Hello there! Welcome Back

This was our first week of polish. From now on, we are no longer allowed to add features are make major gameplay changes. So, what did we do?

Polish, what is it?

Polish is refining everything in your game project to make sure it works as optimised as possible. Some polish will be very visible. In our case for example, the UI was already functional, but it still needed some custom design. Other polish however is less visible. This could be perfecting the control scheme, making sure the folder structure is up to par or going over existing models and reducing the poly count. For this week we have improved our game mechanic's and visual fidelity.

Environment 

We have generated new clouds and made new cloud shaders. Using these new assets we overhauled our background.

We have also added new mailbox animations and made the outline of these game elements bigger.

UI

Start Screen Improvements, I learned how to do this from TaroDev on YT ((3) Tarodev - YouTube)

Also adjust other areas such as the player join screen and the game over screen. 

Playability

Our team spend a lot of time making sure the game played as smoothly and fairly.  We applied the feedback we have gotten from our advisors: refining the player movements, adjusting the windpusher strength, customizing collision boxes so the player has a better time jumping along the platforms, applying the final particles, making sure animations play at the exact right time, ect.  

One might consider these small details, but if anything feels off about the gameplay it could make or break the game as a whole. If it doesn't play well we risk taking the player out of their immersion so this phase is vital to the final result.

Optimization

As previously mentioned, polish also means optimization. That means that this week, and the next, will include things such as reducing poly count, improving textures and reviewing which visuals we're allowing to take up more space and which elements we're cutting down in quality.

Particles

We have finally Integrated all the partciles in the gamre given the mailbox an some more flair and user visibility.

Next week will be our final entry, don't miss it!