Hello everyone!

This here devlog marks our entering the last stretch of work on Fish Fiasco. We have a little less than two weeks at our disposal to patch everything up and polish any rough edges our little project might have. So, without any ado, let's get into what changes occurred this past week!

Programmers :

Daphné started the week with fixing reoccurring bugs. First of all, we realized that we had an issue with the player character breaking at spawn and refusing to be affected by the world, since it would just stay in place and refuse to slip off the ice cube.

The fish items' logic also needed some adjustment, since they would occasionally fall through the floor instead of stopping their fall when they hit the ice cube. As a fix she decided to give the location they fly towards an offset from the surface of the cube.

Last of all in terms of bug fixing, our player connection screen wouldn't refresh if the players decided to go back to the start menu and then into the connection screen again, causing them to be unable to start the game at all, so she added a script to help with that.

Daphné also quickly set up the buttons for controller use in the connection screen and made players able to leave once they joined and did the animation logic and setup for the fishes, but this took a bit longer than expected because of odd state inconsistencies. Afterwards, she moved on to enabling fish to only spawn when there's no previously active items on the ice cube, as well as adding rumble when a player is stunned and implementing a little screen shake when whirlpool round starts or when a wave hits the cube.

Just like last time, Miguel started off the week implementing the visuals we've been pushing out lately. This included adding the visuals that precede the tie-breaker round (and fixing up the HUD, which used to break off-bounds), as well as a bunch of particle effects - namely the little stars for when players get stunned, the one little warning zaps for when players are out of the ElectricEel range, the GroundSlam landing dust, the collision lines, and the spikes and thunder for the fishes effects. Once done with that, he focused on bug-fixing and code polishing - making the playing field wobble up and down, as well as some background objects; launching all other players up when someone GroundSlams; and changing the animation for the fog when the Whirlpool round kicks in (which also served as a solution for an annoying bug we've been having where, weirdly enough, the first player got pulled up with the fog at the end of the round). 

Lastly, with all his code tasks done, he focused once again on sound design. This time around, he finished composing the Whirlpool Theme (making it fade in/out on beat at the appropriate round) and made/implemented 3 new SFX. One for the beginning of each round, one for the wave warnings, and one to remind the players of the timer whenever the round's about to end.

Artists :

Stijn started this week by finally addressing the rather scuffed setup we had for our play space (the ice cube). Because of the way our transparency was set up we had to improvise this and this led to a setup that kinda worked but looked odd from certain angles and wasn't very optimal. 

After fixing this he added an extra outline effect to the eel safe zone. This outline is always present and shows the exact bounds of the safe zone. 

Finally he tweaked the dust trail particle and adjusted some of the materials our fishermen were using. Before getting stunned or having dash on cooldown would result the material to switch to a very bright color. This was very useful for debugging purposes but didn't exactly fit the style of our game. Now the colors are still noticeable but are much easier on the eyes.

Beau went back and polished our wave animations. These required some more frames and a little extra detail in order to make them look smoother, since they are going to be seen in the foreground quite frequently. He also modelled, unwrapped and textured accordingly two more models which he placed inside the ice cube as well (namely a boot and some seaweed strands).

He also polished the previously implemented rain particle effect. The raindrop frequency and the color needed some adjustment, since it was a little distracting and too gray in the actual game scene. In terms of VFX, he also created two new effects : a 2D animation of a big lightning strike hitting the players outside of the eel safe zone and a particle effect of spikes jutting out of the player and pufferfish upon stunning.

Lastly, he also animated the idle, post landing animation of the eel, which now wriggles around on the ice cube before being picked up.

As for myself, I split my time between VFX, background adjustment and menu improvement since the last devlog. I started off by creating two particle systems : one to give the player some kind of visual cue that they're dashing forward, which looks like cartoony wind lines flying off the character model's belly and a landing effect in the shape of a dust cloud and sparks flying away from the landing area. I also drew four different sprites of the ice cracking under the player when they land that are not yet implemented in-game.

Aside from that, I modelled some wooden pieces that I used to redecorate the village in the background, since the docks were previously made out of simple default cubes with a flat color inside Unity. I created three differently shaped and textured wooden planks, a round pillar and a small moss decal to place around and make the docks look more water-worn.

Lastly, I also animated our 2D start menu. The initially static water now moves, as do its shadow and a little fish that pops up sometimes in the corner of the screen (if you wait around long enough to see it :) ).

And that's it for this week folks! Next time you hear from us Fish Fiasco is going to be let loose at sea!

-Alex