As the second sprint comes to an end and the polish sprint is on the horizon, we are officially in the home stretch now. The team finishes the final systems and assets for Nest Wars. 

After the teacher's feedback last week, the team focused on bringing more player feedback to the game. To give new players a better idea of what to do. Kirill did his part by creating UI images for the various buttons used in the game.

And by creating a new button for the main screen so the player can also play a tutorial now:

Then Kirill moved on to weapons and created a new set of weapons, more powerful than the already existing plastic ones. Showing gear progression with only one type of weapons was hard and that's how these came to life:

Some feedback from the team later, Kirill finalised the 2D versions and also made 3D models for the new weapons:

Inias on the other hand focused on adding VFX to the game. He redid the VFX he created with the Visual Effect Package using only particle systems.

Besides the VFX, Inias also started making a sound library for the sound effects and music. He made a selection of effects and music styles that fit the game and the rest of the team can choose out of in the future.

Shadow also required some new animations to give the power-ups some visual strength. 

Last but not least, Inias finished up the animations and placement of the crowd in the arena. The crowd uses simple animations created in-engine, as they are not the main focus for the player but still add some ambience to the game.

Michiel, as always, did a lot work. Taking last week's feedback into account, Michiel created a tutorial scene to explain al the game's mechanics to new players.

Then, he moved on to improving player feedback throughout the game. Bots and Shadow were scaled up and so were weapons, to make them more and instantly recognizable. Animations and effects where added so the player could clearly see when and what action was taking place.

The player movement got reworked to ensure the player character cannot go out of bounds of the main area or get stuck on or clip through  props.

The bots also got another treatment, they have been challenging for a while, so to make sure they work as intended a complete rework from the ground up was necessary. Now they can wander around without getting stuck or landing outside of the playable area. This also included some changes to the arena and its NavMesh.

Some changes to the Bots' health and defence  bar were also made, now they are always visible and not only when right in front of a bot.

Michiel also made changes to the Sound Manager to enable two audio sources playing at once: the background music and the chirping of the audience.

Finally, Michiel fixed a lot of bugs to make the game more stable.

The Build

The current build includes the development release of the game. Everything we planned is in the game right now and can be enjoyed. A lot of work went into player feedback to ensure the player knows exactly what to do and when to do it. Animations and effects played a big role in this. There is also a tutorial for those who want to get to know the mechanics before diving into the real game.

We did a lot of work fixing known bugs and improved on a lot of systems. We hope you enjoy our final development version of our game, and hope to get feedback as to what to improve upon during our polish sprint.

Up Next

In the next two weeks  the team will not introduce new systems or assets. They will focus on polishing what is in there and make sure they can bring the best possible experience for the player to fruition.