Devlog 05: Cannons Unleashed!

Arm the cannons, target ahead! Part two of production sprint one has come to an end.

Welcome back for devlog number five of FullBroadside, our chaotic PVP boat combat game! In this devlog we will be covering our progress of this week on all aspects of the game. Let's dive right in!

Programming Progress:

Our programmers have been very busy setting up collisions and making sure players can attack each other, some crucial elements of our game. 

First off,  setting up collisions. This is still in active development for the moment, but the programmers have been setting up collision for the ships and cannonballs, so players will be able to shoot each other and take each other down. So yes, that means they have also set up the ability to shoot! For now, only the base shooting mechanic is set up, the side cannons. Nothing fancy as of yet, but having one option down to attack is already a great start. Being able to shoot each other obviously raises the question if the player already has health. To this question, I can proudly say yes! Players have health and can also respawn after reaching zero health.

That wraps up the programming progress for this week!

Sound Progress:

Our sound designer has been putting in a lot of effort to create some beautiful sounds for our game. He has implemented sounds for functions from the previous week and for this week already too!

We now have some nice environmental sounds playing during the gameplay, like moving waves for example. He also implemented sounds for when the ship moves around, when a player makes a turn, for example, you hear the ship crack and hurl. This adds a lot to the experience of the game. There is also a very satisfying sound added, for when a player shoots the cannons, the shot sounds really impactful and is a very important part of player feedback.

Art Progress:

Now we have come to, personally my favorite part of the devlog, the art progress! Let's see what we made.

First of all, there has been made significant progress on the design of the ships! It transformed from a block out to a beautiful ship mesh. Plenty of detail has been added to make it really stand out. A cannon has also been added to the front for the frontal attack that will be part of the game. Eventually, the flags will be very saturated colors, differing per player to make your own ship stand out during the game.

Next up, progress on another important asset has been made, the Kraken! It started off as a block out, just as the ship. The Kraken is now being refined and made into the final mesh as you can see below: 

As you can see, the Kraken is coming together beautifully. A little sneak peek at what we are planning to do with it. The Kraken will deviate a little bit from the main idea of our art style. It will be hand-painted to be able to add extra details to it, to make it look extra nice, knowing that it eventually will take up a lot of screen space.

Continuing, progress has been made on the decoration of the islands! Extra environment props have been made and two textures for the island itself. The textures are combined in one material that makes use of vertex painting to break up repetition and add some nice details to the islands. Down below you can see the props and the textures:

And finally, some RFX has been made as a part of player feedback. The RFX hasn't been implemented yet, but has still been made. RFX for when a player takes damage and RFX for when the Kraken is about to spawn have been developed. All RFX in our game will take inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Unfortunately, the footage for the Kraken spawning RFX is too big to show here, but be sure to check it out once it is implemented in the game!

Instead of the Kraken spawning RFX, here I have concept art of the Kraken. This has been used to help with modeling the boss of our game.

That wraps up our progress for the week! Thank you for keeping up with the progress of our game and I hope you are as excited as us to see the final product.

Kind regards,

the Full Broadside crew