Nigel

Elevator pitch

Nigel is an action-adventure platformer game about a little mouse named Nigel doing anything he can to get back to his owner, including fighting post-apocalyptic monsters. Survive a dangerous, eldritch, fallout world, with creepy mutated monsters. Learn to fight and overcome obstacles to reach your destination 

Iteration 1(week 4)

We want to have our first level designed. This will first show Nigel coming out of his cage and dropping down to the bedroom floor. This level will introduce movement and combat. The art might not be refined, but we want a general idea of where Nigel is and what his animations look like. By using platforms, players will get an idea of how to move around in the game. At the end, a cheese boss will be introduced, showcasing dashing and attacking. Music will be included throughout. This will be the basis for our next milestones to see what we can 

Iteration 2 (week 7)

Our second level will be designed. This will feature Nigel climbing and exploring the kitchen. A gray box of the level and combat mechanics for the second boss will be emphasized. Parrying is introduced. Sound design for walking and fighting.

Iteration 3 (week 10)

Polish the game and finalize the boss fight. The boss will have previous boss fight mechanics incorporated. 

Finished

Charlie 

Ideated boss 1 arena and boss fight.  We were hoping to go with a mutated block of cheese and have it act similar to that of a slime monster.  It will have charge attacks, AoEs and be able to split and reform itself. 

Soland 

Redesigned Nigel's player rig to align more with story and be more visually appealing. Redid the rig to be more responsive, flexible, and easier to understand. Also added a cape to Nigel per request. Transfered existing player scripts to new Nigel object and created a prefab. Also adjusted scripts and made sure everything worked.

Eli 

Reworked the story to create a more inclusive close ended story within a short video game. Started working on the initial level 1 design.

Fiana

Brainstormed melodies for the soundtrack. We want more fantasy elements in the beginning. It needs to be lighthearted to represent the happiness in the beginning and then turns darker as Nigel traverses the house. The boss fights will be based on rhythm, so an obvious downbeat will be essential

Goals for next week

We want to finish one song, level design, boss mechanics, and animations for the mouse. Decide on a theme and art direction for our game. All agree on what we want the tutorial to be as well as what level one should include.

We all decided on what we expected the menu, tutorial, and level one to look like. This presentation represents our visual and audial thought process. We also thought the dashing and falling movements were too fast, so we played around with the gravity and the duration of its movement.  

Charlie 

Reverted work on boss fight to begin using state based machine to use code more similar to in industry.  Split into idle, attack and 6 subattack phases Boss arena has been made a code going into boss fight is being flushed out. 

Soland 

Discovered and fixed a bug in Nigel's rig. I Finished Nigel's idle animation, coded the animation manager script, and hooked the idle animation up. Tuned idle animation parameters, Did Nigel run animation and hooked it up to movement controls, linked animation controller, and tuned switching between animations to be smoothed. Aligned hitbox to better fix Nigel's animations and ground, as well as collision with objects.

Eli 

Created a presentation to help solidfy our vision going forward on the game with mood boards and music attached. Reiterated and finalized the story of Nigel. Presentation: 

Created a User test level to test movement and platforming, the core gameplay of our game.

Tweaked the numbers on movement and reworked the dash movement to help create a more satisifying movement layout. Also started greyboxing the beginning of Level 1.

Fiana

Bought a MIDI keyboard to help with soundtrack design. Used Ableton to create a menu soundtrack that will loop over and over until the user presses play. Since we wanted to portray the story as happy in the beginning, the song was happier with a happy chord progression on the piano. 

User Testing

People say the jump feels fast but the dash feels good. Idle animation looks good. Camera moves well but sometimes jittery.

Goals for next week

Finish remaining animations for Nigel, design his sword from concept, and link up kinematics with the sword so Nigel can hold it. Attack animations. Polish animations to be smooth and perfect Nigel's animation controller. Create the sound track for the first level

Charlie 

I began reworking the boss after conversation with my team designing the arena to be an equal threat to the boss.  This will focus the player more on movement then combat.  So far I have created a column that will crush the player as well as projectiles that shoot left or right to create temporary platforms for the player.  My goal next week will to hope to have created 6 attacks and a controller to spawn and remove certain actions.

Soland 

Fixed jumping bug, added a variable in our player movement tool to easily manipulate jumps. Animated and hooked up dash animation, polished animation controller to feel more responsive and smooth. Trialed platforming loop with sync movement. Fixed Nigel tail bug when he was falling / rising without movement - extending his tail

Eli 

Ideated final rundown of mechanics that are going to be made as well as story that unified all the ideas we came up with and were working on from week 3. Created a boss object that would sync to music and do a random attack at every 4th downbeat. Started working on creating UI icons.

Fiana

Started playing around with a new track for level traversing and boss music but couldn't find something that I liked. Listened to a bunch of different soundtracks for different video games and tried to find some inspiration. I think Gloom Hands from Legend of Zelda is something that our boss should sound like

Goals for next week

Finish greybox level design with movement to music. Finish music tracks. Finish greybox Boss fight.

Charlie 

Created the boss with 3 different attacks and finished the arena to allow for platforms to come in and start as hazards to the player. I need to finish the 3rd attack and start the mad time damaging platforms for the boss to allow him to actually be hurt.  Also proper interaction between the enemies and the terrain around it.

