11-06-2024

Hello! Over the past two weeks we began implementing feedback from our first week of playtesting.

Progress

Programming

• UI
  • Added a settings menu to adjust volume and camera sensitivity
  • Used Unity's Input system for navigation to make it more consistent
• Updated the rail grinding to be more consistent
  • Added particle effects when the player is sliding along the rail
  • Updated collisions so the player cannot snap to the rail from underneath it
  • Improved the detection of the rail, so the player is not immediately launched off it
• Fixed some camera bugs, that caused the player to get farther from the camera as they get farther away
• Added more feedback for the competition of combos, including different text colours, a higher jump, and particle effects.

Art

Our art team began to develop more assets for the town section of our game, and worked on additional trick animations.

• Two modeled and textured houses
• Developed a skybox with clouds
• Blocked out 4 different trick animations.
• Completed rock and terrain assets

Audio

• Finalized a faster main and more energetic main theme for the game. 

Challenges

• Programming:
  • We found that our current combo system is very limited. We want to investigate more ways to reward the player for moving around our level
  • The current level feels too big at the moment,  we need to find a way to compress it, and make it clear where the player can go.
  • We also need more respawn locations for our player, since the current respawn can be a bit jarring
• Art
  • Some of Maya's deformers don't work in Unity, which makes importing animations difficult. 

Next Steps

Programming

We've outlined the following tasks we are aiming to complete before our Alpha presentation this Wednesday.

• Redesign the level to make it smaller and more readable
• Flesh out the combo system, by adding more feedback, and adding more actions that give the player points, including:
  • Jumping off of different objects
  • Traversing the map
  • Jumping from a high location
  • Chaining together different tricks
  • Moving along rails

Art

• Resolve import issues with animations
• Potentially add shaders to make the game feel more vibrant
• Update grass texture

Audio

• No specific items at the moment, but the changes to our combo system will likely require new sound effects.

See you next week!