We finished the first week of polishing. It has already proven to be quite a challenge. We have one more week to go and after that Robbin Hook is ready! 

Art and Levels

Our artist have been busy again making our level look the best it can! 

Ischa spend the time making some awesome FX for player feedback. He made a dustcloud spawn on the feet of the player when he walks around, after all its a very dusty attic. He also created a FX when you swing the hook, it creates a white trail after the hook. Another FX he made is a dustcloud for when Mr. Sniffles does his melee attack. The last FX he made were dust particles that fly around the level, to recreate the feeling of a dusty attic. Talk about a FX specialist! Last but not least he also created platform a platform level to introduce the player to his hook dash ability.

Bryan has been busy expanding our UI elements, he made UI elements to show the remaining enemies in a normal room and the health of Mr. Sniffles in the boss room. This gives the player more feedback while he plays through the level. He also created some post cards to place through the level. They feature some amazing self created art by Bryan!

Iben worked this week on making Mr. Sniffles room, because every guardian deserves his own room. He also finished working on some decals that will be put on boxes. He also was busy making some filling for our glass jars, so they dont look so empty and boring. The last thing Iben did this week was remodeled the tail of the MouseKnight, so it looks better. Talk about a true digital veterniarian.

Programming

Nicholas has been busy this week with polishing some mechanics to make them feel more alive and responsive, primarily the hook, the push and the enemies. He also polished the wire traps in Mr. Sniffles' room: He made sure that Mr. Sniffles can only walk in the same trap once and after the trap has been disabled the FX is also disabled. To finish this week, Nicholas implemented the UI elements Bryan created, so the player will be able to see how many enemies are remaining and how much health Mr. Sniffles had.

As for me, I have been busy implementing a checkpoint system. This means you don't have to replay from the start when you die but you can respawn at the beginning of your current room, that will save some frustration. After that I changed the font for the timer so the letters align better. The next thing I did was refactoring some code, so it is cleaner and more optimized without going in details. Then I started implementing music and sound effects in the game, we all know that had to happen at some points right. We have chosen a fitting theme for the main menu and game itself (copy right free of course). 

Another big obstacle Nicholas and me had to overcome was Mr. Sniffles. He was as much a main boss to the programmers as he is to the player. There were a lot of hard to find bugs Mr. Sniffles had, but with our combine efforts we were able to fix them all (I hope).

Conclusion

We have one week left until Robbin' Hook is finished. We are looking forward to sharing our finished game, but for now it is back to polishing the game and making it the most fun it can be. See you next week for our last devlog!