Sprint 3 Summary

Team 1

In Sprint 3, Team 1 revisited work from past sprints, redesigning many aspects of the menus created in Sprint 1 to be more in line with the overall 'RunTime' art direction that has developed in the since. This was not just limited to graphical changes, as a large amount of code tidying and reformatting was undertaken. This involved the reduction of code duplication primarily revolving around the button and texture packing of buttons for each menu.

Additionally, a great deal of work was sunk into the creation of a functional score page, that uses an inverse calculator to assess performance based on timed to clear a level. This page will also write to a .txt file stored within the game directory to save these scores between play sessions. This score was made functional by clock also added to the game, that begins when the level is launched.

Team 2

In Sprint 3, Team 2 decided to focus more on usability. This included adding UI elements for the game, specifically for the (de)buff items that were added last sprint, implementing the ability to pause and improving the reset method that make it faster as well as looking at overall performance improvements. We also intended on added a UI to the level editor, but this was not achieved this sprint for reasons that will be mentioned later.

From a design perspective, that main work that needed to be done was designing a pause screen that would overlay the game when the user pauses it. This went through a few iterations to ensure to look and feel matched the rest of the game and was functional. Due to technical issues, the screen wasn't implemented by the end of sprint, but pause functionality does work, stopping the player and the void and preventing input from the user unless they resume the game, reset or exit. More work will be done next sprint to try and get a pause screen to work in the game.

Next, UI elements needed to be created to help the user know which (de)buff they had picked up and how long it would last for. This involved the use of Adobe Illustrator, After Effects and Media Encoder to create 6 animations that could be exported as an image sequence before being packed for use by the game engine. Unfortunately, (de)buff functionality wasn't complete by the end of last sprint, which prevented us from implementing this UI. As a result, the scope of our plan changed to fix this functionality on top of implementing the UI elements. This did mean that we did not have time to implement UI for the level editor, but did mean we had fully functioning (de)buff items with a UI in the levels.

Team 3

In Sprint 3, Team 3 again worked on implementing/refining the player's animations for basic movement which include running, idle, falling, sliding and jumping. The assets for these animations were already created in Sprint 2 however could not be implemented at the time due to the game being super laggy, which meant no new assets had to be made for these animations they just had to be implemented.

We also worked on implementing some spawn and death animations for the player to improve the game experience. So three spawn animations were created for the sake of variety and one death animation was created and implemented. We also had to make sure the animations matched up with whatever current power up the player has, to do this we created an additional animation for the speed boost buff, played the running animation slower for the slow debuff, and ensured that if the player had the stuck debuff that the only animation that would play was idle.

Additionally a number of J unit tests were written to ensure the code acted as expected.

Team 4

Team 4 took on the tasks of converting the previously made levels 2 & 3 to JSON format, as well as implementing full functionality for Runtime's interactive elements (jump-pads, portals, etc.), and finally designing, creating, and strenuously testing level-textures fitting the themes of levels 2 and 3.

The level textures were designed in conjunction with Team 5, discussing in high-detail the implications of the background images they had made, and how these may inform our design choices and overall process. This included many discussions with all members of Team 5, to ensure no stone was left unturned, and to make changes necessary for a more uniform user-experience. A total of 40+ textures were made for individual blocks across the two levels (including differing variations of the same block, as well as corner blocks-bridge blocks, decoration blocks, etc.), however over half of these were stripped away and never implemented within the game, due to constraints in time and effort from other teams. These are all documented within the wiki.

Also included in this sprint was the conversion from .txt files to .JSON format regarding the level 2/3 files. At the end of Sprint 2, Team 2 has changed the level editor system to .JSON format. As we had little time to reflect this change with our own levels, this was pushed to Sprint 3; using the level editor to load and re-save the level files, this was a simple task.

Finally, interactable elements such as the jump-pads, buttons, etc. were given full functionality during this sprint. Buttons now open doors further in the level, jump-pads launch the player up in the air, and overall complexity of the game was improved due to these changes. For a more comprehensive coverage of these changes, please look toward the appropriate wiki pages.

Team 5

Sprint 3 for team 5 was surrounding our Quality Of Life Ticket which incorporated Music Optimisation, Background Optimisation, Texture Design, Loading Screen, UML diagrams and JUnit tests. Team 5's overall aim during this sprint was to improve the games features and their integration with each other; their overall "flow".

Initially when beginning the sprint we were considering all the quality of life fixes, such as having a loading screen while the game took its time to load (about 30 seconds), creating a dynamic camera that would stop at the limits of the background, however, in the first week when we found out about the level of difficulty of restricting the camera's motion as well as the loading screen. This was then made a priority over this sprint and next. More sound effects were added and a change to level 3's background was done due to teammates feedback. Texture packages for level 1 and 4 were created and committed. Slight changes to the background positioning was also done. The team also worked on bringing down the overall builds of sonarcloud bugs. Alot of user testing was done in relation to old work also.

Overall, in this sprint, team 5 spent alot of time trying to implement the code for a loading screen and to fix the camera movement. This took up alot of the sprints time and has been now taken up in sprint 4 too. Texture packages for level 1 and level 4 were created to enhance the "juicy" game experience and align with the levels theme. Many changes were mde to previous sprints work.