The Alpha Sprint

By Kayli 

As the Alpha sprint has come to a close, let's take some time to document and review what the Dimensional Drift team has been up to! In terms of both technical and artistic goals, we have achieved quite a lot, much of which hasn't been fully implemented yet. 

Coding Development

A major milestone for our project is the creation of custom collision that can handle projected from 3D to 2D. This is being done in the Latios framework of unity, and thanks to our very talented programmers, we can have consistent collision from 3D to 2D! 

capsule colliders being projected into 2D

Other things that have progressed is the addition of enemy AI, and a basic combat system. Enemies now home in towards the player in both 3D and 2D, and can be damaged and destroyed.  In the current sprint, 2 enemies have been implemented, but we are working on implementing more and more enemies, each with their interesting behaviour.

Art and Design Development

On the art end, we have been hard at work texturing, modeling, and animating. Not many things have been implemented, but what is implemented is our enemy models, our character animations and our vfx. UI and VFX in particular are big things that we have to add more of, and as we develop the game further that becomes a big part of our focus.

rocket launcher model and texture

Music and Sound Development

In the music and sound department, we have a background track and basic SFX implemented! Sound is a big part of what makes SHMUP games satisfying to play, so it was important that we could get these elements in the game.  The background track conveys the energy and pacing of the game, which adds a lot to the combat loop.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RPlqtNLOyUw_eu4NNOWeVNa9e10Xoh1f/view?usp=shari...
Sample of our main theme 

Looking to the Future

For our next sprint, here's what we want to get done:

• 3 new enemies types and fleshed out waves
• all different weapon types
• sfx for collisions and different weapons
• shop implementation and intel pickups
• camera transition tweaking
• dash tweaking
• collision with environment
• more implementation of vfx

As it stands, our alpha was successful in conveying our combat and main ideas. We are looking forward to continuing to flesh out our game, and showing you our progress in the next devlog!

Cheers!