Introduction:

Wow, one more week and that's it. The game is finished no matter what, whether we like it or not. And let me tell you people, my stress has reached an all time peak. However, with how well the first week went , my confidence has resurfaced and now I'm definitely sure, that we'll bring this project to a great end. I mean, we have to, there's not really any other option.

We've had already an idea of what we could polish on but we still had some difficulty coming up with other tasks that we could polish up on. So during a campus organized study night, we had a game testing session within one of the classrooms, calling in all possible contacts we had on campus so we had players to try out the game. Even some of the professors joined in on the fun and tried out our game. From the feedback we had gotten, we easily filled up our polishing tasks.

And the result of the entire playtesting session, was that though our game lacked a bit on the visual front, the overal gameplay however is so much fun. People had a good time screwing over each other, stealing everything that wasn't nailed down, and being absolute menaces within the mansion. Some even said that we had the most fun game of all the games they've tried within other game projects, and let me tell you that was a wonderful ego boost to get.

Art Section:

So for the artists, their polish tasks was finishing off some of the previous tasks they still had to and overal clean up the level a bit more. Making it look presentable now that we have a clear idea on how the level looks, and just making a nicer visual to look at. Mostly Matteo busied himself with this task, fixing a previous floor texture that looked a bit too much like the inside of an ancient aztec temple, straight out of a Lara Croft game. So he went about  denoising the material a bit more so now looks more like a marble floor, matching his original vision.

Along with this, he also added some frame on the door, hopefully making it less weird for the sudden material transitions on the floor. Giving a more natural feel to the level, and removing some of the amatuerishness of our game. Because at the end of the day, this is a game made by professionals who definitely know what they were doing.

Along with this he worked on making some of the custom icons that we'll use within the game, such as the deposit and threat icons that we're previously just place holders I found on the internet. Now we finally have some customs, though much to Matteo's sadness I haven't implemented them yet so you won't see them in this build. However for now you can look at the images found below. Expect them to be implemented in the final build.

Over on Tommy's side, he's been busy finishing off some of the most important models within the game, specifically the player and the guard. Letting us finally move away from that damned basic unity materials, in to more simplistic looking materials, hooray. Along with this, he did a redesign of the guard whereby he moved away from the very grey colour scheme that they already had to one with just a tiny bit more splash of character. Also the player characters have names now, this is an important addition to the Master Thief Showdown lore.

This is done because we got a lot of feedback from players having difficulty spotting the guards within the level which honestly makes sense because the entire floor of the level is mostly grey. Now that I think about it, we should have seen this coming from a mile away but you know what, better late than never.

Finally, Tommy also worked on creating the Game Info screen as well as other screen we can use for the UI. Next week, we'll finally move away from the placeholder, ugly looking UI to one that is more presentable within the final product. We already found a very nice and useable UI asset pack for us to use so this implementation should be done very quickly.

Programming Section:

Now on the programming section, we busied ourselves adding small quality of life changes and doing a lot of bug fixes for previous mechanics that needed some refining. For instance, the pop-up buttons should now be more consistent within the game, so they can only appear when you can actually effectively pick up the object, and they shouldn't be hanging anymore while the player holds the valuable.

Cristian worked on fixing the guard behaviour a bit more, making sure that the patrol paths now all work effectively since some of them sometimes broke randomly when guards we're going along them. They should now be all refined, and working properly. Additionally, he worked on refining some of the animations and adding some new ones along with a dust effect for when the player walks. You might have noticed that the win screen now includes more animations for the players to perform based on whether they lost or won game, you can thank Cristian on bringing more spice there.

Raphael, meanwhile, worked on adding a player select screen so now all of you have proper knowledge on what you need to do in order to start playing our game. Now that I think about it, that was probably something that should have been added a long time ago but once again, better late than never. He was also the one that picked out all of the names, very nice. Additionally, he was the one that made the fix of  the pop-up buttons, the poor man was wrestling a bit with it but I think he managed to finally tame this ferocious dragon. Finally, he went over the level one more time, changing some of the spawn points and the values of the valuables to start balancing the game more. Since you know, its a bit overpowered having only one object be six hundred points and all the others only a hundred.

And I worked on adding all of the sound effects within the game as well as music, giving more sound and feedback to actions that the player takes within the level. I had to dust off some old audio editing skills and search through the library of Alexandria equivalent of an audio library I got off somebody. In order to not ruin the magic of the soundtrack, we totally did not just take it all from an free asset pack I found in Unity, definitely not. No reason to look in the credits file. In other news, I also made some small bug fixes, mostly concerning with the UI of the game. Making sure that there is no rumbling within the pause menu and additionally a small bug with the guards falling though the floor when they get stunned.

And that just about covers it, next week is the final week of polishing, and you should see the debut of our game. Hope you guys had fun watching the development of this game, and I'll see you for the final release.