Introduction:

Aaaaand welcome to the final devlog for the final production sprint! The finish line is close in sight and, opposite of a marathon runner who might have been relieved to see the end, we are all freaking out and running around trying to keep our nerves calm.  In total we have only two weeks left before we need to final version of the game. But right now, this is the final state when it comes to gameplay for our game.

The end of the final production marks the end of any new implementation for the game, any mechanics that we thought of adding to the game are now null and thrown to the wayside. Their home now perminant within the backlog of the project, never to see the daylight seeping in from the clouds above. So everyone say goodbye to them. If you can't tell, we're all a bit emotional from having to kill off some of these darling ideas like this, but hey, we'll live with it.

Luckily, not all ideas had to be exterminated, we managed to still implement a few before the deadline for the week came rolling by. So we managed to add a pair of traps and some extras for the menus and UI. Mostly the elements we found were the most important to add before we called quits on them.

Art Section:

Our artists bussied themselves with adding in the last of the important visual elements before the end, the ones that still required a lot of production to implement. So that all that was left to do during our two week polish sprint, is to implement them within the game and get them working. The two of them did a wonderful job on that front, getting a lot of them done and ready for implementation within the coming weeks, so with hope you can see the start of animations being present within the level.

Matteo finally finished off the materials, and on top of that, being the hardworking busy bee that he is, he even updated the wall meshes within the entire level. Finally moving away from that Unity cubeness, and into something that gives more identity to our game. Along with the colourful new materials for us to play with, the level now looks better than ever. Here, have a look at it yourselves.

Of course, this is just the first iteration of the design, we've got a lot of materials to play around with and we still need to see about what exactly will be made with what. For instance, presonally and don't tell Matteo about this, but the floors in the main hall could use a different material. Maybe some more woody, but these are all matters we need to discuss between each other. But the walls sure are looking better and honestly, I'm just happy I need to no longer look at different variations of the default blender cube. Hallelujah!

Along with this, Matteo also made a start in choosing out some UI asset packages for us to use for our UI in game, we planned to have more custom UI but well, its a bit too late to implement those. If only this course didn't give us a deadline on our game, and we can just keep working on this and asking delays from management. But this isn't the reality for us sadly.

Here's a sneak pick of some of these new UI's, you might have noticed we already started adding some of them to the game. Definitely the button icons below (yes its from Kenny, sue us why don't you(please don't we're students)) but hopefully you'll start to see some more descent looking UI in the future.

Meanwhile Tommy has been hard at work with creating the animations for both the guards and the players, making sure we have everything we might need in the future implementation of them. We sadly don't have a sneak peak available right now, but Tommy promised to have a gif we can show off to all of you next time. Hell, you might even experience some of them in the build.  Rest assured, we do have them and enought of them so Cristian can set to work putting them on.

On the side, Tommy has also made a start on polishing up some of the models within the game, playing colouring in with all of the previous very gray and bland models. You might already have spotted that the guards have a fresh coat of paint, you can almost hear them making happy beeping noises whereever they are moving around. Here's a look.

So all in all, the level and assets are all hopefully a lot more colourful looking, as colourful as a mansion in the night can be anyway. And much more of a pleasure to run around within with your friends. Better yet, this isn't the end for all of the visual improvements, the polishing will be a focus on these elements so be ready to see a more finished version in the future.

Programming Section:

We the programmers busied ourselves with the final implementation of some of the gameplay elements that had finished visual components made for them. Anything that still needed a model made for them, we sadly left behind. For instance, the fishing rod, an item you could have use to pull in your friends into shitty situations, is now forever left in the backlog. It would have been such a fun mechanic : ( , However, Cristian and Raphael managed to save two mechanics we were thinking of scraping too. 

Cristian set to work adding the trip wire, a trap that you place within the hallways and doorways to create a tripping hazard for all of the player within the game. And creating wonderful opportunities for you to sweep in and steal their loot for yourselves. Along with that, Cristian started implementing some of the visual effects within the game, which I won't show but you can have fun experiencing them during gameplay with your friends.

On the other side of the ocean, Raphael busied himself with the creation of the EMP trap within game, a little can filled with electrical discharge that you can drop anywhere want you to immediately disable any of your fellow players and guard that might have been running behind you. Perfect for last minute defensive plays where you have to ensure your safety in bringing the valuables to the deposit point.

At the same time, I was given the most fun tasks to work on. UI stuff, of course. But wait I'm a programmer? Yes I thought so too, but not anymore though, I have become what I'd like to call the gameplay artists, I should actually be in the art section but that means forever giving up on my programming dreams which you can forget about. So my tasks for this week was creating the pause menu along with the pausing logic and starting with the first update of the UI visuals.

As you can see, we have a new font for our text within the UI and little visual addition to give you much more straight forward time moving through the menus. So if it wasn't obvious before, you have to press the A button to select the button. The Game Info has also been updated, now having more visuals so you don't even have to activate your brain, you can just look at the picture. The buttons sadly still use the standard Unity buttons but hopefully by next week, now that we have settled on which UI asset packs to use, I can start implementing them too.

And that was that for the final week of proper production, the final additions have been made, now we'll busy ourselves patching some of the weirdness still happening within the level. Adding the final visuals, and preparing for the final upload. Please pray for our souls and sanity while we'll be running around like headless chickens. And thank you for staying with us for so long.