Darkness Rising: Production Update 2
It's been a long time since I made a post in this dev diary, but majority of the time I've been giving updates via discord (through problem-posts when I ran into issues, and in playtesting chat and such) and within class during our meetings. However, it's high time I add a post to here to give a more formal update.
Since my last update, to put it bluntly. I've done a lot. In the weeks closely following the last post, I completed the first playable, made a pause menu, a main menu, and a death menu. After that, I created win and lose conditions, and wrestled a very specific issue that I was having... the animation of the rising 'darkness' for which the game is named. Long story short, with that problem, I solved it by messing around within the object inspector, funny enough. The issue was that the objects within it were set to "static," which prevented them from moving and animating within the animation; this being in terms of acting like a liquid mass, as the darkness is supposed to be in a liquid sort of form, and also in the actual 'rising' it does, ascending through the level over time.
Following the solving of that bug, I did a bit of personal playtesting--to the best of my ability--and tweaked the Darkness objects animation to be pressuring to the player, but not overwhelming, especially if they're a player that isn't as good at jumping like I am.
Then I added art, texturing the walls properly and adding rock textures, wood textures, etcetera to objects like the rocks and tree stumps/dead trees and such, and ultimately, I ended up in the last couple weeks in the artsy portion of the game. Truthfully, I could post the builds right now and it's by technicality a fully functioning game; however, there are polishes like adding in the pretty sounds and texturing some more objects and such that I still need to do to finish my plan for this dev-cycle as I originally wrote it.
Some artsy things I've done so far in the last week or so were adding more identifiable mini-objects to the player-character, you know; the little light orb you play as and are jumping around with, so that it is easier to tell which direction the player is facing at any given time. This was done because of some feedback I got from the professor in class, which notably, made a lot of sense, so I'm really happy it was brought up. I've started working on the finalization of lighting within the level, and have started finalizing dialogue I wanted to implement--just making the project a bit more fun to do, ya know? Instead of adding in written instructions and such for what to do. And then I also added in a pretty little skybox, which adds to the mood of the game a bit once you get to the top of the tower--if you get that far, that is... hahahahaha.
Attached I've added in some recent screenshots of the level and the character a bit so you get more of a feel for what I'm saying. I've started working on a bit of footage for the walkthrough and such, and then I've been working with scheduling meet times with my #Fun&FriendlyVoiceActors<3 to record the lines of dialogue that I was looking to implement within the game itself.
Essentially, with where I'm at right now, I'm in a nice place. I need to
- Texture Object Blocks (that are jumped on) within the level
- Add in Game Sounds for Background Music, Menu Music Pieces etcetera
- Finalize Level Lighting
and then stretch goal-wise... if I have time
- Host recording sessions for the V.O.
- Edit V.O. to create the 5 finalized sound assets
- Implement V.O within the game object triggers that I have already created within the level to make them work in-game as the player ascends the tower.
Some issues I've been running into for the past three weeks or so that I've been trying to work with, getting discouraged on, and then coming back to are getting ALL the lighting to render as it should be, and making it so that the player can't skip over small sections of blocks by jumping up the walls of the building.
Truthfully? With the jumping up the walls thing, the bug is contained only to certain sections, so by exploiting it, the player can only benefit in specific lengths of wall by using it... so honestly, if I can't fix it by the time the turn-in of the game comes around, it'll be disappointing from a development perspective, personally, but not detrimental to the game itself I don't think, in hindsight. (Notably, I haven't given up with it. It's just frustrating because I know what the problem is but can't get the code to work right in order to fix it).
Priorities in this next week? LIGHTING.
Then when the lighting is complete? SOUNDS.
anything extra beyond that is... well... just that. Extra. SO it's cool if I don't necessarily get to it, oh well, but will notably be fantastic and worthwhile if I do, as it would thoroughly enhance the game experience I think.
Alrightie. That about sums up my experiences thus far that I've been dealing with. <3
Hopefully this is a good additive with what I've talked about thus far in class and in the discord. And as I've said, some pics are attached to show some of the stuff I've been talking about. Anyhoo, enjoy your day everyone. :)