For the fourth week, the team was made aware that any final visual design changes need to be finished up due to the submission towards the PGF exhibition. This meant that the visual team had to crunch up with any needed Unity level design changes and implement them on time. This week Nathan and Evie have made major texture and asset changes to the environmental props, making drastic changes to the lighting and visual appeal of the game. The PGF poster was also finalised and submitted for the printing. Lewis has implemented the most current corpse models into the game and applied an updated scoring system that would be relevant to different body categories and scoring.  

For the upcoming week, the team is going to be looking at continuation of the new burial mechanic, as well as expansion on the merchandise. Animation blocking and sound design will start to be implemented and tested within upcoming week. 

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer & Marketing)

My emphasis this week was to finalise the poster after the initial ideation, based on the audience’s and team’s critique and feedback. In the beginning of the week, I have provided colour tests and possible alterations that could be beneficial for the readability of the design. Once the feedback went through, I proceeded onto the rendering and touching up the final poster illustration. Due to the sizing required, I have used a vector line-art to minimize the pixel loss and avoid blurriness in the final look. I have also looked into the planning reschedule for the team and made up a timeline calendar to avoid disturbance or overload of work in different weeks. My upcoming plans are to keep working on the merchandise products and finalise the budget for the team’s printing allowance. 

Nathan (Design Lead)

This week was the mad dash to get all of the art assets for the level finalised. I worked mostly with Evie to get all of the final additions into the game in under 3 days so we had the highest quality screenshots we could get for our promotional material for PGF. I worked on creating the coastline in addition to a couple of new environmental props for the level. I was also in charge of laying out all of our assets on the map to make the most visually appealing layout possible. Once this was done I took our 3 promotional in-game screenshots ready to be used for our marketing.

Evie (Art Lead & Marketing)

This week I was finalising some asset design for the level with Nathan. We were adding important finishing touches to improve the overall appearance of the level. I provided him with a sketch for the riverbed to model out that added some organic shapes to the shoreline, along with some bullrush and stones. I also created a tiling road asset which I UV unwrapped and textured. Using Nathan’s original fence asset I created 2 more variations which showed some wear by bending the pickets, this would add more variation and interest to the fence line in the level, I unwrapped and textured these assets too

Lewis (Tech Lead)

This week I implemented the Evie’s new corpse models, including rigging them for ragdoll. I changed the scoring system to require different disposal methods for the two main types – soldier and plague bodies. The cart delivery system is also fixed now and no longer requires a hacky workaround at the point where the corpses are dumped from the cart. Now, the cart delivers the actual corpses that end up being dumped, meaning the groundwork is in place for a wave system with endless possible variations of body types and amounts. My job now is to implement the preparation system for the special requirement bodies.

Theresa (Test Lead)

Focus on this week was coming up with a boat model and boatman for delivering the special body types. This is something was we wanted to be ready for the Perth Game Festival mid September. I started with gathering references for the boat and the boatman, then moving onto doing several concept sketches for the team to go over with. After we finalised on a design for both, I went and spend a bit of time trying to figure a boat model since I haven't really done one before. It took a while to figure out the right shape, but I did end up with a boat that I was pretty satisfied with. The next thing to focus on is a working rig and animation on the low poly player/boatman model. It's going to take a bit of time to figure out how to animate the low poly model to have movement without breaking the model.