Development sprint 1: Log 1

General:

This week we finished up the prototype for "Pray, prey" and moved on to the first development sprint.
This change brought some interesting insights with it, starting with the planning of both development sprints. We had a hard time estimating the time we would spend on doing certain tasks. We already have a pretty good understanding about the time it will take to make some small props or how long coding certain feature would take from the prototype phase. When we were planning the sprints, we also had to take into account the time it would take to create all menus and how long we would need to implement sound, which we did not do during prototyping.
For the programmers it was hard to gauge how long implementing all animations and particles would take, as neither of us really used the particle/animation system in unreal before. So this phase will be interesting once we get there.

Programming:

We will start by adjusting things we learned from the prototype. For example the input for both the hawk and the mouse didn't feel right to most people that tested it. Our first priority is to get the input to feel right, as this will break the whole experience if not done correctly. Next to the input, we will change the way projectiles behave from the prototype. The goal is to guide the projectiles towards the target when they are within a certain range of the target. This will make hitting the other players a lot easier and will increase the fun factor.

This development sprint we will also focus on implementing the core mechanics like interactables and scoring.

Art:

The main goal is to create the models and textures for the items we want to implement in this sprint. Main focus will be the characters (modelling, rigging and animation) along with the most important props. We will also start working on some sounds, mainly to be able to see how we will implement these later. The main user interface menus will be created too. Finally we will already create some of the most important particle effects.