Production has started!

This week we still had some design choices to make so we tested a few more things in our prototype. We also started our actual prodcution week and we've been busy , take a peek!

Programming

As stated in the intro we updated our prototype to be more fun and enjoyable. The level was updated to be overall wider and the camera is now angled more downwards and is positioned higher up so that there is a bigger overview of the level. We also made it so that there is more incentive/possibilities for players to use the pick up items. Afterwards we started on the first sprint of production. Our programmers had a difficult time dealing with C++ and there are lots of small inconveniences that are unpredictable and slow down the development. Nevertheless we were able to get multiplayer working.

We have also been working on creating two obstacles: pundulum object and a spinning wheel. For spinning wheel i have created a C++ class which manages the main logic. For pendulum objects, which we have 2, i have made a base class BasePundulumObject and the inherited one - Hammer. Viusual part for both obstacles is ready, i have also put collision boxes there. For now player-collision mechanic does not work, because we don’t have a player yet. But i have already created all the functions which we need for this mechanic.

Art

We started out making a mood image of how the level is going to look like, we used the standart round brush and sketched out a viking, some traps, rocks and platforms and water underneath. Later we made horizontal axe designs and a final one with color, photobashes of a viking ai image to spark inspiration. Sketches of the silhouette of the viking, proportions, hands, muscle structure and a helmet. finally we found a design we were happy with and we gave him colors for diffrent players and done.

We made a research on Environment elements of the game, such as main light source which is directional light in Unreal Light. We found perfect settings for the light in our scene that fits the style and the setting (midsummer). The second element of the environments is the skybox. We made a stylized gradient skybox for our level. We modelled one of the pain pick up item- axe.We made different concepts for the axe and after testing how readable it is for the player from the choosen in-game camera angle, we picked the final concept model,imoroved it,made it more in the style of the game, texture it and put in the level. We made a swinging hammer model obstacle. In the low-poly style of the viking myth hammer Mjolnir. We made all main walkable platforms for our obstacle course. There are 3 different types of platforms Iron,Grass and Wooden platforms of two sizes 2x2 and 4x4 meters. These platforms are very modular and allow us to build an interesting and entertaining obstacle course's.

Sound

This week we spent designing most of the basic sounds for our character: footsteps and jumping sounds . Since we started working on our obstacles as well we've put some focus on those sounds as well. The spinning wheel sound took a little while to figure out but we got to a result we like currently, it sounds very old and creaky with heaviness to it. Currently none of it is implemented since we were still working hard on making the basic functionality. next week we will be focussing on implementing the sounds that were designed this week.