Hello!

Welcome back to our second devlog! It is the third week of development and we have now started production of the actual game. The first sprint is set up and the tasks are eagerly waiting for completion.  This devlog contains a summary of our progress for this week.

Art:

Levels:

Started creating level layouts for 2, 3 and 4 player maps. These will be tested in the coming week.

Example of the 2-player levels:

Materials:

Testing out on how far we can go with the shadergraph has also been set in motion. This was only for materials and not yet for vfx.

Concepting:

In order to start 3D production as soon as possible, we started with concepting the main assets such as the player character, the player station and the center hub. This way we ensure to not get stuck while 3D-modeling because there are concepts missing.

Currently we are leaning towards a boxy body with wide legs to ensure that the shape is readable from a top-down perspective. 

Some design examples of the player character.

Some examples of the player base.

The main base is an oil rig station which is easily recognizable from afar. 

The Artstyle itself did not change since the Prototyping phase, we are planning to continue with a Floatsam-like style. 
For a texturing example for that artstyle you are welcome to check out our last week's devlog. 

With most of the concepts finished, we are set to continue with the modeling in the next week.

Programming:

So coding wise there isn't much functionality yet. This is mainly due it being the first week of production and we have to start from scratch.
It's important to focus on the basics first and create a base for the game on which we can build during the coming weeks.
Following is the functionality created this week:

There are players!
Support for up to 4 players at the same time(controller only).
For now the only functionality the player has is to change colors and move around the test scene.
One change from the prototype is that the movement input now correctly scales based on how much the trigger is being pulled. Energy usage due to moving slower/faster also adjusts accordingly. 

Player stations and basic energy stations(main hub) are added and do nothing more than change colors (if player station) and deplete/generate energy.

Managing the players/stations is being done by managers (mind blowing, I know..) which can be accessed easily by other scripts(singletons).
When a player gets added, a player station gets created accordingly with the correct color, this station will be linked to the player.
Functionality to change player colors from a range of available colors defined in the player manager.

Changing colors and adding/removing players is obviously not a mechanic or anything. The point of this functionality is when play is pressed (from our future menu) the user will go to the selection menu where players can choose a map, gamemode,  color and add/remove players. After all the set up is done and  all the players are ready the actual game can start and all of these values will be locked.

If you wish to try out the game, here are the controls for now:

F1: spawn a player

F2: remove a player 

That's it for now and thank you for following our wild journey through the scraps!