ALL FISHERMEN ABOARD!!!

Hope you'll have a reel good time out here! This week has had us focused on steadily moving forward with production (just keep swimming, just keep swimming, anyone?) and slowly but surely taking steps from the initial blockouts and prototypes to what will eventually be the polish assets of our little fish game. The vast waters have been a little kinder to us this week without major hiccups or anyone falling overboard. We have done our best to keep our heads above water and our lines in the sea! (We've been sticking to our schedule and managing to more or less complete tasks as per the estimated times) Success! 

Now then, let’s get hooked on adventure today and take a look at the spoils of this week!

Art

Yeees it's all coming together

This week we created modular dock pieces from the sculpted wood planks, meaning Lego bricks of wooden planks were modeled, sculpted and textured, which could then be used as the building blocks in our scene. This way we only need a few blocks to build the environment as opposed to doing everything manually. They have also been successfully integrated them into the engine! We had a lot of fun since this stage of the production is where an asset kit comes together. It always feels the best.

It's aliveee!

Our little shark-man also got a a facelift this week, or rather, he's finally been allowed to move properly! He's been freed from the misbehaving rig! We successfully added controllers and IK constrains to the character's rig this week. Now he can properly move and be animated next week :) Yippeee! Master gave shark-manbones, shark-man is freeee!!

We also made sure the fishing rod model from last week is rigged and weight-painted so that there can also be some ragdoll physics on it!

Well aren't you a handsome young man

This week the first hints of UI saw some tender loving care, which is to say the HUD has been made! We tested out a couple of variations to see which best fit the style and ~vibes~ of our game. Once that was settled on we rendered out the favorites and exported them as a sprite sheet for our programmers to throw hands at!

We have also stared working on a little fish buddy or pray buddy if you will. This week the model has been made and UV unwrapped as well as packed. Fish being an organic shape, the packing proved to be a little awkward but we still managed to pull through. Unfortunately, for the moment he's naked for now, please don't judge him:)

Which brings us to the next part!

Coding

You get a mini-game and you get a mini-game and-!

With the core gameplay established, we structured the system for creating mini-games in such a way that it was easy to integrate different challenges and activities. The mini-games are independent, and multiple players can play and compete without interfering with each other, updating the score of the players with each completion. 

Other than that, we also kept refining the game mechanics to ensure that everything works well and is natural to play. We also set the foundation of basic systems like falling in the water and reviving, allowing the players to re-enter battle when they were knocked out. In addition to that, we have also made the base system for future point handing in.

Finding the right current!

This week we created a character movement on stairs. The forces are dynamically applied according to the angle of the stairs. The force is applied only when the fishermen is climbing the stair, not when getting down. Also we implemented the buoyancy physics, when the character is in the water. Its synchronized with the water shader our artist created.

HUD moment part two electric boogaloo!

This week we worked on integrating a dynamic HUD system that updates based on the number of players in the game. The HUD contains player icons (PlayerIcon_1 to PlayerIcon_4), along with additional UI elements like a crown to signal who is leading and a timer. Certain challenges & Fixes we ran into;

• We've adjusted the HUD placement to ensure it remains properly scaled at 1920x1080, despite being on a 4K monitor.
• We ensured images inside the HUD properly mirror when needed.

In addition to the HUD, we also worked on implementing a respawn system to handle player respawning dynamically. 

Key Features: -> we've implemented a system to track occupied respawn points so multiple players can't spawn at the same position. And ensured the chosen respawn position is random, so players don't encounter unfair position.

Future plans!!

• Animate the our lil guy!
• Give the fish a skin so he can stop being naked (texture himst)
• Keep moving forward from the blockout into our final scene
• Keep on polishing the existing mechanics and elements
• Keep on adding adding new mechanics such as the hand in system

With steady hands and a full net, until next time fellow fishermen!