Devlog 2:

Week 2 of the devlogs is here! Welcome, readers, new week, new information. We worked on our master shader some more, started building the art bible for the game, and began prototyping actual gameplay. More in-depth information can be found below, so if you are interested in any of these topics, keep reading 😉

Game Changes

In the game, we had the idea of making the players change lanes with their vehicle to avoid upcoming obstacles. This seemed like a fun mechanic, but after some prototyping with the camera angles and mechanics, we discovered the idea of having 3 lanes will not work for our game. We changed the 3-lane road to a singular lane road. This opens a lot more space in the world for the camera and the overall scale of the vehicle, which should be the largest on the screen. This made the shooting of enemies easier and opened up our spacing inside the vehicle for the ‘tasks’ mechanic.

What about the obstacles? Good question, those are still there. Instead of dodging, we brainstormed other ways a vehicle could get past an obstacle: using a force field, ram through it, shoot it. What did we choose? Explosions. We added a giant artillery cannon to the vehicle. Because who doesn't like big weapons that go boom, am I right? This gave us the possibility to add an extra task to our mechanics, which is the reloading of the giant cannon. Players will have to make sure the cannon is reloaded before the next obstacle comes or will take lots of damage.

Since we already have a reload mechanic for the turrets, making this work won’t be that far off from our code. So we have more spacing for the gameplay, and it adds upon an existing mechanic, win-win situation.

Master Shader

This is what we had in Devlog 1. The shader had already some functionality implemented, for example: Overlay tint, saturation/desaturation, contrast, transparency, and a gradient with directional controls. 

Now the shader has been expanded to work with color variation using masks, which can be applied underneath the gradient or above it. We can also adjust the intensity of the color variation map. We also added an outliner to the shader; we are unsure if we will use it, but it might be nice to experiment with, and this way it’s there when we actually want it. The outliner can change in thickness and has custom color possibilities.

Artbible

Here’s a little sneak peek of the artbible. The overall layout is still a work in progress, right now we are just focusing on getting the art style explained and settled.

Gameplay Prototype

Finally, with combined efforts, our team has established a gameplay build, featuring the main mechanic of fighting off enemies approaching the side of our vehicle using turret artillery and bringing clarity on the overall game view.