Devlog. 3: Final Game Prototype

Introduction: 

Hello everyone to this week's addition of the devlog, this weeks is an important milestone for us for we needed to make a finished game prototype to present to our course moderators and based on what they see, they will decide whether we can enter the first production sprint or whether we have to go back to the drawing board and start from the complete beginning. We are all praying to respective God that this doesn't happen, so for that we have been hard at work making sure we have a playable version of the prototype with a gameplay loop, a beginning and an end, and finally a way for the player to be impeded and lose.

Along with this, we focused on preparing for this, hopefully, future production sprint by creating a complete design model of the game and adding all possible tasks that are associated with implementing all of out mechanics, assets and systems within the game. The write-up took a while but it was definitely worth it. We now have a clearer idea of what needs to be done in order for us to have a finished product along with how much time each part might take and just making it extra clear to us how much work we have ahead of ourselves. But this design model is also important in another way, because from this we're basing a Design Document that will have to be presented to the course moderators along with the the prototype. We hope that through this we can give them a clearer picture, and hopefully you too, of what we want to achieve with our bring and the type of experience we hope to create for you players!

In addition, our artists have been hard at work completing our Art Bible, making new additions to it and applying any given feedback that we have gotten. A few of these new additions will be shown in the Art Section, the rest will be kept secret so we don't spoil too much. All of this will help to further convince the course moderators to give us the green light to produce the final product and not be stuck in a prototyping hell for another week.

Art Section:

Our two artist, Matteo and Tommy, as previously mentioned were hard at work finishing off the Art Bible and the end product really looks nice. They added new chapters, talking about how the game's camera will be structured, its distance and angle from the player and showing references to other games that have similar camera's as ours. As well as a chapter detailing all the interactables within the game, the valuables that you'll be able to get your grubby hands on, along with traps that you might encounter on your robbery-filled frolic through the manor or those that you might find and use it for yourselves to impede any friends that you have unfortunately playing with you. You might be interested in knowing what each of these traps will do, welp you'll have to just wait to get a more clearer answer. So keep being updated with our progression! For now, you can settle on this little sneak peak into the new Art Bible.

Additonally, they added a chapter on the RTX effect that will populate all actions and movement within our finsihed game. Giving you a more immersive and responsive experience, and making you feel like you're playing a mondy morning cartoon about robbers stealing from the rich and, unlike Robin Hood, making themselves rich. As you can see, we were heavily by how Nintendo does their visual effects, a lot of games have the same feel that we're going with and this will hopefully give us direction into making our own. Tommy has already had fun designing how some of these will look so in the coming weeks, we might share some of the finished ones for you to see.

Our lighting expert, Matteo, has been personally hard at work creating the finished lighting of our game, adding new shaders and other lighting and rendering magic that I am not too smart to talk about. However, the end product of his work shows how much change he brought in. Compared to what it was the week prior, our game has become more presentable and personally, I am now able to proudly post it onto my SNS. He also added a new lightmask on all of the level's light to better detail the affected radius, so if you were thinking that you could complain that you don't know where the light stops and where it begins, well too bad, Matteo fixed the issue before you could even notice it. What a guy.

Our Tommy has been working on making the beginnings of the valuables as well as decour around the mansion, populating a previously empty level with assets and making it now a more liveable looking mansion. And hopefully, now sparking that inner hidden kleptomaniadc that calls for you to steal everything that isn't bolted and nailed to the ground. Maybe it won't be done just yet with a blank looking vase, but with more progress and some sparkly gold textures we hope we can achieve this experience for you guys. Below you'll find some images of their handy work.

Programming Section:

We programmers have also been hard at work, making sure that everything our artists have created won't just sit motionless within the level like a good looking still-life. So we've added new systems and behaviours to existing game objects like the guards and players to give a right and proper game feel to our finished prototype. Making sure that there's and actual start to the game, something for the players to compete over, and a way for one of these players to win and the others to use.

With this, we also focused on getting the design model and document written up. The design model now outlines every single mechanic, asset and system that we will need to implement for a completely finished final prodcut. Each of them also has an outline of any visual or audio aspects to it that will need to be implemented with them. We've also added estimated time costs to each of them, outlining how much time they might take up to better structure our work calender for the two production sprints. Of course, we purposefully overestimated the time for each of them, making sure that regardless whether the person is done early or requires extra time for them, which knowing how programming sometimes goes, it will definitely happen.

Additionaly, Cristian worked on finishing the Tech document to provide a smooth and developed production line for the whole team to adhere to so we don't have to deal with files that are forever lost within infinite folder structures and to be never found. So he detailed a complete folder structure, specifically for our project in unity and the coding paradigm that we programmers must follow to avoid any annoying confusions that might happen when merging code or working off each others. Believe me, programmers are prepared to kill each other over this so it is a must have for us.

Below you will find a few images of these.

Naturally, we programmers haven't only been typing out word documents, if we wanted to do that we would have instead become journalists or, god  forbid, bureaucrats. 

Our Raphael worked on developing our previous guards further, making them trickier to escape from and additionally expanding on the previous noise detection behaviour of the guards that had been created. Because sure, its nice for them to register that a sound wass made somewhere around them but if they don't really do anything with it then what was really the point of it all. So Raphael, to hopefully your future frustrations, added that the guard will go and inspect the origins of the sound with a new patrol behaviour along with it for you players to navigate around it and avoid the guards. However, we're throwing you a tiny bone, the cups now make noise too so you can distract the guards away from you or a better idea, attract them towards another player. Tricky stuff right?

On the other side, Cristian was working on getting the deposit point and point system working for the players, so now in the prototype you can actual do the primary mechanic of the game, stealing stuff, and be rewarded for doing so. Along with that, he made sure you won't have an easy time with the guard. When the guard reaches you, you will be caught and send back to your spwan point, so any extra future frustrations that you'll have can be thanked by our resident Moldovian. Along with all this, he added a fun throw mechanic for the valuables, so you have fun slinging them to his deposit points or at other player's heads. Your choice.

Finally, along side this, work was put in on making the first iteration of the player's HUD, a little counter the keep track of the points that the player collected. Also a countdown timer of five minutes that will be counted down and once the end is reached, the round is ended and in the end screen the winning player will be notified.

That was all for this week, we hope you have fun playing the finished game prototype. If you have any feedback to give or you find a few pesky bugs, please let us know. We are always looking to improve and learn from our own dumb mistakes.