Hello there! It has been a while, hasn’t it? We used our Easter break to have some time away from the project, at least a little bit. But we’re back with some cool new things to show you! Let’s get into it.

Art

Let’s start with the biggest news, our new level. We decided it was time to move on from our testing level and actually build a presentable, playable room for the player to enjoy. No more small, claustrophobic rooms made from more cardboard boxes than you can imagine. We now present you the main residential area of Gorgonzolder. 

In order to build this level, Bryan started by building some houses out of the props we made in past weeks. These houses pushed the look of the level to what we originally had in mind, a messy attic, inhabited by small humans and mice. During our last meeting everyone on the team played the level for a bit and suggested some improvements.

While Bryan spent all of his time on the level, Iben had a more diverse set of tasks for this period. He spent his time brushing up some models from earlier weeks and started making some thick planks that can serve as the floor in our level. Lastly, a new level comes with a lot of bugs, so Iben is catching most of them, making the whole experience pest-free!

As for me, I dipped my toes in a little bit of everything this week. I started off by finishing some banner models that can serve as set-dressing. I then spent some time making a shimmer shader that could call attention to interactable objects by giving them a fake shine effect occasionally. After that I worked on a particle effect for the mousetrap. This effect took me a few more tries than expected but I’m rather happy with the result. The last few hours of this week were spent making buttons for the menu, a lot of buttons. Since we used slightly torn papers for our buttons, they all need to be different, this meant making a new sprite for each button. This did give me more control overall which I think is a good trade-off.

Programming

While the art of the game made a lot of progress this week, the programming definitely followed suit. Building a level usually breaks some things left and right and this time was no different. Keanu made sure our new level works rather than only looking good. But this wasn’t his only task this week. Last week we completed the model for a new enemy, this week it was implemented. We wanted a bigger enemy in the game that disrupted the normal gameplay and I believe we succeeded. You can inspect Mr. Sniffles in game! Our regular enemies also had an update. Nicholas added the animations for them, so no more skiing for the knights.

Our menu’s got a facelift as well in both looks & usability. Both programmers took part in this task, so we now have a start and pause menu, with functionalities. Controller support was also added for this for a more seamless experience.

Conclusion

It has been a fruitful week, I bet some vacation helped with that. Most aspects of our game improved, and we are ready to move on to our last week of production! Hopefully we can cram in an extra level by the end of next week. Find out on the next episode of Robbin’ Hook Devlog! Bye!