Posted October 11, 2022 by Brodie Farrell-Oates
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh it's the final week. We're not crying, you're crying!
First up we adjusted the grid pattern shader for the boundary wall so that it works seamlessly for the corners. We also adjusted the boundary walls from 4 separate planes (that weren't correctly aligned) to a cube. Now the corners look much tidier!
One of the comments we received was that the shield not fully surrounding the player made it seem like the shield required some sense of aiming, or facing in the right direction for it to be effective. We have now switched to cylinder based shield that fully surround the player. We have still left the top open as this causes a nice visible line on the players first person view to help them see that their shield is active.
The settings screen finally got implemented with several options added.
Firstly, we found that the main font we're using (Goma Western) can be a bit hard to read for some players, particularly those with cognitive issues affecting their reading perception. Therefore we added a toggle to switch between the normal font and a simple sans-serif font.
We then added the ability to set the round timer. It can be toggled between 15, 30 and 60 seconds.
The EMP blast effects were tidied up and the player who dies now falls into pieces in a rather hilarious fashion!
Some care was taken to tidy up materials to get things looking a little more consistent- now almost everything in the level is using some swanky cel-shading.
Player animations were implemented using shape keys (animation created by directly animating the mesh), rather than a full armature system (due to some complications) but this resulted in a walking animation with more swagger than a boxing champion making their way to the ring. And the idle animation is cool too, I guess.
The level was adjusted to be a single lane down the middle with a saloon on each side. Each saloon has a staircase to the roof that faces the spawning player, allowing you to break away in the initial 3 second pre-round timer.
A couple extra assets were also made such as a undertaker building and a hanging bar.
We also worked on tumbleweeds that roll around the level to really drive in the cartoonish wild-west feeling, which have force applied to them based on an invisible tumbleweed controller so they all move in roughly the same direction, which changes from time to time, like they're being blown by the wind.
And eagle-eyed players can spot something beyond the barrier now. Figures watching from beyond distorted glass from a room that defies space? I guess you'd better keep things entertaining down there. This room effect was done by using a glass shader with a normal map as well as hiding the outside walls of the room with a shader that writes to the z-buffer without an actual material, hiding things behind it.