Final student iteration for class showcase EECS 494 Umich.
This week heavily focused on refining existing components and resources were heavily focused on the patch note section.
New Features This Week:
New Features this week include:
-A tutorial to teach the basics of the game as well as begin on the journey of quests the game offers.
-Theme music and sound effects to give more juice to the game.
-A reworked, in-depth, complete quest line that allows you to the end the game, along with end credits.
Patch Notes:
-Enemy physics rework since issues such as zombies pushing the car, pinning the car when surrounded, and unrealistic interactions were happening when ramming into a zombie full speed. Zombies have been made much weaker in terms of being as heavy as the car, so we scaled that down and added the ability to run zombies over.
-The ability to drive up hills and walls was caused by the car being too light and too powerful in terms of torque. The weight was increased and the torque was attuned appropriately to prevent unrealistic car physics.
-There was an issue with resources bumping the character at high speeds, creating a gross slowing effect. This has been removed to create smoother movement for the player.
-Lighting was changed to suit the tone of the game more. Before it was just a pure light that lightened the entire area, now light is more carefully placed to illuminate certain aspects of the game and take away focus from what shouldn't be focused on.
-The store was almost useless in its first iteration, and has been updated with new stock that is beneficial to the player's progression throughout the questline.
-The menus were changed to be more clear and more smooth. Players can now navigate the menu more clearly, as well as having a revamped Instructions screen to be more in-depth with game controls and objectives.
-Enemy spawn behavior has been improved. Enemies now spawn based upon the player's active location rather than the region the player is in. This is due to playtesting showing that players would sometimes not know where to find enemies. Now, they find you.
-The "Store" label was viewable through walls. This was unintended and has been fixed.
-The Zombies death animation was reduced by about 0.5 seconds to remove the clutter the zombie body would create in terms of hitbox physics and visuals.
-All enemies now have unique movement patterns. This is because in previous iterations they would all act the same, and at that point it was just a complex re-skinning and health changing. Now enemies act entirely unique from each other, creating a diverse set of enemies.
-The Minimap and Full Map was broken upon map expansion and has since been fixed and improved.
-The quest system was reworked to become more of a progressive storyline rather than an optional part of the game that provided little to no benefit.
Future Notes:
- The car was given soem great upgrades with the store, however an expansion on the car's capabilities is in order.
- With the expansion of the car's capabilities, an extended questline able to showcase the car's new capabilities would be in order as well.
