Planet Nine Dev Log Week 7

Another week down and only 8 more to go! This week however marked a crucial change in the development of our game.

Considering that this should have been our final week of Alpha we realised that the game is still not feature complete. We had barely started working on the second level and knew that if we were to implement this second level it would suffer in terms of its quality compared to the first. So as a team we decided that it would be best that we cut the game into 1 level and turn it into a “Vertical Slice” as well as cut the laser mechanics as these were not fully implemented yet and we were running out of time to properly develop the laser.  This was done, as from the start of development on this game we knew that we wanted to prioritise quality over quantity. As a team we wanted the game to feel like a polished and finished experience, rather than an experience with two good but clearly unfinished levels. We also decided that we would extend this first level out by adding in more puzzles and rooms to extend the playtime, but also to make sure that all the work that had been done on creating puzzles for the second level didn’t go to waste. Because of this, we decided that we would use our two buffer weeks that we had for the development of this game and extend out the Alpha stage until week 9 of development. That means that Beta will now run from week 10-13 and our Gold stage will be weeks 14-15.  Planet Nine will now launch with only one main level. These extra two weeks will be crucial for the game and we know that we still have a lot of work ahead of us. However as a team we know that we will be able to pull this off and create the game that we want to create.

However with that aside let’s have a look at what everyone has been up to this week!

Ronan has continued his development on the Toxin particles he created last week, he added height mapping, texture noise, collision & self shadowing to the particle effects and can I just say, that the way these particles look now compared to how they did last week, there has been a massive difference and Ronan has done an awesome job with creating this toxin. Ronan also began implementing the new toxin into the level he created with Connor’s blockout mesh. An example of how the toxin looks in game is shown down below. 

Marcus worked on Animating the UI effect for the data logs as well as changing the font of the logs. He also worked on a prototype hologram pause menu which still needs to be iterated on. However as a start it looks pretty nice and I cannot wait to see what the final design looks like.

Noah started working with animations in Unreal this week. He is very new to Unreal and does not have too much experience with it. So he did some research on how to use Unreal’s animation system. In his time spent with animations, Noah managed to implement some basic Arm animations for jumping, crouching and interactions. He also created a shader in the game that switches the glove’s colour as we have so many different designs and this is an easy way to test which ones we like. This will not remain in the final game however as it is very unoptimised. 

Charlie was away again this week, but will be back next week to continue his work. 

Dan has been prototyping new areas for the game this week through greyboxing. He has created some new test rooms that play with our mechanics and interaction systems and has been playing around with that. He has come up with some new ideas and ways to reduce filler sections in the level. 

Will has been hard at work further implementing more sounds and assets into the project as well as remixing sounds and tweaking previously created ones. He has been doing an awesome job with the sound effects and sound design.

This week I nailed down the final layout for the 2nd puzzle and its rooms. I reduced the size of the area by 25% simply by just moving assets around, creating rooms and trying to eliminate as much negative & empty space in these rooms as possible. The result is a much more condensed but still big area for the player to move around and try to solve the puzzle in. The puzzle logic is solid as well and after trying various attempts to break the puzzle it seems as though you have to follow the steps and cannot skip any in order to complete the puzzle. 

Connor has been working in Unreal again this week and has continued his work on the modular level using the modular assets that he has created (an example of the level is down below). He has also been working on creating materials for objects and creating some trim sheets as well

Petra realised early on this week that she has been spending a lot of her time creating an awesome looking “Tech-Grip '' but then remembered that we do not have an arm model for when the player is without it. So she modeled an entirely new arm /hand model that looks amazing. Petra also began working on creating corpses that we can scatter around the map to add to the atmosphere.

Kye was working on a lot of the VFX this week, he created particles for fire and electricity that look amazing when used in engine. He also created a “Holographic Material” that also looks really nice and will be used in some parts of the game. He also did some work on the UI as well.

Lachlan was away this week and didn’t get a chance to work on anything, however he did let us know in advance.

Thank you again for taking the time to read this week’s Dev Log, we are all really excited about how the game is coming together and cannot wait for everyone to play it.

You can check out the previous week’s dev logs here, and you can also check the game out for yourself here.