ALL FISHERMEN ABOARD!!!

With everyone (hopefully) aboard, we are now ready to sail! (If you didn't get on, there are lifebuoys available if you shout loud enough:))
This week was all about setting the stage for production and laying the waterwork for our game. We focused on building a strong foundation, polishing up our rods and baits (making new and improving upon assets and characters) but trust us when we say this, the waves have not been easy on us.

A bit of seasickness has stricken us along the way (curse you export issues! *six angry fists shaking skyward*), but we are on schedule towards our next destination! We will keep our sails wider and sail only forward!

Now lets take a look at what the sea has prepared for us.

Art

Bringing the World to Life

Since water will be a major visual element in our game, we dedicated proper time and all the tender loving care to crafting a custom water shader! This will play a key role in shaping the overall aesthetic, so we gave it all the extra love to ensure it looks great!

Give us a big smile!

We created the character model this week! Big excite! He is now more updated and expressive and of course as cute as ever if we do say so ourself! We also made floaters on the body to add seams, a zipper-seam, gills and the nostrils. Later on we are going to bake these in the low poly mesh and use the normal information :). 

The character was also rigged and weight painted this week but unfortunately the export went wrong because of some of the bones that were scaled. Ooh nooooo... we will try again next week! (Maya rigging moment, am I right:))

Hook, line and-!

Last but not least in the art department this week, ew made a cute fishing rod, complete with big, chunky shapes to match the style of our game! The model had to be a wee bigger in scale than the player character and of course needed to be kept low poly and optimized for the game.  Once all the pieces were made, the rod was then UV unwrapped and packed as tightly as possible. Last step was the texturing, keeping to the template we made for this project while also adding unique elements; such as gradients, grooves and grain. And of course all this all the while making sure the whole rod had a nice hand-painted feel to it!

Coding

Planning, structure and input

Having the fundamental idea of the game in mind, we started organizing the game code in modular fashion to keep things tidy. Part of that was thinking in terms of class structure — namely, that each of the various pieces of the game, i.e., players, items, and actions, is linked together in a rational way but not so that it creates unneeded dependencies. Putting in the player input was another one of our priorities so that it provided a solid base for creating a smooth responsive system on it, and left the door open to future mechanics. Some of the basic core gameplay mechanics such as walking and objects responding to entering a certain area were put in as well that made the world feel more dynamic. With these core systems now in place, we now have the basis to build upon the game further, introduce additional mechanics, and refine the experience.

Camera and minigames!

This week, we focused on refining the camera system, ensuring it correctly and smoothly zooms in and out based on a designated target group. Players and characters can now be seamlessly added or removed from this group, and all relevant values to achieve a smooth and visually appealing experience were fine-tuned. Additionally, we began working on a new mini-game that involves rapid button mashing to fill up a progress bar. The core mechanics and visuals are already in place, but the feature is still in its early stages. Future updates will include improvements to player input handling and a UI overhaul to enhance clarity and responsiveness.

Ragdoll, my beloved!

This week we implemented a proper ragdoll configuration on the character mesh and rig. The character is not falling anymore and always returns to its initial state, if the reasonable amount of force is getting applied. We also did the character movement, allowing the character to move by using forces and not fall through the ground. We focused on keeping code clean and according to the standards we, as team, agreed in the Tech Doc.

Future plans!!

• Finish assigning tasks to everyone for this production spring
• Assign this week's to-do’s to everyone
• Keep production steadily sailing forward
• More asset modelling, UV unwrapping, texturing... all that fun stuff
• Throw even more hands at Maya rigging (ง'̀-'́)ง (You've got this Megan we believe in you!!!)
• Continue implementing further mechanics into the game (player death moment O.o)

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