Gold Build

Skipping beta release-wise, here's gold!

The game now has completed art assets and has been polished towards a smooth gameplay cycle. Enjoy!

Major changes:
-Finalised art assets.
-Polished gameplay cycle towards fun, short rounds.
-Fleshed out weapons powerup system.

Alpha Build

This Scourge of the Skies build was used in our internal Alpha meeting at our college, the Academy of Interactive Entertainment.

It has a number of slight changes and tweaks since the GCAP competition entry build:

Changes:

• Gameplay balances
• Improved text and fonts
• 'Positive Reinforcement' for scoring points
• Improved physics for passengers
• Bug Fixes.

Pre-GCAP Student Showcase

Prepared a release entry for the GCAP Student Showcase awards. We've begun moving the game towards more party-game aspects.

Major changes:
-Simplified player controls, diminished roll,
-Made camera inversion match ship inversion.
-Added battle-mode style.
-Disabled player damage and repair for now.
-Made the passenger tray gooey-er.
-Altered the slipstream force, made it more gradual.
-Updated models with non-block-out assets.

Post-pitch Prototype Iteration 4

Moving further along with implementing the game's core mechanics. This release focuses on combat, player camera control, and movement.

Major changes:
-Began work on a cannon auto-targeting system.
-Added a level select screen.
-Moved broadsiding to the bumpers.
-Added a victory cinematic.
-Created team player maps.
-Simplified player camera controls. Also improved how it follows the player.
-Implemented a controller rumble framework.
-Added passenger spraying on spawn.
-Added slipstream level boost speedups. They also boost passengers.
-Improved player braking.
-Moved the trapdoor button to Y, and the cannon to A.
-Added an intro cam to show off the level.
-Optimised the scene setup.

Post-pitch Prototype Iteration 3

Continuing to re-add in old game mechanics prior to feature lock and to experiment with some new ones. Also began the process of refactoring and optimising the game post-prototype.

Major changes:
-Re-enabled the ship cannon firing. Fixed several issues with this process.
-Gave the ship's cannons a shot cool-down.
-Added a shunting ability to the bumpers on the controller.
-Added a part repair zone.
-Tweaked and improved the prison fortress' colliders.
-Prison fortress warning light is now orange when idle then red when spawning.
-Lowered passenger terminal velocity to improve physics responsiveness.
-Made a all lerps/slerps/updates use delta time that weren't already.
-Optimised several classes to use cached component references instead of game scene hierarchy lookups.
-Refactored code to improve clarity.

Post-pitch Prototype Iteration 2

Further iteration on the major features of the game moving towards feature release.

Major changes:
-Added advanced ship part destruction, losing balloons now makes the player ship constantly roll in that direction.
-Fixed minor player reversing control & animation bugs.

Post-pitch Prototype Iteration 1

Began working through the feedback from the industry pitch.

Major changes:
-Added a first-pass iteration of ship part destruction. Players may lose their balloons and masts. Losing a part makes the player ship either lighter or heaver and in future will affect the handling of the ship.
-Restored player death, occurs when both of the player's balloons have been popped.
-Improved camera handling and smoothness.
-Refactored game states to reduce potential for bugs and improve performance.
-Implemented a new prototype skybox from Ello.

Pre-pitch prototype Iteration 3 Bugfix

Fixed a bug in the non-editor version of the game where the player UI text would show up as 'Hello World'.

Pre-pitch Prototype Iteration 3

Bugfix & optimisation release to make the game run on a wider range of hardware in busy gameplay situations.

Major changes:
-Addressed a camera control bug where the view would reset if the player was accelerating and trying to rotate the view.
-Made reverse turning behave more realistically.
-Performed a code optimisation pass, specifically targeting game hierarchy searches during update ticks.
-Addressed a bug where sometimes players wouldn't get laden by the prisoners and could move at the unfair normal speed while laden as a result.

Pre-pitch Prototype Iteration 2

Fixed small gameplay and camera bugs.