Bug Fixes

My first week of this development period was spent fixing various bus and issues that we found during our previous play test. Most of my work went into the starting sequence of the game. The issue came from players joining the game when they shouldn't have been. When the master client created the game other players could join it before they had even loaded the scene. This caused some problems starting the game because the timing would be out of sync giving certain players an advantage. So to fix this issue I had to stop players joining until the master client had loaded the game.  Also  in the starting sequence I checked if all players in the current room had loaded the scene. This was so if the game was counting down and a new player had joined the game it would stop and allow them to load.  Once every player was ready the game would begin; stopping others from joining until it resets.

Camera Fixes

A long sustained problem with the camera was it being parented to the head bone of the player model. This meant  when playing animations like running and jumping the camera would shake with the stride which was not desired at all. I managed to fix this issue by faking parenting. This involved taking the transform of the camera and the transform of the game object I wanted to follow and lerping between them. Then applying an offset to the final transform. That managed to solve the position issue but didn't solve the rotational one. The camera needed to rotate up and down to look in all directions. I solved this by actually using the same code from the spine rotation. This meant that the camera would rotate the same way as the spine. Now the camera works that same as before but is no longer affected by animations. It was great to finally get the camera working perfectly because it was something that i had been putting off for a while.  

I also made some additions to the camera and added some camera shake. Now when the player hits the sword against something or when they get hit by one their camera shakes a little. This serves as feedback for the player and makes hits a bit more impact.

Player Movement Tweaks and Improvements

Another long sustained issue we had was to do with running up slopes in the game. When players would go up slopes their speed would be severely hindered but we wanted the player’s speed to consistent on all surfaces. This was due to the fact they we were using rigid body physics for our movement. To fix this I shoot a ray cast from the player’s feet a short distance. So if the player is on a flat surface the ray cast doesn’t hit anything but when they are on a slope it does. Once I detect that the player is on a slope I add an upward force essentially negating the speed hindrance from running up slopes. This worked perfectly and now the player movement feels great even running up slopes.

I also added a movement hindrance when you become exhausted and when you have the grail. This was to punish people who don't use their endurance properly and to allow other players to catch up to the grail player.

Combat Tweaks and Improvements

This past week I also spent a little bit of time tweaking and polishing movement. The major change I made was to the special attacks. For the lunge I made the the attack more direct and abrupt. Now player travels a shorter distance but in a smaller amount of time. My favorite change was to the overhead attack. If you're in the air and do the attack the animation halts midway. You then come plunging into the ground at high speed and once you hit the animation continues to play through. This felt really satisfying, like you are really slamming into the ground with your sword. To add further feedback I added hit stop into all sword collisions. So if you hit any collider in the game your sword stops so you really feels its impact. I also added endurance use to attacks to further contextualize them and I also twerked the damage values

Where to Next

Now for the next week or so I'm moving on to audio. Our sound designer has been working hard and has made some really nice sounds so now I want to put all his hard work to use and get them in the game.

 - Liam McIntosh -