Week 11 – Punching Prototype

This week flew by as the team worked to build a playable moment for our “Punching Combat” prototype.

As is par for the course with us, the team thought ahead about the bigger picture and future plans. On top of terrain being added to the build, the programmers worked on developing AI for the LSE on top of building the aforementioned combat moment.

The LSE now has a behavior loop of “Search -> Move -> Adjust -> Attack”. This loop seems to make the LSE more natural and realistic. To further push these feelings, the “eye” of the LSE is now locked on to the player. Research has also begun on an inverse-kinematics system to enhance the LSE even more.

In order to better indicator when and where to punch, we started to experiment with some new UI:

While we currently have these circles as simple indicators, this could change. For instance, perhaps circles will change in size and color as the window to punch that spot closes.

There is a lot we have to think about in terms of making this build / combat moment shine as well as if we will move forward with it, but there are some diamonds in the rough we are already starting to notice. For instance, the moment itself does have a visceral quality to it, and not having UI for the initial “punch the LSE’s fist to stop it” creates a noticeable tension. Further pushing on our lessons comes the importance of feedback. The five different punching sound effects make the moment feel even stronger, and this is even without the inclusion of haptic feedback yet.

We are all curious to see where this new exploration will take us, but the road looks good so far!