This week was focused on fixing small bugs that were occurring, and creating a small portion of a level to be used for playtesting. We wanted to create a portion of the game that will be used to make a moment, and decided to make a portion where the father is high up on a cliff, while the daughter is below. The game will show the two of them close to each other, but not close enough where they can meet.
To help create this moment, we started to create sounds to help players feel more like inside the game and create the mood. We have implemented footstep sounds on grass, a gunshot, the rattling of a lantern, and ambience noises that are associated with nighttime in a forest. The footstep is set responsive with the walking/running speed, also set up the discrete terrain in FMOD so that later on we can easily assemble footsteps for different ground types. The rattling of the lantern is set to randomly occur, and is currently attached to only the father. The ambient sound currently is a mixture of a night owl, a raven scream, insects, wind and tree leaves, to give a vibe of immersion in the deep night forest. The ambient sound later on can be set more random so that players don’t feel the loop. For theme music, we have a draft for now, where piano and light sounds represent the daughter, while the cello and heavy instruments represent the father. We have set them separately for left and right channels, making it more asymmetrical, the mood is supposed to be dark and sad.
This week was also spent correcting the lighting on the daughter’s frames and other cosmetic changes. We also finished all running animations for the father, and fixed all animations for the daughter and father. These animations work for both keyboard and gamepad. For keyboard, it can move diagonally if multiple of the keys are pressed at once, and for a gamepad, the degree at which the joystick is moved decides the direction. Depending on the direction the daughter or father was moving also changes the direction the daughter and father face when they are idle. An example of this is if the daughter runs east and stops moving, she will face east when idle, but if she runs west and stops moving, she will face west when idle.
Monster concept art has also been drafted for the game. The monster will look like a clump of different body parts mashed together to form almost a blob. Throughout the game, it will mostly be just portions of the monster being shown, and it will only show the shadow of the monster. The reasoning is that having an “amalgamation” type monster requires less frames to draw, as one animation cycle can be used for any direction. Also, glimpses of it seen through the trees can mislead the player early on, with suspense and confusion building as more limbs are revealed.
For the coding, we have fixed some bugs from our prototype, and have added new game mechanics. We fixed the shooting mechanic so it feels better to use. The bullet is no longer a rigidbody moving through the scene; instead, the father does a Raycast and the bullet instantaneously travels to its destination, and we also removed the explosion animation. There are destructible objects, such as logs, that can be placed and the father can shoot to destroy. We are thinking about replacing the explosion animation with a little bullet spark that emits from the hit point.
The daughter has the hiding mechanic already implemented, but we have now also added the ability for the daughter to collect objects she finds while in the forest. The daughter will be able to go through the map and discover objects to help shape the narrative of the story. Knowing that our game will be heavily narrative based, we knew that we wanted to have dialogue in our game. Therefore, we have created a very simple dialogue display to playtest and determine where we should put the dialogue, along with if there should be two boxes (one for daughter and one for father), or the daughter and father to share one dialogue box.
To make the game feel more asymmetric, we have also changed the lighting for the daughter. While the father carries a lantern which allows him to see his surroundings in all directions, the daughter will carry a flashlight and therefore can only see a small portion of the surroundings in front of her. We will introduce this for playtesting and determine if we will keep this lighting for the daughter, or change it so the daughter is also carrying a lantern. We have yet to decide, so we are holding off on redrawing the daughter’s arm in all the frames holding a light source.
The level is quite simple, in which the daughter is able to collect an object and reach the bottom of the cliff, while the father goes up the cliff, having to shoot a fence and destroy it to reach the top. For the prototype, we used assets instead of using terrain, but this week we have moved to using the terrain tool on Unity.
Next week, we are planning on making changes based on the feedback we receive from playtesting. Some things that may change based on playtesting include the lighting for the daughter, where the dialogue boxes appear, and the way the level is laid out. We also would like to make small fixes that will create a better experience for the player, such as having the trees in front of the camera and player fade out. Additionally, we would like to begin some initial testing with toon shading and changing the look of the daughter’s screen vs the father’s screen. Art-wise, we’re hoping to finish up the majority of essential animations such as the shooting animations, monster animations, and daughter hiding animations by early next week. After these are completed, we can start on refining our existing ones and adding smaller improvements to enhance the feel of the game. Besides that, we are also going to start on UI and in-game items to build out the story.