Week 04: Production Sprint 1 - 1

Hello Shrimpact fans,

We are back with another devlog, huzzah for progress! 

A new beginning

We started this week with a yes from the supervisors although with a couple of adjustments to the core gameplay. We had this crazy idea that the Clam would destroy the map gradually and then the players would end up in a tie. The supervisors hinted to us that that would take away a lot of the time we have left and that it would be much work for little reward. So we dropped it… Now we can focus fully on the core of the game: punching!

A whole new world

First on the artside of things. We have started on the most fun thing of all, design. We can finally start making pretty art! So a few designs were made for the character, clam and arena. We also designed one of the most difficult props of the game… the pearl, see that shape, so round, so intricate… 

After some feedback from fellow artists, we could move on to the modelling and unwrapping phase which provided us with these results! 

Furthermore, the texturing process has started! The texture for the mantis shrimp is done. Changes can still be implemented but we’re keeping the textures to a simple gradient with details.

This is the final shrimp model for now, placed in the new skybox, with the caustics, light rays and post process effect applied.

We also started on some particle effects for the punching and the trail particles for the bubbles with each their own custom-made textures.

A binding agreement

When starting from scratch, it is a good idea to already lay out the input mapping that you’re going to need. So that’s what we did… We quickly made an InputActionMap that covers the most important input during gameplay: Move, Punch, Dash, and Pickup/Throw. We were also thinking about already putting in the input map for when you need to navigate the UI, but we left that out for now. We can’t have Shrimpact without a player character, so the programmers had to create some kind of base-player. First, we needed to make sure the input bindings were working. A quick ‘Bind test’-script was created (insert heavenly sounds). This script just subscribed functions to the corresponding input event and then logged the current values. As some kind of visual representation, we just made the position of the player equal to the value of the joystick, which caused the player to move like a joystick. It looked pretty funny, not gonna lie.

After some testing input for 2 players, it’s safe to say that multiplayer is active!

I like to move it, move it

Having a player that is stationary, is not a player. So let’s add some movement. To translate the input into movement across the platform wasn’t so hard. We also adjusted some physics like the ‘linear drag’ to get some movement that felt nice to the player. There were some struggles with letting the player turn smoothly when changing directions. After some research, the implementation seemed to be rather easy. Well… At least we learned something in that time. We also implemented the model and particle effect the artists made and, boy, do we dare to say it looks good (chefs kiss). The export of the model did cause some issues with offsets though, but these issues were (luckily) resolved pretty quickly.

The Clam awakens

 The awesome pearls make a return! These can’t be missing from the project of course. We started by implementing a ‘Spawn’ state and a ‘NonAltered’ state. When in Spawn state, the state will change to NonAltered when the pearl hits the arena. After some time the state will change to a ‘Explode’ state. This just destroys the object for now. Later we will implement an actual explosion, don't worry. We also created a spawn point for the pearls which represents the clam. The spawner from the prototype has gotten an upgrade. We can now have multiple areas where the pearls shoot to. This way we can really control where we want our pearls to land on the arena. The angular drag of the pearls had to increase quite a bit to make sure the pearls don’t just roll into eternity when landing.

A different perspective

We have gotten the feedback that the camera movement was all over the place in the prototype. So the camera also needs some adjustments. We wanted to make it clear to the player at what point the player would die. So we decided that it would make sense to let the player die when they are above the camera view, off-screen. With this in mind, we wanted to lock the camera vertically, so it can only move horizontally. We’re still not fully there, since we had some trouble regarding the settings in cinemachine. Hopefully, we can make it work next week. Fingers crossed! 

Know your value

After some thinking, we agreed that it would be a good idea to have some general manager that would manage everything with the knockback. The manager is a tough guy: everything that wants to modify knockback, needs to go through him. The values are also visible on the HUD right now.

The player can also die when their lives are lost by the killzone. These lives are also visible on the HUD. When you respawn, there are a few invincibility frames in which you can’t be hit. We decided to put that in there to counter pearls that would explode in your proximity when you spawn.

Next week

The artists will continue on the models, unwrapping, texturing and implementing them in the core project. Furthermore we will also have more asset creations for the arena. Next week will also be the moment where we will aim to finalise the rigging for the characters and get the animations in for the player and the clam. The programmers will have to make sure the core mechanics are up and running. The punch needs to work smoothly, knockback needs to be applied correctly and pearls need to be able to be picked up and explode on impact. It’s gonna be busy, but fun. And that’s the important part ;)