Soland 

Created prefab MusicManager, which easily switches between tracks, pauses tracks at any time and keeps music synced. Also allows user to change speed/pitch of the song up or down. Started building Nigel's Shader, added flashing along with various controls that can be manipulated with code. Started thinking about what a UI for the game might look like (concept). Since the plan is to have Nigel play through a "music" video I designed with the idea that the player is a DJ of sorts since they're switching tracks and controlling music via speed. Perhaps volume could be an influence too? Tested cameras and scene post-processing effects mostly Bloom. 

Eli 

Created a BeatManager, since unity manages audio and video separately, you can't simply sync audio to video by starting them at the same time as they will eventually get out of sync with each other due to a variety of factors such as audio and game stuttering or not starting right on time. Eventually the audio and game will go out of sync and there is no way of fixing it other then restarting the game. Using an algorithm that instead calculates audio samples and frequency we can track the music using beats instead of seconds, in a way that won't desync audio and video. I then connected this BeatManager to moving and rotating objects, having them get permission to move from one angle or point to the next, only when a certain beat hits(quarter notes, eighth notes, ect. ect.). Currently my blocks move smoothly from one place to the other, stop, then wait for permission to move, so my next challenge is to make it so instead it calculates how far it needs to go, and what the speed it needs to go at to travel that distance within the beat I want it to, creating snappier movement. I've also starting working on some of the UI as well.

Fiana

Created 30 seconds of boss fight music. I wanted something epic that also had distinct downbeats that way the platforms could follow easily. Lots of layered piano and arpeggios. 

Goals for next week

• Finish BeatManager Movement and connect it with MusicManager

• Completely finish Greyboxing Level

• Start working on platform music

UX Questions

• Does the movement feel good? (Jumping, dashing, running around)

• Do the platforms feel fun? 

• Does the concept of switching tracks sound intriguing?

• Does the music fit the theme? 

• Boss fight

  • How does attack one feel? 

  • How Does attack two feel

  • Does the arena help or get in the way?

Answers

• James Tran - non gamer 🐥

  • Hand placement is weird

    • Use other hand to dash instead of space bar

  • Nigel falls fast

  • Likes the space invaders vibe in Attack 1

  • Don't feel like jumping in Attack 2

  • Confused on platforming, music, and boss fighting all together

It was hard to do UX testing when we didn't have all the elements put together. Soland had the music manager, Charlie had the boss fight, and Eli had the level design. We will do more UX testing next week.

Charlie 

Ran the interviews with Peter and Danny (both of our mentors) Also began designing sprite work as to Peters suggestion as that is what we are behind on in addition to designing level one for us to grey box players to run through.

Soland

Hooked up a temporary damage animation with shader to flash on hit, created health manager, created UI foundation, hooked up health manager to health bar. 

Eli 

Fiana

Discussed further ideas to implement to the soundtrack. Thought about the mood and how my boss music right now doesn't fit the theme we're going for. I'm thinking of scrapping it or moving it to another scene. Asked David Schaal for some assistance to help me make something cool 

Goals for next week

Charlie 

Finished level 1 and started designing level 2, had a rough week so will do more next week.

Soland 

Iterated a few different styles for art direction, did the line work and background details for the first scene.

Eli 

Grey boxed out the bedroom scene, worked with Charlie to ideate the bedroom scene and most of the under the bed scene. Started creating and putting in different mechanics(respawning, death spots, ect.). Listed out a todo list with all the sprites and their dimensions that need to be made for the level. Added more functionality to the BeatManager that lets only certain platforms be affected by halftime slowdown instead of all of them.

Fiana

Ideated another boss soundtrack. It's more intense than the previous one and is at 140bpm. The recording I did in Ableton isn't to the exact beat, so I'll have to adjust each note to make sure they follow the rhythm.

Goals for next week

Have levels fleshed out and boss first seamless build

Charlie 

Changed the controls on the game to allow for controller adapting it for movement and animation.  Designed level 2, under the bed and began working on platforms that move in Sine waves to add varitey to our platforms. 

Soland 

Continued to build on Nigel's animations, added a baton and animations for it running/standing still when track is switched, started creating assets and inserting art into scenes. Adding lighting, adding particle systems.

Eli 

Fiana

Added finishing touches to boss soundtrack. Included a breakcore sample, viola, horns, and more drums

Goals for next week

Charlie 

Worked on the movment of multiple platforms including sine wave movement and platforms falling to beat. Also spend a lot of time debugging issues that came up with the controller switch and rectified them all (this is underselling how long this took...  it took hours...) Big one was a bug with dash where it wouldn't be properly executed breaking our game.

Soland 

Worked on lvl 1 artworks and sprites, particle systems, shaders, and lights, assisted in bug fixing code

Eli 

Fiana

Finished boss and platform soundtracks

Goals for next week

POLISH!!!

Charlie 

Soland 

Continued working on sprites, artwork, shaders, lights

Eli 

Fiana

Finished level 1 platform soundtrack and halftime. Finished level 2 soundtrack and half time. Struggled with putting soundtrack and halftime together coherently in unity.

Goals for next week