On this week's devlog: progress on the loot system, power-up system and some other important systems. Inias and Kirill continue to work hard on the assets needed to bring some much needed life to Nest Wars.

The Programmers

Michiel's main focus this week was the Loot System, responsible for handing out random weapons or armour. Currently the Loot System is able to hand out random armour to the player partly based on the score the player had the previous wave. The better the player performs, the better the score will be. The Loot System also hands out new weapon to the player and the player can choose to either keep his current weapon or equip the new one.

Near the end of the week, Michiel, focused on going over the main level and making sure the new meshes and scripts were integrated well with the existing systems. There were some issues Michiel needed to resolve due to some minor miscommunications. A point of improvement for the team is to inform eachother more as to how to work with scripts and assets aswell as being unafraid to ask questions when somthing is unclear. 

Sometimes things don't go as planned and all of the sudden you are working on bird-themed music game. But those are things that can and will be fixed.

Lukas on the other hand worked on implementing a camera for the game. Originally we planned to have a somewhat static camera constantly looking down on the player. This however limited the "playable" area of the arena, so we decided to go for what we now call the "Donut Camera". The camera is located in the center of the arena and always looks at the player by rotating around it's y-axis. Underneath the camera there's a deadzone where weird stuff happens. The current solution for this problem is to not allow the player in this deadzone, thus limiting the player to a donut shaped playable area.

Lukas also worked on the power-up system. Currently there's a system in place to keep track of all the possible power-ups, the power-ups the player can use and to activate them. For all the four power-ups, there's some basic code in place, but it needs to be more finetuned before it's ready for a build.

One of the power-ups, the Potion of Feathers, makes the bird flap its wings furiously, pushing back the bots in the player's vicinity and dealing a small amount of damage.

Last but not least, Lukas ventured into the world of the artists and made some basic UI sketches on which the artists can further iterate.

The Artists

Kirill started the week with making some final changes, the changes were minor but made sure that the assets were more consistent with the art style of this project.

Then Kirill modeled the Leaves set of armour and made appropriate changes after feedback.

Finally, Kirill worked on Tanky, a sturdy defensive bot, capable of shooting multiple eggs at once in the direction of the player. Firstly, Kirill made some design iterations which were later discussed with the group.

The team liked bot B the best, so Kiril started modelling. According to Kirill, it was a bit trickier than the previous bots and due to an unfortunate 3DS Max crash, he lost some work, but after some time, he was happy with the final result.

Inias, on the other hand, focused on the arena all week. Inias worked on the blockout and was the first one to propose what is now the Donut Camera. Inias also made some sketches for how the arena could look like. 

After finishing the blockout, Inias dived into Blender to make some meshes and made the arena come to live.

The Build

The current build of the game gives the player access to some core mechanics in place. These being the player movement and combat system tied in to the health and defence system. The player can use light and heavy attack to destroy and kill all the bots spawned in, and use his interaction key to close the gates to try and win the game.

The current level features some hight differences to make the arena feel more alive and intriguing, as you might notice currently the bots do not follow the player up the ramps but instead stay down on the ground level while keeping track of the player. These changes to the bots are still in the progress of being build and are not implemented in the current build of the game.

You are currently able to win the game by killing all enemies and closing down all the gates. Or lose the game when your health reaches 0.

As movement is not finished yet, you might encounter some issues where the player character manages to get out of bounds and is unable to get back inside of the arena. This is something we are aware off and this will be solved in our next build when we get our level and movement smoothed out.

Up Next

In the last week of the sprint, Michiel and Lukas will focus on finishing their systems and take care of any and all bugs that rise up. Inias and Kirill will continue working on the art assets and bringing some much needed life to the game.