Week 7: Looking Good

Hey guys, Adam here again, bringing you this week's update on Magefest's production.

A lot of what has been worked on this week is longer multi-week projects as opposed to the shorter form stuff we've been working on up until this point; as such, some of the work we're showcasing this week is currently unfinished, and this update is likely to be a shorter one.

Ryan has been working on getting our UI hooked up to the character health values, and has been successful. The bars in the top left and right now drain from the center of the screen to their respective edge correctly (although there are still a few bugs related to damage and healing values).

Also the circle to the side of each health-bar is currently being fitted with the changing character portraits, which will likely be ready to show by next week.

Josh has been continuing his work on the game menus as well, creating a stage selection screen, however it is currently non-functional.

Connor has been hard at work getting our poster designed for when we show our game at Perth Games Festival () and has created several small scenes which are going to be combined into the full poster. Here is the currently most completed section; the tree level and explosion showcase.

Connor has also been working on getting his portals and particle effects from last week integrated within the game, as well as adding a camera shake effect whenever the explosion ability happens. So look forwards to seeing that in future updates.

Jess has completed the weight painting for Bob, despite some setbacks with the model itself. This means that it should be ready to go into the animation stage this week hopefully.

Christina has been continuing her work on sound effects. At this point they are all finalized, and are awaiting implementation into the game.

I have spent this week texturing Bob's model, which involved taking our initial colour palette and bumping up the saturation on everything. This is because in game, the lighting effects we are using wash our the colours quite harshly. However, the texturing is mostly done at this point, with only some minor changes likely to happen; this would be due to things like matching spell effects or background too closely, or being otherwise hard to read.

 

With the model as small as it is, unfortunately a lot of detail has been removed, as it simply cannot be seen at all in game, this included changing the triangular design around the edge of the hood into a solid line of colour. 

Also this week, I converted Connor's "Magefont" into an actually usable typeface, which may hopefully be showing up on this blog eventually. Although, even if not, it will still be our main font for any text related to the game in any way.

Altogether, this week has been a frenzy of getting some high priority tasks completed and implemented into the game, making it feel like more of a complete game. However, it is still feeling quite patchwork, with each patch slowly being filled in and completed. However, despite every setback, it's rewarding to see the whole thing come together.

Thanks for reading guys. This coming week I may have the chance to interview another team member, and if not, then it will be done by next week at the latest.

Thank you so much!