Planet Nine Dev Log Week 9
Well this week I was going to start it off with a Planet Nine joke to celebrate the ninth week of development, but I decided against it because I couldn't come up with any funny ones. However as i said this week is week 9 and it has been a big week for the team. We are nearing the end of our extended Alpha phase with week 10 being our last week. It has been a mad scramble to ensure everything is ready for our Alpha phase but I have absolutely no doubt that we will get everything that we need to reach our milestone.
Anyway let’s take another look at what everyone has been working on for this week!
Ronan: This week Ronan refined his Spotlight interaction with the toxin even further. It now looks way more smooth than it did previously and the toxin spreads around the light in a more natural way. He also worked on hooking up the “Toxin Scene” into the main level so now that level is within the main level and is ready to have the toxin placed into it. He also started playing with some of the values for the death mechanics, changing how quickly players die in the darkness etc.
Charlie worked on fixing a whole heap of bugs this week. These included physics bugs as well as ensuring that the mechanics are working as intended and are fixing anything that he or our playtesters have come across in the time playing the game.
Marcus will be away for the next few weeks as he is taking some time off for some personal reasons that he made us aware about before we started production on the game. He will help out where he can however & Noah is still overseas this week.
Dan started work on the final area for the game. This will be the endgame section that allows the player to finish the game. The layout for this area is nearing completion and Dan already has a rough idea for the puzzles in this area so it will not be a problem for him to finish this area before next week. He also started working through fixing some issues that were brought up in playtesting and started working with the lasers again as the functionality for these were already in the game and because we have time & Dan has some really cool ideas for the lasers in puzzles, we decided to add them back in.
Will has been working on finishing his level off and tweaking some of the areas due to feedback from playtesting. The Level itself is quite large and was confusing some of the playtesters for where they were meant to. Will has implemented ways to make it easier for the player to navigate his level and hopefully we will be able to get this into the game before the Alpha stage. Will also worked on more audio design and adding them into the engine.
For myself this week, It has consisted of me building new “Filler areas” that will connect my two puzzle sections to the main game. I have essentially been creating little hallways that connect the sections together and then connect them to the main map. The result is really nice and they do flow well with the rest of the game. I have also been working on implementing little easter eggs and secret rooms into my puzzle rooms. I am not going to spoil it, but at the moment I have got one secret room implemented into the game. I also started working on doing little bits of set dressing, creating little kitchen/office spaces to fill with corpses and fog to help further engage the player through visual storytelling. Overall it has been quite a productive week for myself.
Connor worked on fixing up some of his modular assets that he had created previously. Making them more in line with the other assets included within the game. He also started creating some new assets that the development team can use to create new and exciting areas as well as little things to add to the atmosphere.
Petra worked on the trim sheets for the wall, floor & Roof assets, as well as creating trim sheets for the various different set dressing assets included within the game, including a keyboard, magazine, safety manual and notepad. She also did some UV unwrapping for her assets and added the textures to the grey boxed assets in engine. Petra also worked on creating a model for the laser cube.
Kye worked on a whole lot of set dressing this week. He completed his work on the initial room and to say it looks amazing is an understatement. The room is full of objects, flora and fauna and the way everything has been set out really makes the place feel overrun and abandoned and really helps to build the atmosphere for the game.,
Finally Lachlan has continued his work creating even more flora assets for us to use within the game. These alien flora concepts are starting to look really nice and will help break up the environment instead of re-using the same model in multiple places.
Thank you again for taking the time to stay up to date with our latest dev log, as always you can check the game out on our official Itch.Io page righthere and to see the previous logs you can check out my medium page right here.
