Devlog 06 - Third Sprint Week

Hello world! Welcome to another update of our adventurous platformer, Jointed!

This concludes the last week of our first production sprint, meaning we're about halfway there! With that came a lot of testing, making sure most tasks were done and implemented to start fresh for our new production sprint, commencing next week!

To summarize what the artists worked on:

Hanna made most of the models for the gameplay, such as three different types of rotating platforms, different springy platforms, a moving platform and some elements to put in the pits, such as spikey vines. She also unwrapped the character, and started on some of the other models. As almost all the models are close to finished in the modelling stage, next up we're moving on to unwrapping everything and texturing, so next couple of weeks the game should actually start to have some visuals :> Underneath some models :]

Flor made sure the models were rigged and ready for animation. As they are simple characters the rigs are rudimentary yet functional for the animation that we need. Also, he made sure the shader he was working on is ready to be used to get achieve our art style. He made sure all the variable and options were neatly listed and ordered.

As for the last artist, Stan dove not only deeper into the level, but also in some Unity shaders! With those shaders came along our curse that will be bonding the 2 players together:

Not only is it appealing to look at, but does it also change along the width and will it collide along geo in a natural way. The rest of his time was spent further implementing meshes and iterating on the level layout, as this is finalized and ready to be dressed, lighted and played in for the final game!

As for the devs,

Elias added both coyote frames and jump buffering to make the game a lot smoother and forgiving to play. he also made the characters always render on top to improve clarity and so the players don't lose sight of their character. afterwards implemented the tilting platform so we can put these in the level already.

Mathies changed how dying works in the code so the logic happens in the player instead of in the deathtrigger. He also added a delay before the player can move again after dying and a sound that plays upon death. He also tried to fix the brace, to no avail as it just refuses to do what it needs to. This will be something to work on next sprint. Lastly he added the weighted platform to the game.

Bram dedicated some time to improving the main menu, creating a basic but functional version to serve as a foundation. He also enhanced the visual feedback of the death triggers by adding spikes, making them look more dangerous and visually appealing. Currently, he's working on refining the trigger scaling system so that instead of scaling the child objects directly, it dynamically adds more spikes based on size. Additionally, he spent time replacing temporary development assets with proper 3D models for several objects, helping to push the overall visual quality of the project forward.

And as always, we'll make sure Jointed becomes a fun co-op couch game, as we keep on improving it every single week! See you guys next week!