2/23/18- Menus, Characters, and Gameplay Planning
Hey, fireBreak fans! Parker here with another dev log. We're settling into our third sprint here, and things are coming along pretty well! Without any further ado, let's get to our highlights for this week!
Design
This week, our design team has had two major tasks. On Ian's end, he's been placing assets in-engine, play testing and getting a feel for what gameplay is going to be like.
Here, he's looking at an overlay of the level, and is placing our new models according to the positions on the paper map.
On the other end of the spectrum, I finished up writing dialogue for the level, and began to design the progression of the first boss fight. Lots of documentation and looking through concept art.
Art
WE HAVE ENVIRONMENTAL MODELS
It was something of a red letter week, as far as environment art goes. Jake, one of our online artists, gave us a few dozen models to work with, and going through them and seeing where they'll work best.
On the other side of our art department, Bryce and Trent have been hard at work on our generic male and female character models.
Tuesday, diligent as always, is working on the mesh for the player's ship.
Programming
Dave has been hard at work on our enemy AI, and he's making a lot of headway there. Enemies will now track the player. Shooting comes next!
He turned and smiled, I swear. It only looks like a death glare.
In the meantime, Wyatt is polishing off the UI functionality, and Garret started on the player's status system.
Lore Corner: Sellar's Gulch
Of the multiple possible starting points for the Miner's Coalition, the most widely accepted one is the rebellion at Sellar's Gulch.
Sellar's Gulch was one of the first smaller mining towns on Hoelia, nestled into the base of one of the planet's many mountain ridges. Shortly after the settlement of the planet, Stratum Mining Corporation prospector Reynold Sellar applied to establish the settlement after discovering a rich platinum vein. His application was accepted, and a few families built the first few structures on what later became the town's main street.
Over the next few years, the small township grew alongside the mine. The mine produced platinum bountifully for the next several decades, until it began to run dry. Many families left the town, seeking employment elsewhere. Over the course of a decade, the population shrunk to a mere thirty percent of what it once was. The mine's production switched from lucrative platinum to tin and copper, and few miners still stayed.
So it continued, for a few years. When a pay cut struck the already-struggling town of Sellar's Gulch, a small riot ensued. During this time, the townspeople locked up the acting magistrate and sheriff within the jail at the police station. The townspeople drafted a stopgap government, in hopes of holding out the town's (still meager) mining output to extort more wages from the Stratum Corporation. When several months passed without their appeals being met, they began to reach out to other towns, who they soon learned were in similar situations.
These organizations banded together and formed the Miner's Coalition, and the situation escalated from there.
Within the past few months, as Syndicate crackdowns became commonplace in the nearest cities, Sellar's Gulch has become the rallying point for refugees in the sector. It is a sort of headquarters for the Coalition, having become a well-defended, well-stocked cross between a refugee camp and a military base.