Shaders

Aaron has also been working with shaders this week, creating a liquid shader for new sap and lava materials. Below are some gifs of these shaders, which you will be able to see all throughout builds in the future!

Aaron has also worked on some grass shaders for the plant life in Ant Assault, which slowly wiggles and can be adjusted for specific chambers and uses! Like the lava and sap shaders, these will be featured across chambers too!

Modular Assets

Aaron has also created some amazing modular assets that designers and artists can use to decorate and light the chambers with, as shown below:

Greenery

Felix has also been hard at work, creating lots of greenery and environmental assets to be used throughout the level, with a variety of rocks, mushrooms, and plants!

Carapiercer

In terms of weaponry, Daniel has modelled the carapiercer, which was retopologised by Lachlan W, with placeholder materials currently assigned to it. We plan to add the correct materials soon so be sure to keep an eye out for some amazing detail to be added to this weapon!

Sap Lobber

Michael worked on the Sap Lobber this week and now has been completed, which can be seen below. This Sap Lobber will be animated and show up in builds in the future.

Particles

Jack has been busy this week working on some amazing particles, which brings the game to a whole other level, with visual feedback for combat such as the carapiercer shooting and ant goop effect, along with more ambient visual effects like the mushroom spores, dripping lava, and rising embers!

Carapiercer shoot & goop

Ember particles

Mushroom spores type 1

Mushroom spores type 2

Lava particles

Animations

In terms of animation and bringing characters to life, Aaron has worked on some Sap Lobber animations for the new weapon, and is currently working on updated ones for the Carapiercer, replacing the current placeholder ones!

Sap Lobber animations by Aaron

Below is an image of the new and complete final models for the fire ant soldier, worker, and leafcutter ant in-game!  A new animating rig was created to fit these models, and the animations have been updated too. By Aaron,

AI

Zach created an updated version of the worker ant AI state machine diagram according to Ben’s addition of new worker ant group behaviours.

Programming

Over the past week, Nik has been working on the HUD, with systems for audio, menus, and UI. This includes HUD fixes, a functional HP bar, capture Area UI, a save button, a main menu credits page, and UI transitions!

Ben has also worked on lots of changes and updates for coding this week! This includes many bug fixes, which relate to the game manager, look scripts, enemy spawning, weaponry, and more, helping troubleshoot and efficiently fix bugs that otherwise would have slowed down progress, and has been a major help for the team! Ben has also collaborated with all disciplines, implementing sounds created by Anthony, capture area functionality and UI with Nik, Sap Lobber projectile tweaks, ambient SFX implementation, tweaks to HP and Ammo pickups, and more! Ben has also worked on and created some extra features for Ant Assault which include controls settings, Quality controls, and even Save files which are now in the engine, ready to be fully implemented in the near future!

Lachlan has also created the weapon swap functionality this week, so the player is easily able to change between weapons.

Testing cycles

In terms of testing and gathering feedback for Ant Assault, cycle two is currently up and ready to test right now! Zach and I will be conducting multiple tests with the new builds with different player settings to fine-tune and troubleshoot the culprits of motion sickness, so players can enjoy the game without being disoriented! We are looking forward to and hoping for improvements with the changes we have made but we will find out after testing is completed.