You might notice that this devlog is formatted differently from our previous devlogs. Previously we had every member of our team pitch in to have an update to share in the devlog. However, this created a situation where not everyone could post their individual work update for the devlog that ultimately pushed the devlogs back. So we'll be switching to an individual of the team that will take control of writing the devlogs every week. 

For this week we really had one goal in mind when it comes to progressing the game. that being getting multiplayer up and running as we want to be able to test the game as early as possible as our game really relies on testing to see what works and what doesn't. A lot of our design decisions have been up in the air as we really need testing data to understand the core issues  and find solutions around them. Until we conduct play tests, these problems will be unknown and have unknown solutions to fix them. As we don't want to design solutions for issues that don't exist. 

In terms of getting multiplayer up and running we now have the ability to connect multiple controllers to control multiple characters. We finally settled on a player count that we would like to hit, being a four player experience, so the team should be broken down into one mom versus three kids. Our reasoning for going with this four-player experience is it just felt natural as a lot of couch co-op games are surrounded with the four-player experience in mind. 

In terms of objectives there is now a set round structure, where players can destroy breakable objects to gain score and when the timer reaches zero it moves to the next round. Breakable objects now are actually breakable where if the player interacts with them without sliding they can push them around, but when the player slides into them it'll crack into many different small pieces. 

In terms of the level we are now moving away from our initial level that was built in the game jam to our first level. It is still in the early stages as most of it is gray boxed out. We have a couple of breakable objects that will spawn around in a random fashion which will give players the objective. Everything is set up for a simulated round to occur as there are beginning and end sections as well as win conditions. Assets for these levels are beginning to be churned out with different furniture and breakable objects being created to populate these levels. 

Now let's talk about the future and what our plans are to accomplish next week. Next week we want to have our rough playable build finished. As multiplayer in theory works we have not tested it yet with multiple different people. We have tested with one person plugging in multiple different inputs but we haven't had that multiplayer experience yet. This will be the main goal for next week, setting up a multiplayer environment and testing it with parsec. To see if parsec will be a solution for play testing. Additionally we want to continue creating assets in order to populate our world and implement and continue to fix bugs and issues we come along the way. 

Anyway this wraps up this week's Dev blog and I will see you next week!

Written by: Brady Anderson