The museum environment got a much deserved facelift with a new lighting setup, making it easier to see and to cast shadows with the characters. The lighting is now baked in to the geometry, allowing the dynamic lights to be focused on characters so they now have shadows as they wander through the museum floors. The Sovereign has been seated on her throne and is being rigged for animations. She currently provides commentary on the match, commending or berating her Drifters on their performance against each other. Other sound additions include the announcement of the selected Drifter's name on the player select screen, more random comments from the NPCs as they stop at various exhibits, and the Drifters have more sounds including taunts, victory comments, and attack sounds.
The Drifter Vision no longer snaps from glowing character to Drifter form, rather a new light burst transition activates to reveal the Drifter form, letting players know they're now visible as a Drifter. While attacking, there's better response time, so a missed strike no longer makes you as vulnerable to your target. To better assist the player in learning to make better use of Drifter Vision and attacking, the video tutorial which was in progress is being updated with the latest assets and controls.
On the technical side, DevTrack is being used to track the bugs that come up during playtesting. As a bug is identified, a log is created by the player that tells when it occurred, under what conditions, and what the steps are to reproduce it. The bug is assigned a category, and then the QA lead reviews the report, determines who should handle the bug, and assigns it to a team member to work on it. The team is also busy testing on multiple machine setups, including 3 versions of Windows (XP, Vista and 7 beta), various video card configurations, and multiple processor speeds. The goal is to optimize it so the game can run on virtually any current generation machine capable of playing games like Half-Life2.
To kick off their last normal status report, the Sultans team revealed their final peripheral, a Turntable Lite if you will...
It's about 1/3 of the previous peripheral, isn't it adorable?!
The game is down to the addition of a few minor art assets in the menu screen and the DJ models in the crew transition modes. The new peripheral integrated perfectly in with the control scheme, so the game is playable with either the DDR pad and turntable, or the keyboard and mouse schemes. Now that the environments are finalized for lighting, the cinematic crew is placing the final assets for the final cinematic clips.
The last bits of the menu are coming together to complete the experience and this week some background music sets the mood for the record shop. The announcer can now be heard on the selection screens and once inside, he'll direct you to choose your crew, your turntable, venue, and song. Menu overlays are being placed and the animations on character select are being polished as well with each pair having a unique interaction animation set.
In-game the digital screen on the turntable finally gets its moment to shine and now displays the multiplier for the current crew, as well as the difference between the scores of your crew and the opposing crew. This lets you know at a glance whether you need to step up your game or if you're dominating the round. The crowds are fully placed, textured, randomized, and animated to create a real dance club experience, completed with animated props like the warehouse's traffic light speakers or the club's neon glow furniture. At the end of the level, a new chalkboard-style score screen shows off the winner and loser of the round:
Probably the biggest reveal of this report was the tutorial option, which guides players through the various controls of the game, plus introduces the combo system and how to activate "Pass the Spotlight". There's still some adjusting to do so the steps flow easier, and talk of splitting it into a normal and advanced tutorial set, but so far it's a great feature!
These next two weeks, Cohort 5 will be conducting interviews with many companies within the video game, simulation and digital media industries. With so many interviews and companies to coordinate among the 49 students, the teams will not be holding their weekly status reports. The final game presentations will take place on July 30th and that will most likely be the final development blog post for Cohort 5. We'll try to dig up some beta stage info for you in the meantime!
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