SEAR DevBlog, week of 8/11: Art direction and level cap screens

The box art sausage getting made

We've largely transitioned completely at this point from implementing new functionality and into making sure all the pieces we already have are present and playable for the prototype next month.

I have come to terms with the fact that said prototype will not be perfect. We have a hard deadline for grant application and I don't want to miss it, but thankfully no bugs in the current build are debilitating. Most are strictly aesthetic. We are still scrambling to iron out a few physics issues, but those too are not game-breaking. The budget clock is ticking and we need to hit this deadline, so every week between now and go time is going to be invested in improving what we've got right now.

That doesn't mean nothing new will be showing up in the gameplay videos - a lot of that polishing involves implementing functionality that has been in the game for months, but is waiting on an animation suite, for example. So there will still be some major changes to those over the coming weeks; if there weren't, I'd go ahead and release the prototype now.

Focus this week was on continuing work on the shipping build, continuing refinement on the vehicle load animation, end-level results screen (tested and ready - just needs final implementation), further level refinement in phases 4 & 5, development of some additional art assets for phases 1 & 6, and my piece: building a CinematicManager to handle the brief cinematic at the start of the level, the title screen intro, some elements of the tutorial, trailer videos, etc. That's MOSTLY written (there is one last stubborn bug that I will probably just move past because it doesn't threaten the core functionality, it's just an extra) and like the results screen, just needs final implementation... which unfortunately I ran out of steam today before I could quite get to.

Oh! Speaking of the tutorial, I finished the basic outline for that this week. A big hang-up was how to have a traditional tutorial where you can take your time and learn the basics and control of the vehicle, while also being on a timer based on the music which is presenting PREs which have to be responded to at a certain time, etc. These two needs very much clashed and I'm pleased with the approach I finally figured out. The tutorial will be one racetrack but actually have two song sections. The first section will be open-ended, no time limit, with very chill music and voiceover which walks you through the basic controls and confirms your understanding of them. Once that's done, part 2 will start: a 60-second tutorial song, much more intense and exciting, with 3 resboost PREs in it which you can repeat as often as you'd like to, or opt to proceed into the actual game level once you're done with it. Really excited to see this in action. I also passed off the script to our voice actor, Stephanie Light, who is working on tone-setting this weekend! Between you and me, I'm not 100% time we'll actually have time to implement the VO parts for the prototype - it may be more of a final demo thing - but we're gonna try!