One of the important facets of game development in a project semester at the ETC is finding a balance between building the actual game, and creating the separate systems which would be required in the actual game. This week, we made a lot of progress towards the individual subsystems which would be required in our vertical slice (more details on this in the Tech section of our blog this week), while also ensuring that we move further with our art assets, rigging, and animation.
Slowly, the basic foundations of our game are beginning to come together. Our planned scope of delivering two levels by the end of the semester is still on schedule. A lot of first-time solutions that are being created now will aid in creating our second level at a quicker pace.
On the art side, we have created the model for the Gattler Mech. To visualize the final effects, we applied a layer of basic texture with Substance Painter. We then imported it into Lumberyard, and with Lumberyard’s outstanding rendering capabilities, the model looks great in the engine. In the meantime, we rigged the mech in Maya, and will animate it in the following weeks.
We also set up a UI wireframe that includes every stage of our vertical slice from start to end, along with the audience game flow. We will follow this wireframe to implement visuals for UI.
On the tech side, we started putting together a lot of the individual prototypes and started integrating components. We replaced placeholder models with the first iterations of the actual models. We currently have the Gattler Mech and a placeholder Kenhai model set up with physics and animations. The health and damage system is set up and working. Both the Kenhai and the mech can take damage. On the Twitch side, our chatbot is set up in the engine and we are currently testing out bot interactions. We are in the process of writing a script for the bot for the messages it sends when different events in the game take place. As our team prepares for Spring Break next week, followed by a week of GDC, we hope to get all the integration done soon to have a playable prototype by halves.