Hello everyone!

Welcome to another week of production!

This week we moved into the final production week so we tried to finish as much tasks as we could before we move onto the next phase of production.

Art

We ended up reworking the engine on the chair a little bit since before it didn't read as well as we intended.

Environment

We decorated some of the areas to get a clearer idea of what the final game will look like. For now we worked mostly on the kitchen and the ChillRoom area in the level.

We made some more assets this week which were also put in the level to test if they work togheter.

This week we also finished up the general blockout of the level.

Including NPCs, for which we downloaded various animations and set it up so they can be easily placed in the level.

Technical

This week we finished the main player mechanics, with the focus on creating a new and improved system for the speedCircle (which is used for momentum and to add velocity to the player, see previous devlogs) and creating a completely new mechanic. 

 The improvements on the speedCircle are purely visual, but they strongly impact gameplay. Now the player will be able to see the full circle most of the time, and a thin inner circle will grow and shrink along it, to indicate in which region the player is. It works the same as before. Hold down the button to make it start growing, and let go to stop. The regions of the circle are now: red, green, red, gold. Making this change gives more options to the player. Will they go for the bigger easier green area? Or for the smaller gold area which gives a better boost? 

 The new mechanic which completes the characters toolset, is the folding mechanic. When holding down the left bumper, the character will fold their chair which will allow them to go under obstacles they wouldn’t be able to go under while sitting up straight. The downside to folding however, is that you lose control over the rotation of the chair and you also can’t use the speedCircle anymore while folded. This mechanic will allow players to quickly take shortcuts or go under obstacles in their way, but it is not without trade-off so use it wisely. 

 A new addition to the environmental objects, is the conveyor belt. When hitting the start of the belt, the player will snap onto it and be taken along it until the end. This way of traversing through a part of the level will be quicker than racing through it normally. However, its not easy to get to the start, which makes this a risk/reward for the player. 

We hope to see you again next week!