Blog Post #9: Preparing to show off

Welcome back to the SmileBoiz Post, for your weekly update on all things Slime-ish. We ran into bugs while testing out new levels and new mechanics, which will be explained more below.

Purpose for this week

We delegated tasks out to each of our members with the end goal as, “Having a lot to show off for the live demo”. So our sprint was as follows;

• 30+ hours dedicated to cranking out about 30 new levels
• 10 hours to debugging a few issues we’ve found during our last playtest and to creating new mechanics such as;
  • Double Jump
  • Glider/Parachute
  • Lava Platform
  • Shrinking player
• And a few hours for User Interface design, Concept art, and texture modeling

Levels

We really made this the number One priority for this sprint, because our game is heavily level based and shines through the unique interactions that can occur.  All the levels that were cranked out by myself and our programmers were made to test out specific aspects of the game to see if it can be fun and how that aspect adds the the overall feel of the game. By honing in on these specific qualities we can get clear answers from playtesters and get a more clear idea of how the game will.

Mechanics

The Slime Hook we were testing caused many problems to the fundamental “dash” mechanic we have, so we did away with the hook and in place of it placed a Slime arm. We believe this arm will solve the depth issue many 3D platformers have. With this arm the player can tell the direction they would head in if they chose to dash in that moment, as well as how far away from a wall the player is.

To play around with the amorphous main character we have, we are testing out new “forms” such as;

• Shrinking
• Parachute / Glide

Bugs

With new mechanics and multiple parts working together for the first time, there are bound to be a few kinks. Here is what we discovered over the week;

• The breaking platforms caused a bug that allowed the player to jump infinitely. So in addition to fixing that issue, we made platforms with the ability to break, to be more visually faded.

Thank you for following Slime! Please continue to support us.

             – Dewayne White