Development continues

Hello again! We are finally back from our spring break and ready to continue the development sprints. During the last half a week we finished off many of our tasks, mechanics and art alike!

Game loops for days

We finished the core game loop. Basically that means the game is finally fully playable, in theory at least! Menus don't exactly look pretty and the whole experience is still a little clunky, but now the basics are down and we can concentrate our efforts into polishing it. Once we get controller navigation for the UI, the whole experience will get to another level.

For now the game will go on until one of the players reaches three points, but we'll make match settings so later you can change the goal freely. You might also notice some placeholder powerup stuff between the rounds but those don't really do anything yet, so just click the brown square to continue the rounds.

New old mechanics

During the prototyping stage we created many interesting mechanics, but those were sadly not present in the first production build. Since we switched into using the Gameplay Ability System, we had to redo most of the code, but now everything is much more robust and customizable for the future development. 

We used this last week to bring many of those old systems into the new project and into GAS, such as timed bounce, bullet redirection and more. Things like parry, powerups and pickups will come next week, hopefully.

Level graphics update

Since our last update, the main level got a graphical update. We added textures and proper models for the platforms, walls, and ceiling. Alongside those came a couple of reusable decals with lights and normal maps that add a bit more detail to the scene. We are still missing a background and lighting is a bit off, but those will follow shortly.

Player character

The main player character is also here looking good and ready to be put in the game as a placeholder. It's not rigged yet but that will be the next step, along with all the animations. A lot of work ahead!

We still have to decide if we want to keep the emissive material, but for now the first iteration of the material is ready as well! We'll fix many lighting issues later on during the polish sprint.

That's it for this week! By the next week's update, we'll hopefully have much more effects flying about and most of the core mechanics ready. Hope to see you then!