This week was a very big week for our game as it marks our first playable build that showcases the multiplayer aspect. One of our big goals for last week was to create a playable build that can be played with multiple different people over parsec. Since we had a playtest coming up with the TA we wanted to make sure that the multiplayer aspect was all set up and ready for testing. 

Before our play test session with the TA our team got together to test the functionality of multiplayer. Specifically if parsec would be the solution that we needed to test remotely. We found that parsec is a suitable solution to solve our issue of playing a local multiplayer game remotely. It works pretty much flawlessly and really solidifies our play testing solution moving forward. In terms of actual multiplayer mechanics, up to four people can connect to the game and spawn in and play a round of gameplay. There are a couple of bugs that will have to be sorted out next week that involve only one round being able to be played and the score not being individual but being a collective score. 

The map went through a couple of changes. There was a change that in a few spots on the map there were doorways that only kids could fit under giving kids more traversability throughout the level. We also added back in the kit bashed assets into the level to fill it out more and have more obstacles to traverse around. 

Balancing was another focal point as this was the first time we could play a round of gameplay the way we intended and mark things down to be fixed or balanced. An instance of this was our first round of gameplay, since the initial version had the mom being slightly slower than the kids this created unappealing gameplay on the mom's side as it became quite hard to catch the kids. 

What we did to remedy this is increase moms movement speed to be slightly faster than the kid, giving her the opportunity of running down kids and being able to catch them. 

Assets or continuing to be created for our game! However, none of them have made it into the game yet as they are still being unwrapped and textured. 

This leads us into the play test session with the TA. Overall it was a positive experience and everything went well. We were able to use parsec to play multiple rounds of gameplay where we had four people in the game at once controlling different characters. This playtest gave us a lot of insight on areas that we need to fix currently and gave insight on potential solutions to issues we might face down the road. An example of this is with the moms throwing mechanic it is more difficult than expected to hit the kids with the slipper. There are many ways to approach fixing this issue. That being we will probably increase the size of the slipper as well as giving Mom and aiming reticle that'll showcase the trajectory of the slipper. 

In terms of what we want to accomplish next week we would like to fix a lot of the small bugs we ran into during our play tests like the infinite stun glitch and the rounds ending after one round. We also would like to try and implement the scoring system so every player has their own unique score by the next play test with the Prof. I feel we are on a pretty solid trajectory to create a solid build for the upcoming Alpha playtest. 

Anyway that wraps up this devlog I will see you next week! 

Written by: Brady Anderson