Devlog : First Sprint Progress!

Models & Animations

Since we have officially started developing now and are no longer prototyping, we can go into a bit more detail with what we create, and sink more time into each model. Therefor we have recreated the cauldrons and snails with nicer shapes, proper UV's and even animations.

Each of these will have a wide range of animations that will be called for different status and potion effects. The cauldron currently has 4 different animations; A splash, for when you add an ingredient. A walk, for when you apply a magical potion that causes the cauldron to walk around. A sort of stretch for when it pops out a potion. And finally we have an animation for when you sabotage the other player where the cauldron will 'dance' around and will temporarily be unusable.

The snail also has a new look. We made it a bit shorter and chubbier. It also has a new range of animation. There are even more than the cauldron has. It has 3 different crawling animations for different speeds. There is an idle animation for when it is at a standstill. There is an animation for when you throw a potion at it. And finally there are animations where it jumps up and hides in its snail and one where it crawls back out.

Terrain

The terrain also has a brand new look. We have finalized a playing layout complete with bridges, a river and a finish line. This new design also comes with new materials for the grass, ground, etc. One of our artists carefully modelled and painted the landscape and then masked out where the grass should and shouldn't go.

Programming & Tech

What did we try to tackle this week?

First of we have create the concept of the cook book. What is the purpose of the cookbook you might wonder? It's main purpose is to hold all the recipes that are currently possible. But how does it know when to add new recipes, one might ask? It takes into account how far your snails are along the track. Other than that it serves as a map to hold all the classes for spawning new items. This way we can just operate with simple enum classes behind the scenes. And when we need to spawn a new item we can query it from our cookbook. Pretty neat if I say so myself?

Next on the list is the item spawner. You might think, how does the item spawner know what items it should spawn? Luckily we have a pretty smart cook book and it broadcast which items it needs for a newly added recipe and all we have to do as spawner is listen. This way the item spawner knows which items to spawn, and if there are recipes that require the same items, you have double luck and double chance.

Further more the throwinging mechanic is implemented. Because why would you have that beautiful cauldron recognition system (improved and working from last week), when you can't throw anything into the cauldron <\p>

Finally some minor things where respawning the player when he runs into the water, some optimizations for the code and some physics logic.

Cya next time!