Three days have past, and things are moving along. We started working on the presentation for the Alpha, and since our lead has so many other things to deal with right now I helped put it together. I’ve talked to both artists and programmers, making sure we got some art progress to show off, along with a build containing all the elements we want to show.
We’ve also discussed hazards/ traps. A suggestion to add something more to make the levels more interesting and engaging for the player came up. We had to discuss whether or not these traps could harm enemies, since if it’s possible to just lead the enemies around and into hazards the combat aspect can be ignored completely, and that’s our most important part. It was also suggested to add stuff like lava as some sort of platforming challenge, where my biggest problem was that we would have to change the health system and it deviates too far from the genre of the game to just have pure platforming rooms.
Jumping over lava out of combat is completely useless, since when you are not in combat you regenerate health. Changing this system and designing something new would take too long, and we could actually just adapt the new thing to fit what we already have. I came with the suggestion to use ranged enemies together with the traps, even if they are inaccessible to fight. This would put another threat in there together with the hazard, keeping the game action-filled, and also solve the health regeneration problem. You’ll be within the aggressive range of the enemies, meaning that you are in combat. Having enemies that you cannot hit could take away from the combat-focused core of the game, but it’s a good compromise for mixing up gameplay, and these rooms would be rare.
After some discussion with both programmers and artists we decided that these hazards were worth adding, as they would take maybe two extra days to implement while adding a lot to the game.
I’ve had to jump in to fill out some VFX and SFX things, to get the documents clear and structured. The new hazards also means that those documents need to get new additions, like a different walking sound when the player walks through the slowing tarr. I’ve also had to keep track of the GDD, as usual, making sure that every new addition is readable, but also doesn’t contradict anything we’ve written earlier. The document is starting to get really long and hard to keep track of.
We have also finally gotten in contact with our sound people, and so far they seem excited to get started. Start up meeting during Friday afternoon went really well. They had all read most of the GDD and gotten started with thinking even before we handed them the SFX sheet, which tells me that they’re genuinely interested in doing a good job. They seem to understand the general idea and general setting of the game well, so things are looking bright for now.
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