Sprint 4 Recap

 Sprint 4 has concluded, and everything is still on track. There were no major issues this sprint, but a few speed bumps that took some extra horsepower to get over. Similar to Sprint 3, my time was equally divided between creating models as well as making particle affects. This sprint though two of those models were larger, and more or so centerpieces.

The Chicken Coop was the first of the larger models. This is where the player is intended to spawn in, and provides a safe area where the Maze Keeper is not capable of reaching them. The UVs were also pretty clean, and they should provide ample surface area for the texture artist to work off of.

After this, I also worked on a tractor.

It follows a similar low poly art style as the rest of the game, and should fit in nicely with the other assets. The tractor is meant to be broken down, and not operable in any form; it provides no function. It's simply a asset to help fill in a otherwise empty maze. Due to its size and level of detail, it will also most likely be used as a reference point.

A more simplistic, but still important, prop I made was the haybale

This should be a bit more numerous, and should appear multiple time's throughout the level. The model is primitive, similar to its real world counter part; most of the detailing for this prop would be done in texturing. That being said, I still optimized it as much as I could. You can see a small rectangle near the bottom of the UV map, this is the bottom of the haybale, Since its unlikely to be seen by the player, I made it take up less then 10% of the surface area the other sides do.

I also made the 3rd, and final rendition of the modular maze wall pillar for the 2nd level. This visually looks pretty identical to the other versions, but has slight changes in order to make it accurately line up with other models.

Most of my work after this was regarding particles. The first one I did was the Sunflower Glow:

This affect is intended to be used on the checkpoints (which are sunflowers) to indicate they have been activated. Likewise the color of the sunflower will also change. I really liked how vibrant and happy these particles came out, it differs starkly then those of the powerups.

I was also tasked to create a secondary particle for the freeze powerup. This was more of trail system, and would follow the projectile that the freeze powerup would grant you.

There's a cyan and baby blue trail that spiral around each other. The spiral itself is less obvious in this gif, as its on a stationary object. But when it is added to the final moving projectile, you will be able to clearly see the the arc and circle the trails makes, due to their increased velocity.

Speaking of particles, if you have forgotten from previous recaps, they originate from a barrel. Breaking that barrel now has its own unique particles, to help immerse the player into thinking the barrel is actually being broken, instead of just deleting itself.

All the particles I have made are technically dynamic, though this is the only one that is not looped in any way. The last particle is generated and spawned 1.5 seconds into the cycle. 

The last thing related to powerups I worked on was the clairvoyance item. Which is just the fancy word we are using for the compass.

As before, I made sure to optimize this as much as possible. With the bottom of the compass taking less then 1/20th of the space as the front face. This will be animated, with the arrow on the top pointing to the exit of the maze.

Lastly, I worked on the feather particle system. This was the hardest portion of this sprint, as I was struggling greatly to make the background of the sprite transparent.

I was never given a clear reason on where this would be used, but I presume it will be tied into player damage or jump. potentially even a trail the follows the player around. I was super happy with how it turned out, and believe it will make a great addition to the game.

This concludes the recap for Sprint 4, we are on track to finish everything on time, and I'm pretty ecstatic on the progress I have made.