Cloud Control Windows, Mac game

Devlog update:

For our final iteration, we focused on adding more polish and cleaning up the game as much as we could. Most of our changes were centered around the map select screens and the UI, but we also added changes to the player characters.

For the map select screen, we received feedback that the buttons were not necessarily going to the right maps, so our first change was to fix this. We also tweaked the voting system countdown so that once everyone has picked the same map, countdown is greatly reduced. If someone moves off before the countdown ends, it reverts to the original countdown, or if not enough people have voted, the countdown stops.

We also added borders around the map buttons to make them look nicer, and updated the screenshots to reflect the final map designs. We also received feedback that our backgrounds were a little distracting, or difficult to see some players on, so we made every map have the same skybox which is dark enough to see properly. Finally, we added a few more maps to reach a total of 8 maps, every one of which utilizes our existing game mechanics in new interesting ways to create more varied experiences for the players.

As for the UI, we changed our progress bar from saying “victory” and “defeat” to being a picture of a crown and a cartoon dead face respectively. We did this to remove some of the words from the UI and because it felt a little cheesy. We also added a replay map button, and on the title screen a parsec instructions button.

Our biggest feedback on the last iteration was that it was unclear when the game was about to end, and no one knew if someone was about to win unless they were looking at the progress bar. To fix this, we added sunglass indicators to the player clouds. Whoever is in the lead has sunglasses. If a player is 3 kills away from winning, the player gets a crown as well. We also changed the player’s eyes and gave them more facial expressions, for example a stunned face and a smiling face when they trap someone.

Our final change was making the rain clouds able to rain infinitely, and players are able to take over rain clouds from each other.

Our motivations for these changes were to respond to feedback and to make the last submission the most professional looking and — more importantly — as fun it can be.

As this is the final iteration, we now consider the game to be complete.This is the last update, we hope you enjoy it!

Devlog update:

At this point, much of our core mechanics have been set and we chose to more heavily emphasize polishing what we already had. We added a more interactive map select screen, made sky boxes more interesting, color coded buttons, adjusted the font we used, altered some animations for clarity, added more post-processing, fixed bugs, etc.

In our previous released deliverable, our map select screen was fairly plain. The user (host of the Parsec game) would use their mouse to click on a thumbnail of a map to play it and that was that. In this version, we allow players to actually move their characters on top of the thumbnail of a map to vote. Whichever map has the most votes will be what is played, and if there is a tie, the winner will be randomly selected out of the most voted maps. When players move onto a map thumbnail, it becomes highlighted green to show that it has votes, and is also enlarge slightly. The more votes a map has, the bigger the thumbnail becomes.

Next, we received feedback that the skybox backgrounds we were using were kind of boring. We chose to make them more varied in color and change more dynamically. For instance, we created a map that has a skybox reminiscent of a sunset.

A small touch we added was to color code some of the UI buttons with colors corresponding to the players. The colors don't have any semantic meaning perse, but having them fit the color palette of the players is a nice touch.

Another change we made was to use a new font called Radis Sans. We had a couple reasons for doing so. One reason is that Radis Sans allows the use of lowercase characters and is overall a bit more legible than our previous font, Beon-Regular. Another was that because we transitioned to using clouds as our character and made our game sort of sky-themed, the electro feel of Beon-Regular didn't fit our theme as well whereas Radis Sans did.

We also received feedback that the dash mechanic of players looked to similar to the deadly electric fields that their spawned thunderclouds generated, despite it not actually damaging other players. As a result, we changed its animation into what sort of looks like a rotating fractal / shuriken pattern. We hope this improves clarity with respect to dashing.

Another change we made was to add bloom to our game. Though slight, it is more noticeable on colors with a higher HDR intensity. Most notably, the electric fields that players generate now have a pleasant glow to them that make them feel much more electricity-like. We are making use of Unity's HDRP and so are using a Global Volume on which to apply bloom. An improvement that could be made for the feature might be to use local volumes rather than global, so that we can fine-tune each volume's bloom threshold and intensity for the material it corresponds to. As it is right now, it can be a bit difficult to adjust the intensity of the bloom high enough to make certain materials pop while ensuring that others do not become washed out.

Lastly, we fixed a number of bugs in the game. For instance, there were certain cases where players became stuck on invisible walls on the edges of the map, analytics opt-in caused player deaths to not happen, sometimes players became invisible etc. Overall, this week was again more spent on polishing our already existing material. We hope that we can further iterate in the next few weeks to really drill down on what makes the game fun (and bug free).

Devlog:

With our core player mechanics thoroughly tested and established, we chose to focus on improving our arena/environment and reworking our game's visuals around a specific theme. To do the former, we created multiple maps that players can choose from between rounds. We've also made some changes to the water channel environment obstacle we created in the previous iteration; they're now rainclouds that can either be stationary or move between fixed points. Rather than conducting electricity by zapping the water, these rainclouds are activated if the player zaps the cloud itself within their electric field and will change color to reflect that. The new rainclouds are part of our thematic change - our game is now themed around clouds and lightning, and our game title has been changed to reflect it. Players now play as smiling cartoon clouds, and their coils are smaller clouds of the same color; the teleporters have been changed to tornadoes, the backgrounds are skybox gradients, and our electricity visuals have been tweaked to resemble lightning (see the electrified rainclouds/water channels). We've also taken the opportunity to clean up visual and intermediary aspects of other parts of the game, such as adding scene transitions and a results screen. The last change we made this week was adding opt-in player analytics. By adding maps, we hope to allow players to curate their playing experience and ensure that different rounds created different experiences and required different strategies. Now that we've established our theme, our game is more cohesive and memorable and we can take the opportunity to properly finalize and polish our visual and audio effects.

For our upcoming iteration, we're looking to design more maps that the player can use and utilize playtesting feedback on our current iteration to improve the maps we currently have and tweak environment obstacles as necessary. We'd also like to do some experimenting with the way respawning works so that players can get a clearer indication of when/where they're respawning; the game is very fast-paced and chaotic, so we're hoping to decrease confusion by making sudden movements (like teleportation or respawning) juicier. Otherwise, we're just looking to generally clean up loose ends and improve the overall experience.

Devlog:

This was the first time we had playtesting feedback in a while, so this week's iteration saw quite a few changes. Some of our existing mechanics went through significant modification. First, instead of having coils generate electricity as soon as they're placed down, we gave players the ability to activate their electric fields on command. This makes tricking and surprising other players a more realistic option. Second, we changed the melee attack from a small, forward-facing taser to a large, area-of-effect tackle. Activating the melee attack also makes the player dash. This new dashing mechanic offers the player more options when attacking and defending. Finally, we changed our scoring system to a hybrid life and point system. Players earn points by zapping other players and lose points when they're zapped. If a player loses too many points, then they're out of the game. This adds more drama to the game; dying has more consequence, and comebacks are more feasible.

We added a few new mechanics to the game as well. We laid water channels out on the map. These water channels conduct the electricity players place down. This spices up the player's zone control options. We also added teleporters to the map. The game relies heavily on moving around the map, and these teleporters provide an additional movement option. With this iteration, many of our core mechanics are starting to shape up nicely. For the future, a high priority is to add more appealing aesthetics to the game. For instance, the players need better sprites or models, and the scene transitions could be juicier. We also want to experiment with the water mechanic, like creating a wider variety of water container shapes. Finally, we want to implement a results screen that gives players interesting information about their match.