UI/UX
This week, I showed the team the UI I finished up last week and made improvements based on their feedback. For the bag, I changed the background color, the shape of the boxes, and the hierarchy of the page. I also showed how an item would look inside one of the boxes. To make sure the letters are visible, I gave them an outline and upped the contrast. This helps make the letters more visible.
Screen Recording 2023-03-31 at 4.48.49 PM.mov
I also worked on a paintbrush item that would allow players to draw around the ghosts as part of one of the combat rituals. It is still a work in progress. This needs to be vectorized and also needs to feel less like a paintbrush and more like a magic wand.
Art
We created a 3d model for Richardson’s character. I wanted to make sure his design was very round and friendly looking.
We also made a player character design, but we may change the colors in the future to differentiate it more from Richardson. We want something very simple and relatively androgynous so any player can be represented by this sprite.
We also made several different designs for Agathe, the opera singer and mother of Alex. I focused on having an older woman feel through the mature outfit and voluptuous dress, as well as the rosy cheeks and friendly smile. The opera gloves and fancy/dramatic dress and hat help cement her design as a dramatic opera woman. I also thought that the mushroom hat could match her husband Guillaume’s leaf head. The final design is the 2nd design with the brown bodice and no bow (for modelling simplicity).
We were also able to translate her design into the 3D model, where we added a pearl necklace onto the texture of her bodice. We may still tweak some of the colors, but this is a basically a final version.
Programming
For programming this week, we reworked the GameManager and GameSceneManager to handle each ghost encounter as its own scene. This is done through the use of additive scenes. Additive scenes load the map as well as the individual scenes. For the map, cameras are swapped back and forth.
Additionally, we polished the DialogueManager. It now hooks up to the ghosts in their scenes to show the appropriate dialogue. We’ve also started integrating the tutorial with the DialogueManager.
Finally, UI bugs were fixed.