Week 07: Production Sprint 2 - 1

Hello you beautiful Shrimpact fans! 

 Welcome to another devlog. We are back with some exciting developments after a well deserved break. With this devlog we also start our second sprint so go take a look at what changed this week and what is still planned for this sprint!

Should we add more stuff? The answer is yes!

Bringing some life to the scene

We decided that the background was still a bit empty so we made a background asset pack to fluff up that empty space. We made both our own assets and some asset packs from other sources. 

Over the next few weeks these will be textured as well. 

More animations for the character were made like this jump animation after we decided to keep in the jump feature. 

More Particles! 

We created a particle effect that shows the temporal shield created when respawning:

And more swirling bubbles to the current visualization:

We also solved previous issues regarding the circle around the character, by ditching the decal and making it into a particle:

Don't get caught!

We also decided to add more features to the game like a fishing hook.(Read more about this one and how it works in the dev part)
This week we modeled and unwrapped this already so next week texturing will definitely make it *chefs kiss*.  

(This model will also get a rope attachment so we will be able to animate it later)

Ain't it clear yet?

Time for some UI updates!

Polished the start menu a bit; changing up the text and color selection. (Logo has yet to change in these designs)

Pause screen showing controls with simple buttons

End screen announcing winning player with simple buttons

New devlog? New logo!

We kept the same chaotic and cute feel to the logo as the last one but made it a lot more polished and added some more character to it.

And finally we added some in-game UI elements!

Quick time event Icon:    Off screen indicator:     Level rising Icon:

Fishing season announcement: Stage where the fishing hooks start spawning

Improving the playground

Arena changes! Not quite a large amount of changes were made, but we made it so that the white stone parts are connected with the corresponding layers/islands. This will make them fall altogether when the arena gets damaged. 

Also the front part (fungus) has been decreased in size, shoved more into the arena and got a blue tint, making it less obstructive to the eye. 

Feelin' better?

As developers, we’ve learned that making a game feel good is not as easy as it sounds. We’ve come to the conclusion that that is currently the main issue we experience. With that in mind, we tried to pay extra attention to make the game more satisfying.

For the Dash, we’ve gotten the feedback that it feels too linear. The supervisors recommended trying to simulate the feeling of pushing through water a bit, so that’s what we went with. Using Unity’s physics system, it’s a pain in the… bottom… to get a specific result. That’s why we decided to update the movement of the dash by updating the position manually based on an Animation Curve. 

Because of this curve, the player will go slow at first, but speeds up to reach the peak. After that, they slow down again. It is very subtle, but this makes it feel like you’re trying your best to move through water. 

New Dash:

Old Dash:

The Dash mechanic also got stuck on some obstacles. We decided it would be better to dash over everything so it doesn’t break the flow. It’s really cool how this is solved. When there’s an obstacle in front of you, you transform your current direction into a direction that aligns with the face of the surface, based on the normal of that face. These are the results:

Reel 'em in!

Since our map will now break per layer that represents certain phases, we wanted something special on the last phase. We decided it’s time for fishing season! In the last phase, hooks will come down from the surface trying to catch some shrimp! Be wary of these because these will snatch you from the arena and try to reel you in to the surface. If you do get caught, you still have a chance to escape: mash that button!

We used specific animation curves for some smooth movement for the hook. 

• Hook drop curve:

• Reeling in when a shrimp is captured:

• Reeling in after not catching anything:

These animation curves result in this kind of movement, neat right!

We will add some more particles and a way to visualize that you can mash the button to escape in the future, so stay tuned!

Camera Jank

We spent some time cleaning up the camera and doing some tweaks to the way it behaves. Mainly added in some smoothing to the movement and fov.

Another benefit to this refactor of the camera system is that adding new behavior or making more tweaks in the future should hopefully be much easier!

UI Feel

Along with the previous UI updates we also started adding some more feedback to the ui. The lives now actually pop when you die!

What's next?

Next week we will destroy some things! Hell yeah! Especially the arena.
We're also gonna mess around with lighting a bit more together with some particles and extra player feedback to tie things together. The lighting is especially needed when the map start to rise.
See y'all next week!