We Keep Chugging Along
30 November, 2023
Happy Thursday, everyone! This is your Community Manager Squid Gumbo coming back to you with a new edition of the Weekly Cheese, chock full of prime cuts of juicy devlogs for your consumption. Don’t take that out of context. We’ve got a fair amount of ground to cover today, so let’s not dawdle!
Something Seems Different...
Did you notice? We changed the blog font! That’s it. That’s the news. Honestly tell me if you noticed because the previous one was driving me insane.
Taking out the Trash
This week, we did a lot of housekeeping. You know when you’re just living life and spiderwebs appear out of nowhere? That’s kinda what it was feeling like around here, what with all of our continuous work being focused on pushing afflicted forward. Luckily for us, Ryan took matters into his own hands and cleaned up our beautiful muenster of a project. We have (of course) some basic strategies around keeping the project clean and streamlined, but periodic cleanup is critical to actually making sure those unused map pieces and prefabs aren’t cluttering up the joint. It’s hard to keep everything straight when we’re all working in tandem in this pre-demo development environment. Thanks Ryan!
What are we up to?
It’s been a solid week here, so let’s check up on the team and see what we’re doing:
Ryan’s redesigned the dynamic level generation systems to create a more unique experience for players on each run. He’s also worked on improving the footstep and jumping sounds and animations, as well as looking into the footstep system employed by the Zombie Brutes. I’m not sure how much sleep Ryan has gotten...
Big Spoon Bryan has been consistently working on the afflicted storyline and a functional game-flow document for the forthcoming Extraction game mode. He and I have also been riffing on ways to tie in gameplay to the lore and storyline.
Bruce finalized his work on the 3rd Shift Studios logo animation, and it’s looking crisp!
Little Spoon Bryan has been continuing his efforts on the city map, adding detail and breathing life into the scenes.
Manny’s got a few things on his plate right now, but his main focus is redesigning the entirety of the afflicted UI – from the menus to the in-game HUD. Going along with that is ensuring support for the menus using various controllers for nerds like me who suck at using M+K. Additionally, he’s been continuing his work on bringing the Zombie AIs back into the game 👀
I’ve been polishing up a bit of the swamp map to make sure the layers all make sense, and also looking into some atmospheric issues I’ve noted. Of course, I’ve also been hanging around with all of you and keeping the team motivated from all of your support.
In Closing
Seems like it’s been an eventful week around here, even with the busy post-holiday weekend. We’re continuing to push afflicted further and faster as 2023 starts to come to a close, and we’re really glad to have you all along for the ride. While it may not look like we’re up to much on the day-to-day surface level, we’re down here in the trenches as much as we can be outside of our normal day jobs. Here’s to another productive week!
Stay Warm Folks,
Squid