Sprint 3 Tons of progress and setbacks
Lets talk: The State of!
Refactoring continues as The entire spawn system has been redone, as well as enemies. The enemies run on a state machine now, rather than being one massive jumble in one script. This makes creating new behaviors much simpler than the making enums for each one and choosing what they do based off of that.
The spawn system for the game is now no longer wave based, it works based off of spawners that can be damaged and destroyed. This will make for a more player controlled gameplay experience.
Lets talk: What I Did! The AI
The AI works with 3 primary scripts. The base AI state machine component which the specific enemy's state machine inherits from. The enemy's state machine which can be customized to fit the AI used. Finally the in-game component which controls health, damage, and animation.
Lets talk: What I Did! The Spawners & Level
The level is now based on surviving spawners, the level ends when the threshold number of enemy spawners is destroyed. It Is fully customizable based on the specifications given to me by the designer and I am really proud of it. It can be preset to the amount and type of enemy it can spawn and the rate of spawning. The spawns can also be randomized giving a fun variety in where they spawn.
Level setup Doc & Designer specifications
Lets talk: Research! (Boss AI)
Not too much to talk about on this. I have just decided that the first phase is simple enough to be a state machine. The second phase, however, will most likely be a decision tree or a system of highest value option. Both of these give me more control over switching up boss attack patterns.
Lets talk: Setbacks... :(
Originally this week I had planned to do the corruption system, which would give the designers the ability to make cool puzzles and choke points, but that didn't happen. I faced many setbacks this week including bad merges, old mistakes setting up animation, and surprise frame-rate issues.
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The animations were actually set up in the editor wrong so it was using the wrong rig as the animation base, while the frame rate issues are due to far too many triangles for simple props.
However, most of the setbacks stem from not reading my source control doc (which is frustrating) and unforeseen issues with the builds. What I think I need to do to prevent these issues is go over in class what to do about source control, and tighten up the QA process, since I am allowing people to turn things in so late.
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The first thing I will do is go over proper source control, and the new deadlines for work submissions. Furthermore, I need to update my level setup doc to clear up some confusion on how the designers should set up a level.
Phrase of the Week!
No matter how much you prepare mistakes will always happen.