DEVLOG 1

The first two weeks of development - VRTA/BRAE

Things were smooth sailing. Week One we had completed animations, a few sound effects, and a general understanding of task breakdowns for the coming weeks. Inspired by run-and-gun platformers of the 90s and drawn to their quick pacing and fun visual and sound effects, we got to work creating our codebase.

Nick and Justin L. did the heavy lifting for the code, while Justin X. and Cameron handled the majority of the visual and audio direction. Week One deliverables gave us confidence -- perhaps too much, and Week Two snuck up on us.


THE BETA

Playtesting came around and we hadn't been all there. We had a vision and a build, yet everything just didn't quite mesh. What was supposed to be a complete and playable game ended up being a sample scene with our animated character and two platforms. Not the most reassuring. 
No sound effects, no menus, and no enemies. All the code was there, all the sprites were there, but we hadn't actually put the pieces together. On the bright side, our jump worked.

Other groups had polished games, with levels and menus, while we had a barebones scene. A lot of the playtesting feedback could be summarized with the following:

• "I like the idle animation"
  • Thank you :,)
• "What are the controls?"
  • Arrow keys, and spacebar
• "... is there another level?
  • Well... not yet...

What had begun as a strong start for the first milestone had turned into an underwhelming beta. Seeing other groups' work kickstarted us into high gear once more, and we knew that we had to find the fire within us to get VRTA/BRAE polished for our final deliverable 1 week later. 

THE GRIND

Throughout the week, progress was made on all ends, from adding new code for features such as the shooting and enemy mechanics, creating new sprites for enemies, reworking platform mechanics, and adding original music and sound effects. It was all hands on deck for the last 24 hours, with dozens of Google Chrome tabs, Discord calls, and Git Pulls being opened. 

It wasn't comfortable, and the scene wasn't pretty, but we found it within us to push throughout the night to complete something we all wanted to do. A testament to our group dynamic of all-for-one, everyone was active in contributing levels, animations, and polishing code until VRTA/BRAE was close to what we had originally drawn up. By the end of the grind session, VRTA/BRAE had menus, music, animations, levels, platforms with different mechanics, enemies, level transitions, and a shooting mechanism, unrecognizable from the beta we had been shy to show off a week prior. While definitely imperfect, the grit we showed off to bounce back is remarkable, and the tenacity required to pull together from where we were showed that the VRTA/BRAE team does in fact, have a spine.