We've had another busy month. We've done some hardware improvements and had our first play test. Along the way we've been making consistent improvements to the game.
Hardware
We had an unexpected opportunity at Roy's and my day job. They had a day for computer recycling and we were able to grab two PCs with decent specs. With a lot of tinkering and some additional hardware we've managed to turn them into dedicated motion capture machines!
Tah-dah! A machine set up with a Kinect 2.0, ready to capture!
For extra accuracy, it has a twin across the room:
Both ready to capture our main stage! Now if we only had quality actors :)
Play Test
On the 8th we had our first playtest. We invited some of our close friends, specifically because they'll come back if everything failed! Thankfully we only had a couple hiccups. Even the failures helped us test our server's self healing and logging capabilities.
Our primary objective of this event was to test our various user interfaces. We had prepared eight different user interface designs for players to give us feedback on. Our UIs which made every ability immediately available were well received. Players liked being able to check the status of their abilities quickly; and with less overhead they could observe the battle more. Our UIs that require character selection first did not fare as well. We also found that the UIs that existed in world space, instead of overlaying the game, were cool but impractical with a moving camera and moving/overlapping characters making it difficult to target. Players also liked the UIs that made it very apparent who the viable ability targets were.
We have decided to move forward on one of the UIs that accommodated everyone and have already removed the alternate UIs. We have a long list of improvements that I'm excited to work on in order to make this UI as streamlined as possible.
Another big Thank You to everyone in attendance. :)
Business
Roy and I have established workflows for creating abilities using Trello, while Bud and I have finished moving our task tracking to Hack n' Plan. We have also made solid progress on our SOP: Hiring doc that has grown to encompass sourcing, recruiting, interviewing, hiring, retaining, and managing new team members. This has been a great opportunity to think up front about how companies recruit, retain, and manage people to help us identify our own path to these ends. We hope to create a healthy, informed, effective, and rewarding work environment. After we wrap that up we'll resume work on our Independent Contractor Agreement.
Development
Roy found a way for us to capture wrist movements using additional Playstation Move controllers. This will improve the quality of our captures. Unfortunately this means that we'll want to recapture a lot of what we had ready to go. Right now we're refining this new approach and are planning to do a few abilities at a time instead of all upfront so that we don't lose work again. Yuk!
We've added a new level: Jahara's Temple - Where players battle it out to please the goddess Jahara.
Two new character models: Cassiel and Hidemi!
Here you can see the character panel for our winning UI. Notice the Mana and Stamina triangles above the health bar to indicate available resources, with the ability costs on top of each ability.
Until next time my fellow Daemons,
Trey
Change Log:
- Added new characters: Cassiel the Angel and Hidemi the Geisha
- New Level: Temple
- Abilities can now denote if they can target the dead, with built in validations
- Increased the scale of characters
- New character icons added to match the new models
- Until characters are earned you will be able to swap your character's model for any team member
- Dressed up the main menu
- Improved Camera AI
-
UIs
- Added new UI Hybrid Plus
- Added new UI Hybrid Inspired Overlay
- Removed Chains UI
- Added new UI QuickCast
- Removed all UIs except QuickCast UI
- Added sword slash trails
- Added level Announcements
- Standardized collider bounds on combatants
- Simplified resource mechanics to be Mana and Stamina
- Added swipe of abilities to target previous target, with UI indication
- Converted ability costs into multiples of 20, to create clear cost indicators
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed Garroak not Bouncing and standardized model loadout
- Now removing ability reticles on caster death.
- Fixed Garroak attachment points
- Fixed all asset and code warnings
- Fixed particle effects scaling with models
- Fixed world space cooldowns
- Fixed a bug where matchmaking would give players different levels.
- Tweaks to soft stun behavior
- Improved weapon scaling
- Fix UI fader to not generate exceptions when destroyed early
- Fix hit to not move the actual game object that is doing the animation
- Meditate now finished when the stat reaches max.
- Fixed a bug where stats couldn't be compared against null
- Fixed a bug where readying would fire a bunch of hidden exceptions in the release version
- Fixed issues with some abilities not triggering