source’s distance. So, I haven’t had much time to focus on creating additional sounds for the game itself. But on the bright side of things, we finally decided on a music track to use for the game during gameplay, it’s surprising how much a music track adds to the completeness of the game. It’s a shame I couldn’t do much else this week though, I didn’t expect that figuring out how to handle volume on audio sources that create ambience for certain track pieces would take so much time and cause so many issues and struggles. Hopefully I can get it all working during the next week and work on creating new audio assets again.