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[liyikai]

This is the Dev Blog of EECS494 P3 Studio 1 on data 2024/11/18:

a. What's new?

UI part: Adding hovering text onto the Tool and Things button, indicating what usage of each item is. A Minimap on the up-right corner can show player's rotation and surrounding environment. By clicking the Minimap, the player can get into a bigger Map that includes the whole world, in which player can teleport to checkpoints reached before. After new item got, a display canvas will appear.

Building Mechanism part: Totally change the car-building logic, now the car can be rebuilt anywhere during playing, and the car information will be always stored. The Retry button can help you go back to the last checkpoint reached, and help you face the next level challenge. The breaking mechanism is added to the game so that the player can't always do dangerous tries, since once the car is broken, player are only able to retry, but not rebuild.

Level Design changes: Largely shrink the plot and make it more level-based, the new tools are given separately and will immediately face levels that serve as tutorial levels to teach how to use this new tool, levels in the volcano are implemented with more innovative challenges, need player to make full use of the tools, Rebuild-anywhere mechanism. More adventures are built with Blender modeling.

Tool Logic change: The rocket now has fuel system, enabling the player only to use it for a limited time, so player will be more cautious when using rockets, cool particle effects are added.

b. What's the motivation?

For the UI part,  players feel confused about the motor wheel and rotation wheel, so we separate its getting line to make it more understandable. Also, A hovering text can help player remember or memorize what is what. The Minimap system and the checkpoint system serves as the save game system, for player who want to retry some prior levels or get out of some deadlock. The rebuild-anywhere system is added to help player make more decisions, like in a 90 degree turn, player can rebuild their wheels' angle to make a nice play try. But the breaking mechanism is added, to avoid player be too confident about the rebuild-anywhere system to make some unreasonable try and moves, which is avoiding the level design's intension. The volcano map is revised to have clear level design, with different challenges for player to try. Plot are deleted to avoid players get tired watching so much blend words. Rockets are changed so that they can be used only for a limited duration, which aligns with common sense and add some difficulty to players' choice making. The map are totally remake to make a clearer linear experience. Our project is heading for a level-based sandbox game, rather than last week's totally free sandbox mode, we make it more level-based, which is also our final direction.

c. What's next? We will add some more sub-assignments with some easy and funny topic, like carrying some NPCs to do some job, and also we will add more tools for use. We prepare to add some NPCs next week and add a first boss fight into the game, and also add music and a nice starting scene.

[liyikai]

This is the Dev Blog of EECS494 P3 Studio 1 on data 2024/11/24:
MacWindows Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jVUFiHwAdgUT0yEKrVmrIZSkNj7gxt6d/view?usp=sharing

a. What's new?

-We make a juicy and interesting Intro animation scene and late for nearly one minute totally using models made by ourselves in blender and Animation systems in Unity. It shall be funny and interesting to first-time players for our game.

-We again totally remake the map in Blender for our whole map, which largely rearranged the pace and schedule of the whole game, we delete all the "hard" but "useless" level designs, add only must levels and interesting but not that hard levels to the map, totally remake the map inside the volcano part, we also add skybox and materials onto the map, make its style more adherent to our pigs' model.

-We also make the main story and the side quest apart, we will present the side quests available only after you finished the nearly 10-min-long main story about the march to the volcano, then we make a story system that can guide players according to his own choice. With this, player can choose neglecting the hard and time-demanding side quests and keep on main story or choose to take a try, which guarantee the main story's 20 min limit and add depth to our game.

-For the side quests, we have three options present for player, with different challenges and different fun, some need patience, some need creativity and courage and some only need fun!

-Make the checkpoint system more stable, more systematic, and adjust the camera's logic, change the rocket logic to right mouse as advised. For the car building mechanism, although we didn't change much, but we add a car design slots with three empty slot while you play further to help you store some designs of the car to save your time, you only need to switch between these designs.

b. What's the motivation?

The introduction animation is the most juicy part that we think can make and to attract players to play our game, so we make the story and animation that fit our game's style and storyline. We make it all with physics so that it can appear to be quite interesting and funny. After that, no more animation but only words that will take some time duringFor the level part, we listened to the players and Prof Austin's suggestions, eliminating the hard and time-costing levels and make levels coherent and easy enough to only try teach player the mechanism of some certain objects. We fix the logic of car falling in the levels getting two different wheels. We make a story UI which like many more mature games. We add the slot space in car designing to try solve complaints of players feeling annoying modifying all the time from one to another during the game time. Materials are added to make its style more coherent as advised by professor. We add audios to add interest to the game. As for the professionalism part, we modified the sky box and just make the car-breaking more realistic.We add many more hints and instructions during game to make player feel better and feel more confident, instead of feeling being fouled. We wish to make it a even much much better version in the gold.

c. What's next?

We will finish the final part of our game-----> the final boss fight, there will be exciting battle gameplay experience as well as new level challenges on the way to the boss. Also, we will expand more side quests to the players to make the content after the main story more.  Map will be polished to be a better version. Audio and sound effects will be polished. We will also hear from the advises from the final round's playtest.

[liyikai]

This is the Dev Blog of EECS494 P3 Studio 1 on data 2024/12/08:
MacWindows Link: Drive.google.com

a. What's new?

-We make a casual and interesting boss fight, in which boss has two stages and three skills, the breaking and rebuild won't be penalized, but we add the count of retry, which may add a little bit of interest.

-rescheduling the level again, making the map and process more compact, save more time, make the boss fight happening in volcano, also add extra exciting levels on the road towards the boss room

- add some story animation, and all the lines are dubbed with voice in certain proper tone.

-audio refinement and adding to nearly all the effects.

-side quests finished, all four side quests, with different challenges and interest, each is separate, player can try anyone they want, and this only happens after the main story, won't occupy main story's time.

b. What's the motivation?

-The side quests and the boss fight are the most important parts we work on in the last two weeks. Side quests are separate so that won't occupy player's main time. Each has its own difficulty and needs maybe several try and use some thinking, but is the main core of our game's idea. For the boss fight, we have made the model interesting and the animation interesting to have a casual fight, so we set no penalty on player's dying or retrying, only counting to add some sense of competition, also if you want, you can use some tricks to avoid any danger, this is all up to the players themselves. This game is in core a casual 3d physics game bringing fun of building but not a tricky one need a lot of skills.

c.What's next?

- In the future, we wish to add more maps and more components into this game, due to the time limit, we compress our main story time, but we want to make it a series, that can cover different kind of maps with different kind of themes and challenges, like the ice world and sky island.