Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows:
- 178 of 181 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining three bugs, two require further testing and one requires more work.
- Artwork, music and sound design are being worked on.
In the last two weeks I have finally done more proper playtesting. In doing this I did not find many new bugs, apart from one which required yet another level redesign to a level I believe I have changed six or seven times by now. I found that there was a path the player could take which would allow them to jump a further distance than I had designed for, which would allow them to reach a series of teleportation blocks that led them close enough to the end to jump the gap. To rectify this I moved some of the platforms further apart, and removed one close to the beginning of the level which has now solved the issue. In the effort to ensure all but one level need at least one placement to be completed, I have gone through several iterations of level design, which has all been a good learning experience but has also been quite taxing as I am no fan of this type of repetitive work.
In addition to the level redesign, I have also updated the artwork for the teleportation blocks. This new artwork is no longer colour dependent, but has a directional arrow design going into or out of a portal. Although I had become quite used to the old coloured blocks, I am very happy with the new design, and it has yet again taken Lab 77 a big step closer to being complete. All that remains on the art front now is a new design for the death blocks.
Lastly, I began trying to implement a camera fade for the teleportation blocks and respawns. This has not been an easy process however as I have yet again ran head first into Unity woes. As it turns out, adding a new UI panel to an existing canvas is a minor issue as the variables I set for that canvas are being ignored on startup which leaves the screen with a big black box on it that obscures everything. At least sometimes. Which is very confusing. Unfortunately, I have not yet had the time to properly Debug this, but I did find that this issue is set off whenever I make a change to the script attached to the prefab UI canvas which does not make much sense. I will have to investigate this further, and as such I can not say for certain that I will be able to implement this fade effect in time.
That is all for this Dev Diary, more to come in two weeks.
-Olav