Devlog 5 - 26/05/25

Fabian

This week, I focused on resolving several issues identified during the testing session. These included key improvements to the platforming controls, which have made the game feel more responsive, less buggy, and significantly more enjoyable to play.

Camera Improvements:
To enhance player visibility and spatial awareness, I adjusted the 2D camera. The new setup makes it easier to see the player’s position relative to the platforms and provides a wider field of view.

Gameplay Mechanics:
Stamina is now only active in 3D mode, which helps streamline the 2D platforming experience and encourages faster-paced movement. To support this, I implemented two new mechanics:

• Jump Buffer: This allows players to press the jump button slightly before landing, making jumps feel more forgiving and responsive.

• Coyote Jump: This gives players a brief window to jump even after stepping off a ledge, improving overall control and reducing frustration.

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Additionally, I increased the player's gravity to make jumps snappier and further reinforce the fast-paced feel of the platforming.

Level Design Adjustments:
I restructured the platforming course by dividing it into four evenly sized sections and stacking one on top of another. This gives players two possible paths to complete the course and shortens the overall length, resulting in a more concise and engaging experience.

Micah

This week's work included a massive amount of bug fixes. The first fix was making so that the player could no longer move once inside the slot machine overlay. A number of players died in the slot machine during testing, highlighting this issue. There was also the problem of it not being obvious that the balance in the slot machine was the player health, so there is an additional overlay when the slot machine is opened explaining this.

There was also an issue where pressing 1, 2 or 3 in the casino when typing a number for the bet would trigger 3D mode, the pre-boss battle dialogue, and the special attack of the clock tower respectively. This was due to forgetting to remove the testing hot keys before building. There was also an issue where you could still interact with the slot machine behind the pop-up. These issues were fixed, and the ability to skip the dialogue of the pre-battle old man has been added by pressing 'E' during his speech.

Many people struggled with the platforming, and dying after completing it would reset the player at the very start of the game. This issue has been addressed by the addition of a checkpoint on the platform between the platforming section and the boss battle. 

Perhaps the most requested fix - the volume in every scene was adjusted to 7% of the original volume, later reduced to 0.7%. We still don't know why the game was so loud to begin with, but this adjustment has gone a long way to easing the role of the players' ears.

Daneika

This week my main focus was on implementing the player animation and creating some materials so that the platforms would be able to have the transition from original green grass to a corrupt purple landscape. 

The easiest of the two tasks was creating the textures. To do this I just made three different base colours in Blender, covering the whole UV map. I made three colours so that I could have a one pure colour for both green and purple, but also one that would work as a midpoint between them so that the transition would be less jarring. 

For the animation I built upon and debugged some work that had already been completed by Fabian. From where I was picking this up, the basic player controller was in place, as well as the player movement script checking a trigger when the player was jumping or dashing, and telling the controller the players speed for walking. At this point all of the animations were happening after their action had taken place, as well as them only playing through once, not looping. 

The first thing I did was change the controller's condition for recognising the player walking by having the scrip set a bool called walking to be true when the player's movement is greater than 0. I then played around with the set up of transitions within the controller, as well as the conditions, transition time, and exit time. To fix the looping problem on the walk and idle animations, I needed to go into the inspector on the original player asset, and change a setting under the animation panel.