Art/Animation
We worked to create decorative art for the different biomes – these elements are added to the top of static tiles to represent both visual elements and elements that will be incorporated into minigames. Below are examples of cacti for the desert, which are simply visual elements. Additionally, we are working to develop movement sprites and prototyping the basic UI for the player.
The glacier and geyser below are to be used in a minigame.
The main character design has been finalized as the following design.
Sound
Ashley created the restaurant theme, which can be found here. She is going to make the intro a little bit softer, but aside from that the teams all thoroughly enjoy the song.
Gameplay
We decided on five minigames where each biome will have a unique game, in addition to two games found in all biomes. These games are still being flushed out, but the fishing and bug grabbing games are the most developed.
Fishing Minigame
- Found in all biomes (slightly different variations in each biome)
- Need a fishing pole to unlock the game
- Fishing retical will float back and forth (first horizontally then vertically) and the player will time when they want to throw it
Bug Grabbing Minigame
- Once the player does the mini game in the forest the mechanic will unlock in the other biomes
- The player will see a top down view of their hand above a pile of insects and controls the movement and fingers of their hand
Egg Minigame
- Forest biome
Bat (Sonic) Minigame
- Ice biome
- Screen is pitch black, can only see player
- Player rings a bell in the cave to trigger a ring revealing slowly moving bats. Move around to catch bats.
Wind Minigame
- Desert biome
- Main mechanic is walking and dodging debris to gather good items
Programming
All of the separate pieces that have been developed – such as dialogue, scene transitions, crafting/restaurant entrance, and resource gathering – are now combined into one functioning scene. Since the last update, we mostly focused on this combination as well as developing the minigames. We have the basic framework for the fishing minigame, as seen in the video below, but are continuing to develop it further. Below is a video showing the integration of music transition between scenes.
Narration
We began writing out one-liners for the main character in response to physical items/events in the world as well as to interact with NPCs. Some examples of this are: “Your food’s on the way,” “Can’t go in there it’s way too dark” when they haven’t unlocked the forest, “Oof, sorry about that, I’ll try and make something better next time.” We are starting to develop barks for the NPCs, as well as to script out the full dialogue for the first few scenes in the game.
