Sprint 2 Summary

Team 1

In Sprint 2, Team 1 had a focus on a much more visible feature of the game as opposed to important but less direct menu reworks of Sprint 1. Collaborating somewhat with Team 3, the designs and assets, as well as the functional behaviour changes of six status effect pick ups were made. These pick ups were a Speed Buff, Jump Buff, and VoidStop Buff, as well as a Time Stop Debuff, an Interference Debuff, and a Speed Debuff.

The work on the coding side included making the pick up objects spawn in game and adding collision and accurate proportioning to them so that they were obvious to the player, but not obtrusive to the gameplay experience. The functionality of all six pick ups was created too, which built off the back of Team 4's work on collision and movement in Sprint 1, as well as Team 3's Void from Sprint 1.

From the design standpoint, Team 1 had to sketch and design several variations on each pick up, then created high fidelity versions of it, and animate it at 23 frames in the animation file. This meant creating 22 different variations of each of pick up. There was also user testing revolving around these pick ups and their design and interpretation done, as well as a Current Game State user test, which evaluated all aspects of the game as of the end of sprint 2.

Team 2

In Sprint 2, Team 2 decided to continue focusing on level development and design. Along with Team 4, the design and development of 4 total level was split 50/50, with Team 2 being responsible for levels 1 and 4. Working with Team 4 and 5, moodboards were created for each level to allow everyone to have an understanding of the overall look and theme for the game. Once this was decided, we worked on map design, textures and actually building the two levels. This also required changes to be made to the level editor that was implemented last sprint in order to handle multiple levels in the game and how the saving / loading functionality would work for this. Our team also implemented an end condition, in the form of a portal / tube that the player enters in order to finish the level.

Team 3

In Sprint 2, Team 3 worked on improving the main player character. This included completely redesigning the character, animating the character in regards to general movements and when under the effect of a buff/de-buff, and implementing these all into the game.

The character design was changed as a result of the initial design being ‘too human-like’ due to its body shape and proportions. Taking this into account, Team 3 designed the character to have a more robotic appearance, with characteristics of a virus being incorporated through the shape of the character’s limbs, and a more creature-like body structure. The redesign also aimed to make the character look more threatening, considering it is a computer virus, which is technically the harmful one in reality.

Once the character design was complete, it was animated to be able to display general movements, including running, jumping, sliding and falling. With the introduction of power-ups by Team 1 in this sprint, animations were also made for the character when affected by a buff or de-buff item.

By the end of the sprint, all character assets were created, but due to implementation issues with integrating the animations into the game, only a general running movement was included. The animations created by Team 3 made the game lag significantly, and thus was not implemented, but was revisited later in Sprint 3.

Team 4

Team 4 expanded the level editor system, added interactable element visuals/animations, and also designed levels 2 & 3 during this sprint. The level editor had it's functionality improved by expanding it's ability to create, save, and read/load multiple levels instead of just one at a time. This was perceived to allow for more interesting gameplay and began the studio-wide discussion of making each level look/feel unique, while also contributing to the grand scheme of making each level flow into one another and have them visually present the virus (player) winning.

This was followed up by the design and user testing of multiple animations for the interactable elements. These elements included the jump-pads, portals, and floor-buttons, each with their own animation (consisting of 100 frames per animation). These animations were designed with the game's general theme in mind, produced using Adobe Animate, and thoroughly user-tested to ensure ease of adoption into the Runtime universe. These animations (while within the game files), were never implemented into Runtime due to time and thought constraints.

Finally, Team 4 designed the general flow of levels 2 & 3. These were initially sketches with directional indicators and placeholder objects for interactable elements. The aim for these was more focused on user-testing, with members of Team 4 testing these sketches in high detail, looking for qualitative feedback of ways to improve or expand upon our initial ideas.

Team 5

In sprint 2, team 5 focused on the visual aesthetic of the game, fixing sonarcloud bugs and fixing bugs from our previous sprint (involving music and sound effects). We aimed to create 4 different aesthetic packages that related to our previous created sounds for the 4 different levels in order to enhance the user experience. A "package" included the levels moodboard design, level background, sounds of the level and the overall mood of that particular level.

The theme of the game was a virus taking over a computer. With that in mind, the 4 level backgrounds related to 4 different Windows Versions. Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows OS. Moodboards were created and presented to the other teams to get a confirmation with the theme. A combination of Illustrator and Photoshop was then used to create the background. The background were then implemented when a level was created.

The mute button implemented in sprint 1 was also fixed along with many sonarcloud bugs. A few more sound effects were also created and uploaded like jumping and power ups.

Overall, in this sprint, team 5 focused on adding a clearer theme to the game and therefore a better user experience. With the added sounds and level backgroun, the game was becoming more "juicy"