After a long PGF days and nights of work, the team has taken a small break from the stress and production to work on smaller changes and tweaks this week. We have sat down together as a team to determine how the game was going so far and what changes and challenges we encountered with the play testers. In continuation from existing content, the team’s plan is to create 2 more levels in the game and push it further as an art team, while Lewis is working on fixing the bugs that we have recorded after the PGF. Meanwhile, Teresa has been collecting extra feedback from external playtesters to “break” the game and find any extra bugs that might be an issue. In the future week, we are continuing the work on the levels and bugs, while also dipping our toes into working on 2D and 3D animations.

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

Kris (Producer and Marketing)

This week I have sat down and review how our game played and read through Teresa’s feedback documents to determinate how the main playability of the game was viewed by the play testers. There were multiple tweaks and changes that needed to be done and implemented to make the game more playable. I have also started working on the gameflow and breakdown for the other 2 levels to determine what would be included in them and what mechanics we needed to have. This would be discussed with the team to make sure all of us agree and implement any adjustments if needed. 

Nathan (Design Lead)

I spent this week focusing on creating the additional levels for the game. Starting initially with the 2nd level planned, I used the concept level layout given by Kris to create the new scene. I am yet to add the different lighting effects we want to have for the different levels or any additional scripting functionality outside of the prefabs being in place. Over the next 2 weeks I plan on finalising the 2nd level and finish the planned 1st level.

Evie (Art Lead and Marketing)

This week I got feedback on level some preliminary designs for level one and then finalised the level design with a concept art. The design incorporates all the base mechanics in their most basic form to help the players get used to how the gameplay feels. It is a simple 3 room layout and I tried to design it to ensure that players would move evenly around different areas of the map. I had a bit of trial and error with the sizing and aspect of the map since I wanted it to be slightly smaller than the second level but not too cramped, I also received some feedback on the sizing which I made sure to apply to the final design.

Lewis (Tech Lead)

I spent this week trying to fix some of the game's most severe bugs. Firstly, I added an internal timer to the wave system so that the cart deliveries are able to continue even if more than 3 bodies are unaccounted for. The next wave can still be triggered early by disposing of all but 3 bodies, however. I also added code for activating and deactivacting the ragdoll physics for the corpses as needed, which has finally fixed the bug that caused the bodies to "vibrate" more and more aggressively the longer they remained laying in the same spot on the ground. Both of these fixes have caused further bugs that need to be addressed. My next task is to implement a minigame for disposing of bodies in the furnace.

Teresa (Test Lead)

I was busy with arranging external playtesting last week and that would continue until the of this week. I just want to make sure there's enough feedback and bug reports before we start testing out future builds. After the playtesting is wrapped up, I will be working on adding new animations for player and environment interactions.