Adam Blog 7

This past week saw the creation of level two, and, as mentioned in previous posts, it was all kinds of special. Thankfully, though I've been able to do a lot of testing on it and have fixed a number of issues as a result.

• The issue of Z shenanigans has been fixed due to work from both myself and Charlie, so we no longer have to worry about GravMan falling through the background or flying at the camera.
• I fixed a number of issues that were interfering with GravMan's trajectories. The first was fixed by turning off downward gravity on the Cube object, so GravMan would only be influenced by planetary gravity and not natural downward gravity. I also moved the background back because GravMan's foot was clipping it.
• With the previous issues fixed, I've been tweaking the gravity power and radius of the planets to make their effects flow more smoothly. It is still a work in progress, but I think that the attraction and escapes have improved. As of now the radius has been changed to 17 and the power to -30.
• I've set up a new scene, one that I call "Scene 20 - Test Scene". This is where I will be performing all of my gravity tests and tweaks.

So level two is progressing fairly well. I'm looking to improve on a number of things in the next week:

• More work on gravity to make the flow feel right
• Possible incorporation of the slingshot planet. I'll be talking to the producers about this.
• New rounds of playtesting

 There are a couple of things that I would like to get done as a team over the next week:

1. Persistent sound: If we could make it so that the GravMan song does not repeat every time the player restarts the level(which will be a lot), it would improve the feel of the game. The professor mentioned how to do this, and I'll be sending him an email about how to go about it.
2. Gravity well indicators: Charlie said this might be as easy as adding a circle around the model, but I would like there to be some indication of how large and possibly how powerful a planet's gravity is.
3. GravMan respawn positioning: When GravMan flies off the screen too far, he respawns at the home planet (thank you whoever got that fully working). The only issue is that he is facing the direction that he was at when he flew off the screen. Meaning that he should be facing the same way as when the level begins. If that could be worked on that would be great.
4. Trampoline: This is something that we have been talking about, and I think that Frank has made a model for it. If we could get an animation for it that would show it bouncing GravMan as he hits it and implement the functionality behind GravMan hitting it  we could start adding it to our levels.
5. Enhanced backgrounds: The new backgrounds that Andy has put out can now be tiled, so we can add those in. Something that I noticed when setting up my shots was that I would use some of the stars on the background as reference points to where I should put the planet. I think adding objects in the background such as distant galaxies or random fun stuff could be used no only to spruce up our game, but to help the player shoot.
6. Playtests: Next Wednesday we have another playtest log due. Find friends, find random people, have them play the game. The more feedback the better.

Anyway, the game is still coming along well. We still have a lot of work to do, so everyone please email me what your schedule looks like for the next week because it would be a good idea for us to meet outside of class.

-Adam