Week 3 (March 13th - March 20th)

Fuel Dependant Mech:

Continuing work on the mech mechanics, I made it so when the fuel bar runs out, the mech's rigidbody becomes kinematic, and a piece of UI tells players to refuel that part of the mech. This was done by making an instance of the fuel collector script and toggling the Rigidbody based on the current fuel-count from that collectors healthbar.

However, one issue remained: Players could move the mech without consuming fuel if they didnt press the button that toggled bool for draining fuel before they embarked. To counteract this, I altered the EnterMech script, so when players enter and exit the mech, the fuel consumption bool toggle is invoked using Unity's event system. This way, whenever players enter the mech and 'turn it on', fuel begins to be consumed. This links back into the flowchart from last week, of specific punishments for players when the mech is fully depleted of a resource.

Game Jam Level:

Since the Mechs base mechanics seemed to be functional, I decided to include them in my Game Jam level.

In this game, the Player needs to get to the end of the river to win, but if they touch the water they drown.

So, they need the help of the Cyclops to get to the end, who needs his butter to spread on his toast, otherwise he won't move.

Scattered along the river are islands where players can refuel the Cyclops, and eventually will make it to the end and win.

And since the mech has a platform on its back, players are able to jump from the mech to the islands for fuel if they cant quite reach them fast enough.

Game Jam 1 Reflection:

This Game Jam was a good way to try out all these mechanics, as I was able to see how all aspects of my player to mech to fuel interactions could occur, and has prompted me to think differently on how these interactions may occur in the actual game. It has also made it painfully aparrent that my mech controller struggles when it comes to climbing up slopes, which is likely due to the mechs slow movement speed and how its movement script handles slopes, so I'll need to look into improving this.