Sprint 5
Beta
Spring Break & GDC
There were two major external events that occurred during this Sprint. Elon University's Spring Break landed at the end of March this year, dividing this Sprint in half. This meant that most of us had to leave campus, continuing to work from various locations outside of Elon as well as taking much needed time to recuperate. Additionally, the 2024 Game Developer's Conference took place from March 18th through March 22nd in San Fransisco. Both the professor of the course this game was developed for, and Alex, the Narrative Designer, attended the conference during this Sprint. At the conference, Alex showed BioDive off to some of the other game developers and attendees present. Geoff Bokuniewicz, the Product Lead of PickFu, a consumer research platform, was kind enough to create an interest poll for BioDive. This provided insight towards where potential interest in BioDive might come from. With the Steam page now public, Alex was able to share the link with other GDC attendees to garner attention towards the upcoming release.
Programming Department
The programming department focused largely on the implementation of finished elements from the other departments. The third floor tileset, more of the set dressing, sound effects, dialogue, and music where it was previously absent have been added. Additionally, the programming department created a "Helper Menu" that can be toggled on or off to assist players with the in-game puzzles. Minor tweaks and bug-fixes occurred in response to feedback from the previous playtest sessions.
Art Department
The Art Department worked tirelessly to prepare the game's three endings. This meant creating animated sprites for the final cutscenes of the game with the gigantic monster for both the good and bad routes. Additionally, imagery to accompany the ending dialogue was needed for the final ending screens of the game. Slight tweaks were made to the sprites of certain set dressing elements in response to player feedback.
Narrative Design Department
Completion of the dialogue scripts was a major task this Sprint. This meant ensuring that the game's entire story was ready for implementation before Alex went to attend GDC to give the programming department adequate time to include it in the Beta build. The script for Level 1 had already been completed, but Levels 2 and 3 still needed to be finished to have a complete script of the game's dialogue.
Audio Design Department
The Audio Department, much like the Art Department, needed to focus on having the game's endings be as close to complete as possible. For this Sprint, the focus was on creating different music for both the Bad and Good Endings of the game.
