From rough waters to rainbow horizons

This week has been both relieving and hard for our team. Our renewed prototype demanded a lot of work, with the devs giving it their all to adjust the current mechanics based on our supervisors' feedback. It was a challenging process, but our efforts paid off.
After meeting with the supervisors, they approved our game and recognized its potential. A moment that filled us with excitement and relief. With the green light to start production, we are more motivated than ever to bring our prototype and ideas to life.
We want to keep spirits high as we move forward, grateful for the approval and eager to see our project take shape.
Starting production also means starting from scratch. Our artists and devs have been working hard to create the game.

Art & effects

Our artists got assigned specific tasks this week, focussing mostly on player feedback and base models necessary for the game.

Player character:

Concept

Model iterations

Boat/ environment:

We created a detailed version of the first blockout intended to be the base model for the final in a couple of months. Since this is basically our entire environment, we took the time to really go in detail with this model. Finding the correct scale and size was quite the struggle. There was lots of discussion within the team. 

Size test with capsule character reference in unity

Potential height differences implemented in unity. With current camera angle in mind

After quite some consideration and input from the team, we came to the final look of the boat. Taking gameplay and somewhat historical accuracy in mind. It took lots of effort but we are satisfied with the result

Model in Maya 

After The model was created, textures followed. This week was focussed on the proper base colors which next week will be followed with gradients and patterns!

Model in scene

Fx's and player feedback:

Lack of player feedback was stressed a lot by the supervisors, so our team knew we had to improve as much as possible in this area.

This fire effect was created using a Unity shader graph and is being utilized as a post process render pass.

Fire effect on screen

This simple RFX should make it clear for players when they dropped something on the ground! (A slightly altered version could also work well as a jump landing RFX – something that we hope to implement soon 🤞) 

Object drop effect

A strong visual effect that immediately tells a player that the ship took damage, easily recognizable from games like Minecraft. 

Boat losing hp effect

An outline seemed like a perfect choice for making players aware that their character is holding an object and that’s exactly what we implemented. Now there should be no mistaking whether something still needs to be picked up or it’s already in your hand!

Outline for active objects in the game

Devs

As devs we have been implementing the mechanics that we worked out during the prototyping phase into this project. Cleaning up the code, and making it reliable. Due to some dependencies some of the implementations could not be done this week, like the player controller for example as this relied on a rigged player model. So instead of doing nothing i took up making physical ropes, as this will add to our scene and can be used in different ways.

Debug boat with ropes

Rope on the boat.

Boat health

As can also be seen in the gif above, we already re-implemented the boat's health and progress meters, and some more visual player feedback related to the health such as the vignette creeping in from the corners.

Lanterns

We also implemented the Lanterns, these were previously also Torches, but for visual distinction that has been changed (as was planned all along). The Lanters go out one by one over time just like they originally did, currently they've been implemented like they were in the prototype, but they will receive more player feedback in the future. As there is currently nothing new about them, I'll let you guys wait until next week to have a look at them.

What's next:

Next week we will, just like this week, continue on production. It is the final week of the first sprint, so we are excited to see the results. Even though we had 1 week less of production than normally planned, we are happy with where we stand so far. Keep up to see the result!