Prototype Milestone

Camron here, in my first (long-winded) update devlog!
MJX is finally starting to take form! In line with our deadline for our first prototype we’ve got some major rollouts coming that will majorly redefine our workflow going forward. First things first, the mega-beast challenge of scene persistent data configurations. With the end goal of a completely controller friendly UI layout experience in mind, my largest challenge and primary goal for the past few weeks has been discovering or developing a method for reading input from a specific device and storing its component information such that the decided upon configuration for its in scene actor would carry across instantiations. In layman's terms, joining the game with a controller in the selection screen would automatically spawn and connect the player to a controllable avatar in the actual gameplay setting. This particular work of black magic proved ultimately more difficult than one would imagine, and the more complex the solution I attempted, the less feasible and harder to fit into the larger project as a whole this particular puzzle piece became. I was fortunate enough to stumble across a tutorial that used a singleton to store the player’s input device information, and with some personal touches I had a working data structure that broke a few things I had to learn how to fix, but by jove it was working. As previously mentioned however, its level of complexity lends itself to a more laborious integration with preexisting systems in place, as well as interferes with certain sceneflow implementations. Just as well, the code we use needs to be original, and there is a significant amount of the data structure that is taken directly from the tutorial. My next major milestone goal is to in fact assimilate the lessons techniques from the tutorial in order to design my own data structure for the final product, but for now that particular Jenga piece stays where it is.

Simultaneously, at this juncture we’ve made the decision (from both the purpose and perspective of simplifying the scope of labor as well as realizing our vision for a particular aesthetic experience) that the physical representation of the players will be 2D. With only our lone artist on the project and their combined workload, we thought it prudent to streamline the pipeline and shorten the distance between the ideas we have and how we ultimately want the project to come out, both aesthetically and mechanically. Unfortunately, the dungeon troll of 3D animation remains an ugly and unfair obstacle for first timers, and we may just have to cross that bridge once we’re ready to answer his riddles three. Nevertheless, we refused to let this feel like a concession or surrender to lesser quality. We’re finding the decision really helps us lean into the aesthetic thematic elements of the narrative of the game and overall qualia of the experience we’re designing. The juxtaposition of 2D characters in a 3D space (especially with a lower more jagged frame rate to their physicality) adds much more to the arcade-like rhythm and old school adobe flash game nostalgic experience.

Overall we’re really happy with the current state of the project, but we’re eager for things to advance to the next phase as time allows. From here on out, devlog updates will be coming out more frequently as time allows us to dedicate more labor hours into the project, as well as the final form of the game becomes more refined and we get closer to exhibition day. Thank you so much for all your patience and support, we cannot wait to share the final product with all of you one day!