CAGD 370 Blog Post 3

 

CAGD 370

Video Game Production

The Crescendo - Blog Post 3

Alex Peters (Team Lead), Kade Chambers (Programmer), Anthoney Johnston (Level Designer)

    This is an update on the progress of the prototype "The Crescendo". My name is Kade Chambers, and I am the programmer for our team. As we go into the final days of Sprint 3, our game systems are coming together to build a complete working prototype with enhanced player control through menu's. Our team has kept a steady pace throughout this sprint to flesh out our level design and player usability. This pace has allowed our team to move unhindered from being blocked by other team members tasks, as well as plan ahead and anticipate challenges in our upcoming tasks. Communication between our team members was essential during this sprint after receiving feedback from our kinesthetic playtest. Discussing our progress each step along the way allowed us to keep a shared vision for development.

    During Sprint 3, my main tasks were to set up our scene transitions, as well as our game menu's. This includes a start up screen for the player to select a stage, as well as a pause menu for the player. To accomplish these tasks, I used the Unity canvas object to create buttons for the player to interact with. I then set up scripts in order for the objects to call scene transitions. Included in our menu was an in-game option to exit the game by calling Application.Quit() when selected by the player. As this function does not work in Unity's Play Mode, I also made sure to send a message to the console for debug purposes as our designers create the game levels.

    To further assist my team members while they worked on designing our levels, I created a simple camera script to allow them to easily change the camera distances on each axis. This allows for fast customization while setting our assets.

    Among the above tasks, I also needed to revisit my previous movement script. Feedback from our kinesthetic playtest showed that the player felt movement was too snappy. To remedy this, I studied different ways to implement interpolation into our player movement. Because we are still testing what movement feels the best for our players, we have yet to decide on an interpolation method. Moving forward, we will test this with players directly to have the best feedback before full implementation.

    I was able to complete each of the above tasks except for setting up the menu for the player when pausing during gameplay. This feature is in development at the time of writing, and does not yet pause the active scene when bringing up the menu. Overall, I feel that our team accomplished a lot the past few weeks and that they are doing great work. I look forward to making further improvements in the upcoming sprint.