Devlog 3

Hello! Welcome to our third Devlog about Know Your Wings. We’ve made very good progress on the game since the last one. But here, we’re going to mention the most important ones in each discipline:

Programming: This week, Kaibo, one of the Programmers in the team, added the “echolocation” mechanic to the game, which can be used to spot the invisible blood drops and make them appear. This mechanic was one of the biggest and riskiest features that we had and by making a functional prototype for it, we got confidence that we can make it work with the rest of the game.

Also, Ricky and Sam from the Programming department respectively worked on the pause menu and experimented with an alternative way to make the gliding mechanic work.

Game Design: As a team, we were able to reach a conclusion about how we want the final area to look like and work. We knew beforehand that it was going to be in a Transylvanian castle for sure, but we had no idea if that meant more of the same gameplay but with some twists or maybe even a breathtaking final boss fight. Now, we know what it is and think it’s one of the most interesting and surprising things about the game. So, it’s better if we don’t spoil it here so you can experience it for yourself when the final game is out. For now, we would like to share a visual that Ali, one of the Game Designers, made about a potential final boss fight with the prince of darkness, Dracula (just note that this is not going to be made anymore and is scrapped):

Level Design: Because we finalized a few new mechanics, we had to update the level to accommodate for those changes. These new mechanics include echolocation (as mentioned before), moving objects, and picking up and dropping ability. Here’s a rough diagram that we created to plan for mechanic distribution in the level:

Art: This week, Caitlin, the team’s Artist, made several concept arts for how D and the castle could look like in the final version. Additional concept arts were also made for the “key to the castle” and how the final D would look from the back. You can see some of these below:

Music and Sound: Over the past week, Julian has worked on echolocation noises. Two versions were made, and the one that was used had less bat squeakings as more emphasis was to be put onto the actual radar noise. A little jingle for when the player resets was made as well. In addition to this, the main theme of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor was extended and edited a little bit in order for the song to loop better in game. Julian also worked on some music for the final area of the game. The song was to be a remix of Leon Boellmann’s Toccata from Suite Gothique. However, the song was a bit too intense, so Julian made another version with a slow BPM, edited the drum loop, and added a less intense chord backing. The song is still in heavy progress and Julian isn’t happy with some parts of it for a variety of reasons, so he’ll be working on improving that over the next few weeks to come.

This is an image of the final song that is currently in-progress:

Next Steps: We want to start doing some informal playtests as soon as possible so we can get a better idea of how players interact with the game. Other than that, we have to continue the development based on our schedule and with our next milestone in mind: having a fully playable level from start to finish.