This week, we focused on adding more gameplay elements to the game, particularly features relating to the park. We also integrated some new animations and fixed some bugs.
One of the big things we finished this week was the procedural animation integration and the walking animation. The walking animation was created using Maya, and inside our animation blueprint we created an animation system that would be able to switch between different animations, allowing for smooth transitions between animations in addition to applying procedural animation. Unfortunately, last week’s procedural animations did not work well with the new walking animation, so a lot of fixes had to be made to make everything look good. In general, a lot of the animations are rather unpolished, which is unfortunately likely how it will remain.
Concerning new features, we implemented a “fetch” feature for the park, where you can grab and toss a ball or frisbee(each with their appropriate physics dynamics) and the dog will fetch and return it to you. The ball/frisbee becomes a child of the dog model, but then detaches as the dog reaches you so that it looks like the dog is dropping the ball/frisbee at your feet. As mentioned by one of our interviewees(one that did not provide a name and thus was not included in our research document as our main stakeholder), dogs do not automatically know how to fetch; we are hoping to implement a training aspect so that dog owners can learn how to teach their dogs how to fetch as well.
We also added a day-night cycle and multiple clocks that inform the user of the current time. The goal of adding this feature was to add an element of time-management to the gameplay loop. This should emulate how difficult raising a new pet is while balancing other elements of your life.
Additionally, we added a pooping feature, where the dog will poop randomly with an appropriate sound. Upon pooping, a health and green ‘+’ icon will appear above the dog’s head, indicating that the health of the dog has gone up by a small amount (this is also reflected in the stats menu). We hope to implement this icon usage across several different features as suggested by Prof. Yarger in a milestone review. We also intend to implement a poop-pickup mechanic.
We fixed a few bugs as well; specifically concerning the menu mechanics. For example, we fixed the teleportation mechanic that would allow you to teleport to the park while at the park. Additionally, one of our playtesters noted that they could not distinguish which stat was the health symbol and which was the happiness one, so we changed the health symbol to mitigate this.
Our next goals will be to clean up some of the interactions and remove some of the bugs found in the play testing with the other group. Our fetching mechanic does not always work, and the dog tends to fly in the air after fetching. The dog also has issues teleporting back to the house after fetching. Additionally, there are some areas you can clip into with the jumping mechanic that we need to close off.
Sample Footage
Playtest Link:
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