Weak #11: re-creating the dialogue system, more HUD, better information.

Figure 1 - Tutorial level, designed by Rafael Ribeiro

Squad...

The road so far was hard and full of perils, but the end boss is yet to be defeated. As MOJO approaches, we still need to create two exciting and playable levels, including a tutorial so that players can experiment with our game one "final" time. After that, we need to create a game-play trailer that is about 8 minutes long. But that's what we need to accomplish in the next 24 hours.

What I've done this week however, is another story.

I had to recreate the dialogue system, which was outdated, malfunctioning in a few aspects. Still, the most notable change was in the interface and how the player engages in the selection. The number of possible choices is still limited to three dialogue options. However, it is no longer required that the tree has precisely three possibilities. This should make the dialogue system less linear, and perhaps more exciting. The underlying system can easily be upgraded to have more choices. Still, the HUD would be cluttery, hence the imposed restrictions. We went from a cycle and mouse click to, W A D keypress selection, or alternately using arrow navigation and press enter selection.

Figure 2 - New dialogue HUD example. Following artists specification.

I also created the credits, intro, and trailer scenes in the game using our art student, Sofia, products. I also used her posters on our propaganda poster prefabs.

Figure 3 - Propaganda posters, by Sofia Santos. There is no better Art  collaborator.

I created a system that allows the user to select between game-pad and mouse + keyboard HUD at any time by accessing the pause menu or the main menu. The goal is to help the user better understand what he is doing. On that note, we now use icons to specify key-binds within the game instead of hardcoded strings. See Figure 2. Ideally, I would have liked for this to be dynamic concerning the "last used" device. Unfortunately, with the way we implemented the input controls, this would not be easily achieved in short notice.

Finally, I created a tutorial HUD and system that allows Rafael to give instructions to the player has he navigates the tutorial corridor, shown in Figure 1.

I could go on, but I have the stuff to do.

See you in two days.