Postmortem

Development on Force of Nature has come to a close! Here, each team member will discuss their contributions and final thoughts on the process.

Justin Kung

As our final major update, we've added a whole lot of new patches and extra quality of life benefits that help the game look and play better than ever before.  We've added more sound effects as well as dangerous river platforms which can cause you to lose progress. However, to counter frustration, we've added checkpoints to make sure you don't lose all of your progress. All of this could not have been completed without the work of our amazing Coder and Artist. Not wanting to be left behind, I did my best to make sure the sfx did not cause any immersion to be broken.

      More trees and new ui for the game

From the last patch there was a lack of sound effects as well as

< Original audio

< Increased volume and adjusted the timing

I adjusted outsourced audio in sound and timing via the Audacity software.

We've also spruced up the land with flowers, stones, mushrooms, and logs.

Special Thanks to

   - Antti Martikainen Music ( main music ) 
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5u9glfqDsc

   - RonnieJayPlays ( boss music )
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCkLXA9oXx8&t=39s

All sound effects (sfx) were found on freesound.org
   - thedapperdan (player hurt sfx)
   - SoundFlakes (bot hurt sfx)
   - passAirmangrac (bot death sfx)
   - loudernoises (pinecone gun sfx)
   - juskiddink (fire crackling sfx)

Jimmy Liu

Since our last blog post, a lot of new assets have been added and a lot of changes have been made in response to feedback. The biggest piece of feedback that we received was that movement and life was lacking in the level, and the one to blame for that was definitely me as the key artist/animator. New animations were added for the robot enemies so that they can go idle, move, attack, and die. Animations were also given to the apple fist weapon (which did not clearly read as an apple before) and the pine needle gun weapon so that they actually move when you attack with them. Additionally, a tiny bit of "juice" was given to the gun weapon pickup, as it now hovers up and down and spins to make it more visible to the player. Most of these animation additions would not have been possible if not for Alex's help, as he put together everything I made in-project—major props to him for all his work!

Aside from animation, a lot of work went into set dressing as well. New flowers have been added to fields to make them feel less empty in Zone II. The skybox was changed to be a solid color and clouds were added to the sky. Smoke particles were added to the roof of the factory.

In retrospect, it would have been much nicer to work with my teammates in-person to help troubleshoot issues. With recent global events, that hasn't exactly been possible, which is regrettable. Responding to feedback early on was a stressful process, as I had misunderstood feedback and had to overhaul my level twice. Deciding to make a majority of assets on my own was also much more difficult than anticipated and ate up a lot of time. That said, I'm very proud of the 3D models and animations I've contributed to the project and I'm glad to have gotten this experience of working with a team remotely.

Alex Kong 

As the scripter/coder for this project, I designed and created the mechanics and systems that went into making Force of Nature. I’ll admit I underestimated just how much time I would spend on this project – a valuable lesson I learned was how to more accurately estimate the necessary time I’d need for different components!

From the last update, there weren’t as many script changes as there were additions; in the midpoint update, we showcased our basic mechanics, such as attacking and dealing damage, and our systems, like the item loot system used by both the enemies and the player. I had then worked on adding an AI system for the enemies to move and detect the player, managers that handled animation and sound for our enemies and the player, and a dialogue system that allowed us to easily and effectively add new dialogue lines and sequences when and where needed. I also wrote some neat little scripts that handled the “cutscenes” near the end of the level, in Zone III. I really like how these turned out, and I feel they give the game more flavor than I had expected when creating them.

There are several systems and mechanics that I’m particularly proud of, and I’ll list them below.

• Health and Combat: This was the first project I worked on where I put extraordinary emphasis on modularity. I wanted to design our systems in such a way that they could be easily reusable and modifiable, even by someone who had no idea what the code itself did. This design philosophy shaped the design behind the health and combat systems – instead of using several different scripts for different enemy types, I instead worked from the top, down. I created a base class with base methods common to all derived classes; the TakeDamage method, for instance, is common to all Health classes. Then, I used that base class to create more specialized classes for different characters – a PlayerHealth class for the player, and an EnemyHealth class for enemies. The modularity of this system would allow us to theoretically create new enemies with health and combat mechanics quite easily.

• AI: Again, modularity was a bog part of my design behind enemy AI. Different enemy types could have different AI behaviors that all derive from an overarching AI class. Aside from design, I really enjoyed the process of making the AI think; the process of designing a process, if you will. This AI is somewhat rudimentary, and still has room to grow – potential that I plan to expand on in the future.

• Animation and Sound Managers: Two big scripts that have a single job each: to take care of animation, or to take care of sound. I wrote these scripts with a philosophy of making them easy to use for my teammates – variables in the Inspector have useful tooltips that appear when hovered over, so the user can understand what they’re for. When a character’s Animator component is set up, for instance, the user can input the strings they used to control different animation sequences. The script takes care of the rest. There’s still plenty of room to improve these, of course, and I think releasing them to the public for common use once they’re finished could be a great idea.

• Item System: Possibly my favorite system in the game, even though it isn’t used to its full potential. The system makes use of two main components: an Inventory manager, and the Items themselves. Items are ScriptableObjects – data containers that work very well when you need several different versions of one type of thing. The player’s weapons, for example, are Weapon Items that inherit from the base Item class. In this fashion, the Inventory system handles everything we, the developers, think a player would need to “pick up.” Very useful! The system in its current form would allow for several more items to be added in a very efficient manner – health potions, for example.

But, as is always the case with creative projects, there are regrets. I wish I had properly planned my time before starting work; poor time estimates meant that, while I did end up finishing the scripts we wanted and needed, I did so in the unhealthy span of 18-hour days. Many a tireless day was had during these past two weeks. Another big part of poor planning was my own ambition: I simply wanted to add too many things to the game, many of which we didn’t even really need. For example, though I had developed an extensive, robust Item and Inventory system, we didn’t have a lot of Items to pick up in the first place. Furthermore, the lack of an actual Inventory UI meant that even though this Item system exists, you can’t really see it (except for those that show in the HUD, like the two weapons). In the future, I plan to work on better estimating necessary time allocations, and to focus on seeking a balance between what’s practical and what’s too ambitious.

Overall, I’m proud of how this project turned out and of the work our team did! Though there is room for improvement, I think we’ve come out of this experience with satisfaction and a drive to keep creating.

Thanks for sticking around with us on our journey to bring Force of Nature to life! Until next time, we are Doom Shrooms, blasting back off into the wilderness.