Sprint 3/26

ACCOMPLISHED:
Suni's attack animation for stunning the guards.  I had to do a lot of tweaking on this animation to get it right.  I'm still not fully satisfied, but I've spent too much time on it already.  I've also heard rumor that we're going to end up taking the stunning out so I'd rather not spend too much time perfecting it.

I finished a very cool level design for the final boss.  But I don't think we'll be using it.  They're still working on the farm and city levels.  They haven't even started on the mountain or palace.  There's no way this final boss level is making it in.  Oh well.  Goodbye for good, Baghead.

QUALITY:
Like I said, the attack animation could be better.  I still think the palm strike I went with looks pretty cool though.  Cristine liked my ideas for the final boss level.

EXTRA:
I started work on making a short tutorial level, but I didn't finish that, and I don't think I'm going to be doing any more level designs.  So far people putting the levels together have completely disregarded my level designs.  It's not because they are hard to understand.  I created a numbering system and I uncluded documentation with each level so that all the puzzles would be clear.

Right now the levels are looking very awful.  I don't see anything from my original designs.  I mean they are using some of my puzzles, but they're also just putting things in random places.  Seriously, the levels they are making are nonsensical.  I have no idea why they put shadow monsters where they do.  I know they're working hard, but these levels are our entire game so they need to be put together in a way that makes sense.  I've voiced some of my concerns (don't worry, I did it in a nice way).  And Sarah said they'll keep trying to improve the levels.

Anyway, Cristine's got other stuff for me to help with, so for now, I think I'm off level design.  The reason I was on Level Design in the first place was so that I could make sure we keep the story I wrote progressing throughout the levels.  But Russell nixed having a story in the game weeks ago.  He says we'll put in a story if we have time (yeah right).  Even if we do have time, which we won't, a story isn't something that you can just throw in at the last second.

It's too bad cuz I literally have zero interest in games with no stories.  I don't play a game unless there's some kind of narrative driving me.  This is probly cuz I started gaming with games like Monkey Island and Zak McKraken. That's also the reason why I've never liked games like Tetris or story-lite games like Mario.

EXAMPLES:

NEXT:
We're getting close to release so all of Suni's animations need to be done.  The only one left to do is the Shadow Switch animation. I'm also in charge of box art.