There’s been a lot happening over the last few weeks, and I’ve been too busy to update this blog like I’m supposed to. A lot of really awesome stuff has happened in my personal life (I just got a job offer, I’ve been spending time apartment hunting and setting up finances for post-graduation), and it’s taken away from some of my class work. In terms of actual tasks, it’s been full-steam-ahead for re[Mod], but things like my blog have fallen by the wayside.

We’ve added TWO new weapon parts! We’re almost done with weapons; after this, there’s only one more grip and then we’re finished! This week included the riot shield, which was super simple to implement (essentially, it just adds a “damage zone” to the player when equipped that absorbs 90% of damage). The second was the Revenge Trap, a grip that drops a grenade when the player dies, doing a massive amount of damage to everyone around them. Both of these saw a ton of usage at QA, and are already crowd favorites!

We also did a bunch of stuff with game rules/score. The game now tracks things like headshots, killstreaks, multi-kills, and more, and gives extra points for these! Each is tied to a special bonus score, a few announcer lines, and hype text. This has had a big impact on the team aspect of re[Mod]. At QA, teams are talking to each other more than ever, and the scores that we’re seeing at the end are growing. One of the big things for this coming sprint is making sure that players can check their score and their team’s score at any time.

There was also a massive UI overhaul we did. The in-game HUD has been more-or-less final for quite some time, but the main menu needed a lot of love. Charlie and I worked together to add animations and sound to almost every element, and the result is quite engaging.

For fun, I also looked at the history of our entire git project. The results, when visualized, are pretty stunning. It’s incredible to see how much this project has grown over time.