Polish polish polish!

The jam is almost over, no more features, only polish!

Artists

Optimisation

One of the main tasks for the first polish week was a second look at the materials and textures for the winter specific blocks, the background and shark. We did this mostly to fix mistakes, make the shark pop out more and push style coherency. 

Blocks

just like the winter biome blocks, some slight tweaks to the regular blocks have been made, mostly stuff to fit our style more or to make the blocks appear nicer.

Particles/ SFX

We've also focused on creating some small new particles/sound effects to be implemented in the game. Except for a few sound effects that still need to be added next week we will focus our efforts on taking a look at all the particles/sfx and tweaking them for a better play experience.

UI-Elements

For the UI we designed the stress meter which is now more an energy meter. 

For the animations, we have implemented a nice double jump and jump animation which makes the core mechanic feels a lot nicer to perform.

Coders

Menu tweaks

Start screen, Pause screen, menu screen have been polished and should be 100% functioning. Usage of the W and S keys in menus have been disabled, arrow keys still work.

Difficulty modifiers

The difficulty system allows for easy additions, some modifiers like ladder block chance, minimum blocks per “wave”, maximum and minimum block distance have been added.

Player assist decal

The circle under the player that helps you find his position can now be properly toggled on and off

Block particles

You’ll see new block particles like wind effects and an explode effect for the metal block. Blocks also have a particle when the shark eats them.

Rapid falling block a.k.a. metal block

This fast falling block now explodes on impact, previously it kept cluttering the scene and removing paths the player could take. 

Shark improvements

The shark now slowly goes back to his passive route, this means that he will chase the player quickly, but go back slowly. This allows the player to make less mistakes and consecutively falling into the water means imminent death.

The shark also has a bad temper and now eats blocks that block his path!

Happiness meter overhaul

We talked a lot about this as a team. The happiness meter felt too disconnected to the game and we couldn’t get it to work.

If has been reformed into an energy meter, performing actions like walking, swimming and jumping will consume energy. Get a teddy bear / land on a bed to get an energy boost!

Dropping to 0 happiness results in extreme tiredness where the player is slowed for a while.