Hello everyone!

The production of our game is nearing it’s end. This week we have been working on polishing several aspects, such as the UI and player feedback during the game. Let’s look into more detail what that all entails.

Programming

Just a previous weeks, we worked on resolving several bugs within our game. A funny one we encountered was a scaling bug that made the cursor of the player comically large. Turns out that was caused by something we did wrong back when we added the cursor, but decided to only show up while polishing the cursor.

There were (and still are) quite a few possibilities in our game to add polish. 

One area we spent time on this week was the player UI. Up till now, it was not entirely clear who’s turn it is (the transparent cursor was not always enough). So we decided to make the player HUD in each corner react the same way as the cursor, it becomes transparent when it is not that player’s turn. In addition to that, we made both the hud and the cursor grow a bit in size to strengthen it further. 

The balancing timer now wiggles around when it is active instead of being a static image. In a similar fashion, the powerups in your inventory wiggle when the powerup usage timer is active.

Another area we spent some time in was the way powerups are achieved. Before, you got a boring static text telling you you received a powerup and it then pops up in your inventory slot. Now, the powerup appears on screen and then flies to the correct slot in your inventory.

There’s also an area we haven’t put much thought into till this week, sounds. While there were already some sounds in the game before, much of the game’s events didn’t have a sound yet, so that is something we also fixed a bit this week. There is still some work, but most events now have their own sound.

We also made a small change to how the block pickup works - nothing big - we noticed that some people preferred to hold the button whereas others preferred to tap the button to pick up the block. Without changing much to the existing code, this is now possible.

Art

First week of polishing!!! The art team sat down together and identified and jotted down every possible thing we would like to see polished. Here is a documentation of the notable things that have received a gentle dusting of polish this past week!

We identified that the crown didnt particularly stand out whenever you got hold of it. We pushed to make it more eye-catching by giving it an animated glint. Next week you should also see it have some little animated stars around it. This was done by drawing up a spritesheet and looping through the different sprites in an animation.

The particle systems felt a little bland, soulless if you will. These have been brightened up with some color tints to make everything feel more alive and in touch with the games’ otherwise colorful nature.

The Toucan’s tantrum lines were always visible. That looked a little silly, and it was concluded, that it would have way more visual impact, if it only popped out whenever the toucan was hit. Simple little task right? (It was not). We had to re-rig the toucan with a new bone to control the visibility of the tantrum line, and then reskin the model, and lastly, add onto the existing animation. This of course came with its own set of problems, as the Toucan seemingly forgot it was a skinned mesh, and caused our dear artist some headache. BUT. Fortunately, it is now working, and the built up frustration can once again be taken out on everyones favourite target dummy :)

We also added a wind animation to the foliage to introduce some movement and life to the scene, the scene with animated foliage appears more alive now. 

Only one week left before production is halted! We are planning to add a few more things to the menu, such as a short tutorial and controls and work a bit on how the powerups are activated. The artists will also polish up our Itch page to make it look much better!

See you all next week for the final devlog!