Frequent Packaging

During our initial prototyping phase, we did a packaged build of the game every two weeks. Now that our team has grown, we’re packaging every week. Packaging the game creates a program that works like a final product. It can be installed on anyone’s computer. It doesn’t require developer software to be played.

Packaging every week brings some nice benefits. First, we get a snapshot of what the game looked like at the end of every week. I save every one of them. Revisiting old versions helps us see how much progress we’ve made. It is also the easiest way for the team to playtest together. Using a packaged build guarantees that we all have the same version of the game.

Code

This week, we fixed a bug in our code that was preventing animations from playing correctly in multiplayer. I also made a lot of small improvements to the animation logic. For example, sprinting now cancels the reloading animation. Another change affects the falling and jumping animations if the character is sprinting before he jumped. His arms now play the correct animation (before they would keep playing the sprinting animation).

We added health bars that appear over enemies when you damage them. Here you can see a rough prototype of what this looks like.

Damaging enemies will now display a health bar

AI characters can now damage enemies. This required some refactoring of how weapons work in the game. Chris is now working on making the AI react to taking damage. If all goes well, they will take cover and search for enemies when damaged.

Ouch! AI characters (blue) can now deal damage to enemies (in this case, the player, red)

Until next week,

Silas Talley, Creative Director / Studio Manager