🌳🌳🌳 🤖⚡️🌳🌳🌳
Howdy. Here’s BANJOS 🪕 2nd blogpost! This week has been a bit slow on updates, but we have made some progress.
Game Design
From our prototype presentation, we received a lot of great feedback, which helped us narrow our scope and figure out which game mechanics we need to implement for the Alpha. We noticed that the main tool and ability for the variant and creator can be used in different ways, hence the players need to balance those actions out.
Variants
- use soldering tool to solder/desolder connections: which can solve puzzles and also mess with the map
- use soldering tool to attack clones
Creator
- control clones to attack variants
- control clones to fix any bugs that the variants made
We figured out another game mechanic for soldering. The variants need metal to solder connections, so we thought that they can scavenge through the remains of defeated clones to use as soldering material 💗 This way, the variants have more incentive to attack the clones.
Art
Artists worked on finishing prop sheets, starting variant animation, and map design.
Prop sheets
We decided to go with the round variant design since it was more deceptively cute despite the sad nature of the game.
Animation
The artist created an 8 direction isometric sprite in illustrator/after effects. However, it was difficult to draw certain objects from an isometric perspective, also the workload would increase tenfold since the variant needs to be animated in 8 directions. So the artist created a 3D model in Blender and rigged it. Moving on, it would be much easier to animate in 3D, and it matches the 3D background components and environment.
Map
The artist modeled components in 3D and started creating the map design in unity.
Programming
The programmers worked on implementing networking properly and cleaning up player movement mechanics.
Sound
The sound designer continued to develop the sound loops for the action and ambient loops.
Next Steps
Our next steps include in preparation for Alpha are:
- finish the 3D model, walking animations, fighting animation, soldering animation
- finish map design, implement the component puzzles
- implement networking
- implement all 3D assets
If we are able to finish a playable prototype, we will conduct playtesting before our Alpha presentation.