For this week we had another pretty big milestone as we were preparing a new build for the game to showcase during the playtest with the prof. There were a couple things we wanted to add to the build for this playtest such as fixing a lot of the bugs that were present in our last play test. Along with adding and fixing mechanics such as making throwing slippers easier and having multiple different scores for all the players. 

In terms of what was accomplished before the play test, as it happened in the middle of our week we weren't able to accomplish as much as we would have liked but we still got the build in a more stable and healthy state. We were able to fix a lot of the bugs that hindered the experience of the last play test. Such as fixing the replayability of the game. In the previous build if you try to restart the game it would only play one round and then end, this was fixed. 

We also made the slipper mechanic easier to land as in the last playtest it seemed more than difficult to land slippers as they were quite small projectiles. The fix we implemented was to increase the size of the projectile and increase the hitbox to be slightly bigger than the projectile so hitting kids would be slightly easier. This allowed the slipper throwing mechanic to feel better to use and made it easier to land. 

Assets are still being created on the side, however most of the assets won't be able to see the alpha as they aren't in a state where they're usable yet. We will still be continuing to use the kit based objects to fill in our scenes and we hope to have more in house built assets integrated into the game before the beta playtest. Along with that development of more destructible objects to replace the placeholders were created and a pipeline was figured out on how to easily make objects look destructible. 

Concept art is continuously being created for the characters to try and really Define our art style and look we want for both the kids and the mom. we are getting to a point where we're really narrowing down the look, we're just playing around with variation and seeing what we like before putting them to models. 

This leads us to the play test session with The prof. Overall we think it went pretty well. We got a lot of great feedback  on things we should fix or look to implement and things that are pretty good. In terms of feedback making the game  easier to understand from a visual aspect is one of the biggest criticisms that came out of that play test which we will be trying to add in a few signifier store games before the alpha playtest. Some good feedback was that the shooting felt easier to land and simple to use which is a big improvement. It seems our game is in a pretty solid state where we really just have to focus on polishing things up and making everything feel fun and engaging to use. 

In terms of what needs to be accomplished for next week before the alpha playtest, would be to continue to fix some of the bugs that hinder our game. Such as the infinite stun bug as it really hinders  gameplay. We also want to try and add that split score system along with adding some very basic character models to more define what the two characters in our game look like.

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

Written by: Brady Anderson