#tether trouble

Another Week, another step closer to seeing the close of the current development phase of Throwing The Habit. In a weeks time I will be showing Throwing the Habit (along with Tether Trouble) and the SAE Perth Student Showcase. Over the past two weeks I have started to see exactly how unready Throwing the Habit is for this type of situation.

Over the past week I have made a mad dash to finish up a working build. Ready to be submitted for marking today. So over the past week I have exhausted all my resources into, fixing all the last bugs in the game, implementing audio through the use of FMOD Studio integration in Unreal Engine 4, alongside finishing the last touches to the visual effects. But to my own doubts I did manage to the game working and ready for submission (despite some of the event-driven audio not importing into Unreal properly).

Due to short time frame in which I had to finish the project I had to end up cutting out any extra puzzles except the physics pickup puzzle and the piecing back together a picture puzzle as well as the withdrawal effects that can affect the player. This allowed for me to focus more into getting the more clear and more important requirements for the final submission. Hopefully I will be able to plan my workflow and time better from this moment on (as well as not aim at such unrealistic goals).

So from the end of Perth Games Festival on Saturday I have started to truly feel the strain of how much I have to do and how little time I have to do it. So over the past week I have been working on Throwing the Habit with a small amount of Tether Trouble.

When it comes to Throwing The Habit I have been working on two parts at once, the visuals and finalizing the programming. Whilst working very slowly, the two pictures below show a comparison of the main area in the apartment.

Unlike the modelling I have been working to have the game play by itself before I decide to add any new mechanics which will rely on the audio to be be conveyed.

As for Tether Trouble, I spent yesterday solidly bug fixing the bugs from Perth Games Festival, this was all in effort to show Tether Trouble at the official SAE Perth Launch last night, after bug fixing it has started to feel more like a complete game.

So yesterday was the 2015 Perth Games Festival, over the course of the day I spent all of my time helping out at the SAE booth both as a student and a developer, this ended out to be a great learning experience as well as a good way for me to network with all the different people and developers there.

For the larger part of the day I was manning the booth to show off Tether Trouble, which ended up being a great success, drawing a lot of the younger crowd, as well as a lot of people interested in learning to make games.

On the other hand I did use the time that Throwing The Habit was on show to find bugs and get feedback on the early beta build (and there sure was a lot of it). I will hopefully be able to take all the information in to count over the next few weeks to get the game into a finished state.

So after this experience I have taken away a lot, how to present a game (both successful and not so successful) as well as the ability to plan more over the coming weeks.

Another week, another dev blog. So over this past week I have been frantically getting Throwing the Habit and Tether Trouble (the yarn ball game) ready to be shown at the SAE Student Showcase for the 2015 Perth Games Festival

When it comes to getting Throwing the Habit ready for the festival I have managed to let myself down, I didn’t end up getting all of the puzzles ready to show but I did manage to get all of the level set up and ready for the public to explore and destroy.

Whilst the creation of Tether Trouble has come along exponentially over the past week. Over the course of Wednesday afternoon I have managed to program all of the major mechanics for the game, this includes the main features of a line of yarn trailing the player along with the rewinding mechanic to roll back up that trail of yarn.