Dev Log #5 | 8 Weeks into the second half of development time

In the past six weeks, we've made a ton of progress on many aspects of our game. Unlike our previous log, where we ended up changing our game's entire art style and many mechanics, our recent development has been solidifying our current systems, building them out, and refining them. In this time we also fixed up some of our key binds to make them make more sense, and added controller support.

TUTORIAL

Our game had no tutorial prior to this Dev Log, and despite the fact our game is relatively simple, there was definitely a need for guidance towards the beginning. We now have a designated tutorial level that helps players get acquainted with our systems, which includes waking up in a trash can with a missing arm and "acquiring" a new one. We made sure to add support for keyboard and controller players in the tutorial so that people on the controller aren't scratching their heads trying to figure out how to hit the spacebar on an Xbox controller.

LEVEL 1 REFINEMENT

We still only have one full level, however, this level from start to finish feels much different. The level is broken up into sections, just as it had been before with the exception being there are defined barricades for each section rather than invisible walls that are integrated into the world, with examples being fences to block off alleyways and emergency exits to enter a hotel. There are new props and decorations littering the city just for flavor as well. We also changed how enemies drop limbs, where before it was a random chance for any limb to drop, now it is guaranteed for each cluster to drop a specific limb. There are also enemy variations towards the end of the level that are larger and do more damage, just to break up the fights into variations. This is on top of a new system we implemented which allows our enemies to be affected by physics, which is a large part of this game. The last major refinement to level 1 was that we changed the win condition from walking under a bridge to jumping down a massive pitfall, which leads into the transition to level 2.

FEATURES AND OTHER NEW STUFF

-Music | We now have dynamic music that changes in intensity based on factors presented throughout each level

-Levels | Level 1 is fully flushed out with new locations, better decoration, and new enemy varieties, and level 2 is in-engine and being developed currently

-Sounds | Almost everything that you would think needs a sound has one now, and we have a pretty robust new method for handling sounds which allows us to add variations to sounds easily. There are also loudspeaker voices throughout the city which add to the worldbuilding, and the tutorial has a doctor character that guides you through using the limb-swapping system

-Limbs | Leg swapping now has an animation with it, and there are two new limbs in the game: a grappling hook arm and a heavy machinery leg that lets you crush your opponents!

-UI Improvements | Last time we said this it was just adding textures to make it look better, this time everything is actually better in the sense that the UI is laid out in a more intuitive way and functions better

-Code Robustness | Many of our scripts had fail conditions due to system rewrites that caused the game to be unplayable, but that behavior is gone now and replaced with code that allows easier expansion

-AI | Our old enemy AI system was pretty rough, however now they work as intended and can choose between a few different behaviors, as well as get affected by physics allowing cool interactions such as; throwing a couch at an enemy to kill them or grabbing them with a grapple hook and whipping them across the map.

-Controller Support | yeah

-General Adjustments | Changes to a few variables in our game, such as slide speed and grapple strength.