Technical Accomplishments

(major changes) Movement system

💡 We’ve made significant changes to how fluid movement is alongside the walls. Moving between edges is seamless and switching from 3D and 2D mode now works flawlessly.

• Non-rigidbody based jump movements for smoother and more consistent jumps.
  • Fixed a bug where double jumps were possible.
• Wall switching is now automatic and doesn’t require an extra keypress.
• X/Z locking of the wall player to prevent a bug where the character would fall when squeezed by colliders.
• Use of events to switch shadow modes and synced the switching of the 3D and 2D positions.

(major changes) Shadow system

💡 We've enhanced our Shadow System with a new layering technique for improved visibility, introduced SurfaceExtrusion and ShadowVolume modes for diverse shadow effects, and added multi-light source support for individualized colliders.

• Switched to a layering system combined with the light culling mask to ensure shadow visibility.

  • Note: works well when each light source only affects one surface.
  • Shadows are now pitch black to be more obvious to the player when impacted by one light source.

• Reorganized shadow collider system to provide two shadow mode

• SurfaceExtrusion: the colliders are extrusions on the target wall.

  • 2D mode: Flat on the edges, but the gap on the floor between the object and the wall is not blocked, meaning the 3D mode player can walk through.

  • Better than the ShadowVolume mode for the wall player because the flat edges prevent the wall player from sliding away from the wall

    
    

• ShadowVolume: the colliders are the entire shadow volume.

  • 3D mode: The player shouldn’t be able to walk into the shadow on the ground.

    
    

• Added support for multiple light sources on a single object. Each light would cast a separate collider.

We have a technical write-up of our shadow system for Unity here!

(new!) Ground pickup system

💡 Introducing our new Ground Pickup System! Players can now "pick up" objects using a ray-casted system, adjusting item height via camera angles for shadow creativity. 

• Added a new ray casted object pickup system by scanning the objects in front of the player. The player now has “hands”. (as recommended by critiques during pitch feedback!)
  • Raising and lowering objects is now handled by the camera angle when items are held. This allows for some creative freedom when positioning objects to form complex shadows.
  • Disabled collision detection between the player and the held item and their shadow to prevent glitchy behaviour. (Infinite flying glitch was possible from this!)
  • Switched to using force vectors over transform to keep the object in front of the player with proper physics to prevent the object from clipping into other objects.

Other miscellaneous changes

• Camera system now switches angles along the wall to help keep player orientation when moving. The 3D camera will now follow the character.

• New starter level was implemented, 2x larger than the previous with more objects and lighting to interact with, showing off the new mechanics.

  
  

Other Accomplishments

• New ambient city noises made by our Audio team, not implemented in the game yet.
• Work-in-progress 2D and 3D renderings of the new player object by our Arts team.

Next Steps

• Fix the jittery collisions that rigid-bodies introduced when moving towards colliders.
• Ensure shadows are pitch black even when multiple lighting sources are introduced.
• Implement a first actual level to show off the various mechanics and create a challenging platforming / puzzling experience.
  • Can we use our current mechanics to make it fun? Move lights.. dim them?
• Start incorporating new assets created by the arts team into our level design.
• Any other remaining polishes (and bug fixes) to our current mechanics of the shadow and lighting system.

Important Discoveries

• Our shadow mechanic ended up being difficult to implement, but we managed to get something we were pleased with.
  • Still has some issues, especially with multi-lighting. But it works.
• Our level is pretty bare-bones for now, but the incorporation of new objects and different types of shadows makes for an interesting puzzling experience.
• Polishing our current systems is our best path of going forward when it comes to extending gameplay.