Disclaimer - These devlogs are one part of a University assignment that Styx is being developed for, so any stilted wording or weird inclusions can be traced back to that fact.

STYX Devlog #4

For a quick recap of what the game is about, see Devlog #1 here.

What's new for STYX?

The programming hat stayed on this week - I've been tinkering away on the prototypes I mentioned last week, and was able to make a handy 'save / load' system that will keep track of players' progress, whether it be the number of Obols they collected in a level or which abilities they have upgraded. None of my previous games included anything like this, so it's been exciting to feel some progression!

The rest of the team were focused on the vector art assets I mentioned last week; I think they've captured the Helltaker style beautifully, and can't wait for everyone to get their hands on the game and be blown away by it all. Similarly, our programmer has been getting to grips with Unity's animation systems, meaning the characters move their bodies... when they move their bodies.

We've steered clear of scope creep, too, so it's full steam ahead on making the MVP!

Progress

• Added adjustable sliders for music / SFX volume
• Got in touch w/ Paul Williamson - he'll be making STYX's Music & SFX!
• Got a save / load system working
• Added a few more features to the bar scene prototype
• Wrote even more lines of 'gossip' for the Dionysus 'gossip / gameplay hint' system

Thoughts

At the end of sprint 2, I'm still happy with our progress - each step forward is one in the right direction, but as our lecturer rightly pointed out, everything in the backlog for the current sprint should be done by the end of that sprint, so I readily admit that I have been dishing out an unreasonable number of tasks.

Despite this, the game is coming together nicely; I'd like to start merging scenes and trying to get our mechanics working together in the coming weeks.

Our main area for improvement this week is organisation - as mentioned above, I've been dishing out too many tasks, so am going to give everyone on the team two 'critical' tasks for this week. This'll be useful in getting the more 'urgent' tasks out of the way, narrowing our focuses, and making it easier to communicate what needs done, and why.

Going Forward

My main focus is on reducing pressure on the team - other assignments' deadlines approach and require more immediate attention, so we're lucky to be at a decent stage of prototyping where only urgent aspects of STYX need to be worked on this week - more tasks can be taken on, but I'll leave that to the team's discretion.

These urgent aspects include:

• Finishing the 'bar scene' prototype
• Finishing Hephaestus concept art
• Creating concept art for the 'cannonfodder' enemies
• Creating placeholder animations for these enemies
• Creating an Enemy AI prototype
• Finishing the melee combat prototype

Thank you for reading devlog #4!