This was a good sprint, everybody got lots of important things done, and I didn't need to overextend as much to complete other pieces of work. I stuck to what was assigned to me and got it done, with a total of 16 points completed.
I started by finishing our explosives, fixing their bugs, and adding propane tanks. Below you can see the fun, unpredictable nature of our propane tanks in their full glory.
This mechanic was fun to deal with and build levels for. I even was able to teach the player about them well after observing some of our early playtest data. This was a great addition that didn't take too much time and adds a lot of value to our game.
Next you can see below I finally got our new goober models into the game, which took a long amount of time. However, this was expected since I made sure to make a simple version of our goobers earlier in the project. This was the right decision as it got me intimately involved with the time and difficulty to build a ragdoll like this. I knew that it would require a simple model with joints, a good weight painted skin, and some adjustable materials so we could color them properly. This all resulted in us budgeting our time for this goober to be implemented, as well as a quality final goober with little to no difficulty implementing, as I had learned the quirks of the system earlier in the project.
I also added some blood effects to the game. This didn't make it in our final build as our programmer couldn't yet add the setting to disable this, however its a good thing I got this out of the way. As we approach our final sprints, we have decided to cut gore and blood decals from the game, as they are purely visual and do not contribute to the gameplay.
I also completed this sprint by reworking all of the initial levels to have tutorial tips instead of big walls of text to read. We will see how well this worked when our playtest data is in, however I think it will do well. However, we were not fast enough to implement this for our railgun, which is showing us that it will take a lot of time to add tips for every new tool we add. Therefore, we have removed the water gun and fire spreading plans for this game as we approach the end. We are happy with our current product and want to simply polish what is there for a fun game. This allows us to build a good portfolio piece rather than a scattered, large game, that is a drag to play through.
I also reworked the levels from the first build to more slowly take the player through the mechanics, which I will soon be testing with some "cleanex testers" to make sure this properly escalates difficulty. I also added a few entirely new levels, and one final level that I view as being a more difficult one.
I am however worried that our more difficult levels are not difficult in skilll, but rather for the player to maintain patience to complete. This is bad, and results in a boring game. We need to quickly find a way to combat this, and I have a feeling it is by coming up with more creative levels, which is more difficult to do. I will have to shorten our expected level count to perhaps 10 or 15 so that we can spend time building more unique puzzles, rather than large structures that take patience to tear apart.
As long as our team stays vigilant and continues to do their part I believe we are on our way to having a fun, small game to release.
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