B4Z-1L Research Facility Dev Log 6

Hello I am Erik and I was one of the two programmers of the game.

We had a very long process of brainstorming the theme and puzzles of the game on which we decided on as a team. As development went on we had quite a few ideas that were scrapped to keep the game cleaner and simpler. The main goal we wanted to keep in mind is the 5 minute timer of the game. Of course the game realistically would be a bit difficult to beat all in one go so what we set out to do was that if you completed a puzzle you wouldn't need it if you lost to the timer as you would have the numbers for the keypad.

Now for my main jobs in this project. I was in charge of making the player controller which I wanted to be grid based. Making it grid based created a lot of issues that had to constantly be fixed. Many clipping issues and the player getting stuck on walls and not being able to progress were worrisome. In the end we managed to fix the major issues together. Now the main reason I insisted on grid based movement was due to certain puzzle that in theory would work better on a grid system however unfortunately these puzzles were cut out due to time constraints and issues with implementation.

We also wanted the ending to be one giant dramatic puzzle but decided on a much more light-hearted ending.

Another main thing I worked on was the creation of the movement and layout for the 3rd puzzle based in the lava area. Everything apart from the beautiful assets was done by me in the 3rd puzzle. It was a very enjoyable puzzle to work on and I wanted to add more to it but had to cut it due to making the puzzle way too long for our timer based game.

And the last thing I worked on was the implementation of B4Z-1L speech. I wrote the lines and also implemented them with code. I wanted to make B4Z feel like a sarcastic know-it-all while also trying to make him attempt to warm up to you. 

One main thing I regret is that we were not able to implement a choice for the end of the game to bring B4Z with you off the exploding research facility and perhaps that could be worked upon if we ever revisit this project in the future.

-Erik