Hello, and happy autumn! :) Since EGX we've been hard at work on floor 3.
When you enter the underwater floor you are now met by an anxious water dragon who requests your help to free his friends, whom are trapped within a broken down maze.
Still trying to work out what a water dragons voice would sound like!?
In room 2 we’ve been primarily focused on fixing bugs within the water pipe system, and also hiding colour brites in shells... Next steps are to animate the brites, and our current thinking is that their swimming should be propelled by their moustaches :)
Room 3 is probably the most complex on the floor. There are a number of puzzles and dialogue systems which all need to work in tandem. We’ve been building the wheel puzzle and conversation system with the coral reef.
All of the animation clips and code for the bottom set of wheels have been completed. When you use a switch which is locked, the switch moves slightly to let you know its state. When the correct wheels are placed on the cogs, they lock into place, and when you try to remove them, a small animation clip lets you know they are locked. All of these minor animation clips can feel like unimportant details, not worthy of dev time, but they create a responsive world which strengthens a player's sense of immersion.
Animating the coral reef's face as they talk is going well, but it has proven challenging. We focused on the eyes and mouth, but noticed the overall result lacked emotion. Our next step is to animate the face rising and falling as the reef talks, to see if this helps.
Writing and implementing the coral reef's dialogue content has been fun. I'm looking forward to creating Mavis, the latent psychic squid! :)
There are a number of cutscenes on this floor which contain important information about the story. By the end of this floor, the player will have learnt about the origins and motivations of Quasi Crystal, the perpetrator of the ongoing attacks, and have a broader but darker perspective on the Growbot world.
I think that’s it for now. Thank you for following our dev journey! :) <3