Note

In order to use the project and or players, spawn them by pressing A (or X on PlayStation) on a controller or J on keyboard.

Controls are 
WASD or left stick for movement
J or RT for boosting

Planning

A good start to a marathon is the preparation. You can't start a 20km run without any training and mental fortitude. Planning out what is the core and needs to be done first was a difficult task, but it worked well in our favour.
Of course it is our first time and is quite difficult. You plan 4 hours but work 5. It feels bad at first, but learning from your mistakes is necessary. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is a must during this problem. If your team member is knowledgable about a topic and you don't necessarily want to learn, it is smart to give them the task. Teamwork makes the dreamwork!

Deving is hard

Working in a team is fun, but wow can it be hard! From features that are dependent on each other to unusable features until further development. It can be quite difficult to work on a project where features might need to be pushed back. Until now there is a nice baseline, but figuring out what is most necessary for the game was a massive challenge. Not one that is done perfectly, but will get better!

Programming

This week, we started with a clean slate. We dove right into a range of separate tasks to build a solid base: player movement, some of the bird behaviors, pickups and pickup spawners.

The main focus for the pickups was to infuse them with life, giving them a sine wave motion. On top of that, as the pickups get closer to despawning, they blink with increasing urgency, tempting players to snatch them before they are gone for good.

The pickups needed spawners, which came with their own set of challenges. However, the objective was to ensure that these spawners are designed for easy integration with future plans.

All of this combined doesn’t make for the most exciting gameplay just yet, but trust the process!

Art

Environment

This week, as we started production sprint, we have started we a clean stage. First we created three different level block-outs, that show different environment composition.  As compared to prototyping phase, we have decided to abandon the pervious level composition because we felt that overall layout was uninteresting.

After careful consideration, we have decided to work with the last (3rd picture) environment.

Modelling

For the modelling part, we have managed to completely model and unwrap 3 character models: Penguin (The player), Parrot and Hummingbird.  During the modelling we have decided to use some of the parts of the models from the prototyping phase. For example, for penguin some of the previous body parts were used as a starting point and reshaped with the use of Zbrush.

Texturing

For texturing, this week was mainly focused on making the models themselves, so we couldnt manage to texture that much yet, however we made some first texture attempts on the parrot and hummingbird models, wich might need some changes and tweaking later.

UI

Some UI elements were also made this week, but they are yet to be added to the game, and still need to be exported in correct components(buttons etc..).