Welcome to our last update before the production is finished. The following two weeks will be used to polish everything. By next week no new gameplay will be added.

ART

Most and almost all of the production phase has finished. So no more new things will be added in the last two weeks of polishing. 

VFX:

All of the vfx have had a first coat. They are pretty rough and will be polished in the next few weeks. 

Some great improvements in the vfx departement

Environment:

Now that all of the modular pieces for the levels are made, the artists worked on set dressing the levels with all the assets modelled and textured in previous weeks. Now the game is not only starting to feel good but also look good. Because the levels are rather small in size it is easy for the artists to make multiple level variations.

Example of a 2 player map

Animation:

Most of the bugs and mishaps that were still present in the animation have been fixed. Some animations need some polishing or some adjustments to work better in game.

UI:

We now have an ingame UI and a menu UI, and are currently working on a breakdown sheet of the game loop and the controller mapping.

Beautiful ui elements 

Furthermore I present to you our mascot duck who is covered in oil and ready to cause some serious havoc around the scrapyard. Do not get fooled by those gigantic googly eyes though, he will fight you over every last drop of oil without mercy.  

Our dear mascot finally in game

Sound:

This week we also started with implementing the first sounds for the game. We found some amazing royalty free soundtracks and the sound fx and ambients are being made! 

Programming

Menu

The main change development wise is the addition of the menus.
There is now a main and end menu.
In the main menu players can join, change the colour they play with and even pop up an image with some tips and the controls for the game.
Once everybody presses ready, a map will be loaded based on the connected players.
Do keep in mind that the minimum required players is 2(max 4).

Once the game is finished the end menu will appear, here the winner’s model appears and scores are listed for each team. Players can then choose to either replay with the same setup or quit the game.

Animations
Animations have been added, freed of bugs, tweaked.

Linking
Bug fixed => on collision links didn’t stun and damage the player anymore.
Transfer rate decreased to prevent players from stealing each other’s energy too fast.
Link max radius increased.
Linked movement speed increased.

Player
Charging and shooting once shared the same trigger, were then divided and are now reunited! Boosting energy penalty increased.
Energy capacity increased.
Spawn duration increased.
Respawn cost decreased.
Charging speed decreased.
Projectile speed decreased.
Projectile now bounces infinitely but its active duration now scales with charge.
Players can now hit themselves so watch out where you shoot!
Shooting cooldown increased.

Colour coding
HUD, projectiles, chargeline and stations nicely adapt to the player's colour.
Hud that is not being used gets disabled.
Playerstations with no active players get greyed out.

PlayerStations
Energy capacity increased.
Depletion rate decreased.

Gamemode
Less score awarded for kills.
More score awarded for higher energy reserves in stations and less score when close to empty.
Players can now continue to play even when their station is depleted, up until they die, then it is really over. Game doesn’t stop as long as more than 1 team has an active station/player.