This week

In this week, a great focus of the project development was directed to the adjustment of the project design, in which the core navigation mechanic was tossed up between a single-lane driving system and a two-lane driving system. Data for this design debate was gathered from playtesters to better inform the final decision, by implementing and presenting two demos for each player to try. 

Art

A major point of focus for the art team this week consisted of polishing the design of the antagonists for the game, such as the enemy company headquarters and the AI bots themselves. The enemy company headquarters were further polished with concept art ideas for the structures of the buildings themselves to maximize the visual impact they have on the player and immersion since they visually act as a spawner for the AI bots:

In addition to the headquarters, further development of the enemy AI cars occurred, envisioning a new enemy car model from the previously designed concept art:

Outside of the enemy design, the UI design decisions were further discussed with the art team in more detail, to set a vision and goals for the next milestones to deliver a greater UX. Furthermore, a preliminary version of protagonist movement animations was created for testing and further adjustments.

Music

This week, the music team has continued their work on more SFX for the AI car collisions.

Dev

Since the analysis of the playtest data, the following adjustments have been made to improve the UX of the project:

• Improvement to the controls and the game's responsiveness to player input has been implemented by increasing the range of valid input for the left stick, as well as adapting the sensitivity of the left stick movement to the speed of the protagonist's movement. In addition, when the player moves the left stick in a specific direction, the player model will slightly adjust to the direction of the player's input to visually relay that input has been received and where the player's input will affect the current in-game actions.
• Bug fixes have been implemented to polish the event system within the code for better efficiency and responsivity, as well as the smoother execution of the beta test bar (top "health" bar). Furthermore, a major issue of resetting the game timescale between scenes to lag or prevent in-game animations has been patched to prevent unexpected behaviour between game loops.
• Further polish to the wave manager has been implemented to make the functionality of the waves more customizable, with greater complexity and changes between the waves, such as creating new spawners, adjusting the goal, and changing the speed of the enemy units. This will add greater versatility to the game loop, keeping the player engaged and on the edge of their seat between waves.

Features

Little new features were added to the project this week, with the exception of more wave versatility between different parts of the level to indicate player progression and increased difficulty.

What's Next

With the improvements made to the controls and movement and the final consensus to adhere to the single-lane mechanic design, the next steps for the project include:

• Gathering more feedback on the polished controls and movement mechanics
• Completing the animations for the protagonist and integrating these assets to bolster the project environment and immersion/game juice
• Tweaking and finalizing the wave manager to perfect the introduction of difficulty and "randomness" that will get the player to constantly think on their feet and prevent them from putting their controller down
• Completing the design and integration of the UI with the art team to better increase player satisfaction and polish with visual effects. Furthermore, the improved design of the UI will better relay the goal of the game and loss conditions to the player to better describe the concept, giving the player a greater sense of direction
• Adjusting the redirect system to prevent overpowered abilities that will unconditionally break the game or give unfair advantages to the player. This will also make the game more challenging, thus adding more emphasis and depth to the mastery of the core mechanics, that will spur more rewarding satisfaction when the players create effective strategies