Hello everyone!

Welcome to the final week of the second production sprint. This week we decorated the level a bit more and did some final changes to the camera.

Art

RFX

Added some more rfx to the game to give some player input to hitting the green on the speed bar. 

We also added an effect for the fire extinguisher.

Props

We also added a new prop that will be used for the Bouncing band pickup that allows you to bump into other players.

We also added some decals to show the player where u can go under with the fold mechanic.

Level Decoration

This week we pushed some more updates on out Level Deco, here's how the redone locations look like:

And we finally added, the long awaited and requested... finish line!

This week assets for the roofs of the background buildings were made, as well as prefabs of entire background buildings:

Technical

This week we didn’t implement any major new features, we just focused a lot on improving the existing game elements and making the game more enjoyable to play. To start, we made an actual start. When all players are loaded in and the start button is pressed. The level will load and a countdown will start. So now the players can actually all start together at the same time. 

When a player completes the race, they now get a big message on their screen which says “FINISHED”. We will later replace this with an actual win screen that gives the player information about how they did in the race. 

Another thing we did is we improved the functionality of the ramps. They now give the player a nice boost through the air which feels better for the player and makes the ramps more rewarding. 

The player can now only see their own speedbar. This way the screen doesn’t get cluttered with bars of other players, and the player can just focus on their own bar. However we are still looking for a way to improve/replace the bar (see controller vibration, more on that later). 

Some bugs were fixed. One of the big ones being, getting stuck on the edge of a surface. Not all the bugs we worked on, we were able to resolve but that will be a focus for the coming weeks to make the game as bug-free as possible.

A final addition to the HUD has been made. The minimap, as you all know, a minimap tells you where the other players are in the level. It is centered in the middle of the entire screen, making it easy to read for all players. This also changes the HUD for some players. If you are on the right side of the screen, your HUD elements are now moved to the right instead of the left. We also added the art assets to the HUD, making it more pleasant to look at. 

 We added some more player feedback to the game. For starters, the player can now see the current speed multiplier next to the speed bar. In addition to that, the player now feels a slight vibration whenever they are in the yellow or green zone. This makes it so that the player doesn't need to focus on the bar all the time but can actually pay attention to its surroundings. Maybe you also noticed that the light of the controller, if your controller supports this, changes to the color of your character. Note that these features only work with controllers connected via a cable. We are trying to solve this issue, but it looks like it is a bug in the current Unity version we are using. 

No new pickups this week, but one received a bug fix, the drone. The drone now actually stuns the player it attacks. 

 We also messed around with the camera a bit more, as we received some feedback that it was a bit disorientating. We are still working on this as we haven't gotten the result we wanted yet. 

 The main level also got a slight redesign in some parts, based on the feedback we got from certain players. We now have the feeling the level plays much better and is less frustrating in certain places.

Thank you for reading another one of our devlogs and we hope to see you again next week for the polish phase!