Setbacks

After a long week of picking up the shards of our dignity and ensuring a proper team morale, we were ready to get back to work. Due to a lack of enough playable content, we were obliged to stay for another week in semi-prototyping mode and be sure that everything is finalized and fun enough to keep working on.

Our fingers remain crossed.

Technical Updates

Our camera finally works as it should, and follows a smoother trajectory, with a slower start. Instead of moving in a straight line, it is easily adjustable thanks to targets that can be placed and moved at will throughout different levels. This should allow us to emphasize the vertical aspects of our game more, and leave enough creative room to include more daring jumps and a less predictable obstacle course.

Speaking of obstacles, we have decided to include different platforms to enhance the fun factor. Ones that rotate or move from side to side will force players to time their jumps more carefully. They have yet to be added into the actual game. The jump-related bug has also been fixed.

We have successfully created item pickups to spice up the gameplay! These consist of sugar cubes for a temporary speed raise, a spit ball set to stun any player that is hit by the projectile, and a pack of bubble gum which would either be used as an invincibility shield, or as a projectile to be thrown and trap other players. They have all been successfully programmed and implemented.

As for the actual players, having only one life (that is quickly used up and leaves the player to watch the rest of the game in a rather bored fashion) seemed very unfair, so we’ll change the amount of ‘lives’ that every player has at the start of each level. This has to be discussed further and more in-depth.

Graphical Updates

Item pickups have been successfully created. The textures remain simple so far, although we hope to elaborate upon them a little more soon. Below, you can see a screenshot of the spitball set, the stack of sugar cubes, and the bubblegum, from left to right.

The models and textures for the traps have been successfully created. They have sharp, dramatic shapes and colours to fully emphasize the danger of each individual trap. Below, you will see the spikes, the ice, and the glue traps.

Otherwise, we’ve also been working on a parallax background for our basic level, complete with bright colours and a deepening effect when one would peek out of the window. Along with this, we’ve added a matching thumbnail for our project.

Climbing back up

Overall, it might have been a bit of a rough week, but we strongly believe that with such a challenge comes great progress that we will be able to showcase in future updates, and once we get back up to speed.

Further playtesting will be very much necessary and at the core of our production in the few upcoming weeks. With every new obstacle we place, the more we have to take into consideration to balance elements of an obstacle course and speed running, to eventually form a cohesive and extremely fun set of playable levels.

Thank you for following the development of Trash Travellers!