Week 3 Feature Build
This week I built the save/load system, camera shake, corrected/smoothed the camera movement and started play testing / searching for bugs. The save system uses checkpoints and saves the level, characters position and any skills that they’ve unlocked. This is a pretty simple system that allows players to continue where they left off or create a new game altogether. I found and fixed several bugs including being able to push carried objects through walls, characters speed not decreasing while walking through slime and ensuring that the games FPS wasn’t affected (too badly) by the bosses particle system that spews smoke that can kill the characters.
Here’s what we completed this past week:
- Object Throwing (new update, works great now!)
- Moss Obstacle
- Boulder Obstacle
- Teeter (characters hang on edge of platforms)
- Water Obstacle
- Character Tracker (UI)
- Character Energy Bars (UI)
- Save/Load System
- Monkey Enemy AI (Re-worked and improved)
- Female Skill: Animal Whisper (Control over monkey now works!)
- Camera Shake
- Controller Support For Menus
This week, the team built a few new features and they also continued working on some past features that weren’t quite working. Boulders were added, these are both an obstacle and a tool depending on how we set them up in the levels. Characters can push them to kill enemies or destroy objects if setup as a tool. Another new feature was water. This was something we’ve been back and forth on about cutting from the game as we didn’t think it would bring a lot of utility to the game. One of my team mates got it working so that it pushes characters in one direction as if they had “opened the flood gates.” Moss was the last new feature to be added, it works in a similar way to the water except characters that touch it lose all control and it’s as if they were on a slip-n-slide. Normally we would have used physics materials to create these sort of effects but due to the way we’ve created our character controllers we ended up having to mess with their velocities instead.
I’ve uploaded the build here if you’d like to check it out: https://sethrolfe.com/wp-content/uploads/Above%20WebGL%20Week3/index.html
Here are the controls: A game pad is recommended but keyboard controls do work if you don’t have one available.
| Male Character Controls – GamePad | ||
| Button | Action | Description |
| Left Stick | Movement | Moves the male character in the direction the player is pressing at walk speed. If the player holds the male’s interact button while moving the character will run. |
| Left Bumper | Jump | The male character will jump vertically. |
| Left Trigger | Interact | Activates several different actions depending on the male character’s current state. For example, dragging a crate or climbing a vine. |
| Female Character Controls – GamePad | ||
| Button | Action | Description |
| Right Stick | Movement | Moves the female character in the direction the player is pressing at walk speed. If the player holds the female’s interact button while moving the character will run. |
| Right Bumper | Jump | The female character will jump vertically. |
| Right Trigger | Interact | Activates several different actions depending on the female character’s current state. For example, dragging a crate or climbing a vine. |
| Male Character Controls – Keyboard | ||
| Button | Action | Description |
| WASD | Movement | Moves the male character in the direction the player is pressing at walk speed. If the player holds the male’s interact button while moving the character will run. |
| Space Bar | Jump | The male character will jump vertically. |
| Left Shift | Interact | Activates several different actions depending on the male character’s current state. For example, dragging a crate or climbing a vine. |
| Female Character Controls – Keyboard | ||
| Button | Action | Description |
| Arrow Keys | Movement | Moves the female character in the direction the player is pressing at walk speed. If the player holds the female’s interact button while moving the character will run. |
| Numpad 0 or ‘/’ | Jump | The female character will jump vertically. |
| Right Shift | Interact | Activates several different actions depending on the female character’s current state. For example, dragging a crate or climbing a vine. |