Riptide Override: Sprint 3

    Hopefully, this will remain as one of our most challenging sprints. Half of the entire sprint was spent attempting to get a build onto the Google Play store, which gave us far less time to do the same amount of content that we normally do.

Let us start with the big stuff. Now let me be clear, the whole process of getting a build onto the store was a group effort. In fact, we clocked in 7 hours across 3 meetings solely focusing on this singular challenge. This might of taken us a entire week of the sprint; but I am very proud to say that my group was the only one that came to class with a playable, built, and published version of a game. 

That being said, what did I specifically do regarding the build? I handled everything surrounding the Google Console. This included seven different builds. Yes, you read that right. Across the first week of Sprint 3 I uploaded 7 different builds onto the store, each of which were a revised version of the last. This was already after we fixed the majority of known bugs on the PC version. These seven builds were solely focusing on new issues that only appeared once we got over to mobile.

Before any of these could even be published though, Marco and I had to spend hours combining a version of all our work on the Github. In theory this could of gone far worse, 3 of our 4 branches were fine and compatible. One of our members though copied a bunch of work, which is fine, but did not change the names of those copies. He then made original work using those copies as a template, without changing any names again. Because of that, when we attempted to merge branches, a significant amount of work was overridden due to this one branch filled with duplicate names from all the other branches. Marco and I we're able to eventually resolve all the issues, but not with out making 6 entirely new branches on the Github.

That covers the first half of the sprint, now lets get into the actual content creation. Because playtests took place in the middle of Sprint 3, I was able to get feedback about our current version of the game, and instantly work on improvements for the 2nd half of the sprint. There were two major bug fixes I resolved during this time. The first one being hitboxes being off for the side scrolling aspect portion of the game. Everyone said the terrain hitboxes felt off, and wouldn't always reset the player on contact.

This wasn't actually the case, it was the submarines hitboxes that were off. I rushed in a quick death mechanic right before the playtests, so players could not get stuck, and in my haste I only gave the submarine vertical hitboxes, and not horizontal ones. This was quick and easy fix as I knew the root issue. At the same time though I would hope we would not need to continue using this temporary death mechanic, and instead switch over to the actual one that's been in development for two sprints.

The second fix was regarding a weird glitch with the lighting. If the player got too close to a wall, ceiling, or floor, the submarines spotlight source would phase into the object. This caused a instant blinding of gamma as whatever material it came in contact with would just turn neon white. I reajusted the values of the light, as well as moved the source to the interior of the submarine, so it could no longer clip with terrain.

I then worked on creating a universal enter/exit model that would be used in every level. Besides the model, this also included a lighting, particle, and scene switch system. The idea was to make level switching more seamless, and make it very evident to the player when the reached the end of the level; as from playtests earlier this sprint it became evident that a "Giant red bar" at a end of a level could seem rather hostile, instead of being a clear indication of the objective. Here's the completed version.

And here's the removal of the model, particles, and lighting so you can clearly see the seamless scene switch in action. Obviously there's still work to be done with lining up the terrain in the levels, but the system itself is working as intended.

I also worked on improving the overall quality of level 1. This entailed adding more background debris, that added to the environment, but did not stand out too much unlike the coral. I added Fish, Stones, and Stalagmites of varying sizes and angles.

After that, my last job as doing a background and border for the first puzzle level. I also added some yellow squares for where the pipes should start and end, as this puzzled (no pun intended) some users during the playtest.

Besides this, I also made the simple death system mentioned above, and added dynamic lighting and fog for level one, which can also be seen in multiple pictures. This concludes the majority of my work for Sprint 3. Things went smoothly, and I am incredibly proud of my group for the grind we put in, as we were the only ones with a published build.