Welcome everyone to the third devlog instalment for the game Dance Monkey Dance!

Over the past week our team has been busily programming, modelling, and testing to ensure we create the best gameplay possible for our followers.

There have been a few changes and developments this week, so without further ado, lets get into it.

Level Design

There  have been quite a few changes and revisions to the level design this week. From testing we conducted on the flow and the parkour movement aspect of the level, we found that he player had poor visibility of the map and that the gameplay felt too cramped, like you were always surrounded by building with no where to go.  Even though that may be the desired feeling for some games, this is not what were were going for in Dance Monkey Dance. As a result, the structure of the level has been reworked. Instead of having lots of smaller buildings, this was changed to larger buildings of various heights that were more spaced out. This gives the player a higher degree of visibility and more freedom to plan  and decide where to go. 

Birds eye view of the map.

In relation to the creation of the map, we decided to with the addition of floating block/platforms. Rather than the player spending most of their time on the ground, they have the opportunity to traverse upwards through a variety of parkour test.

Area to test your jumping skills.

Structures and platforms. 

More structures and platforms.

The parkour cave has also been finished.  The cave has been designed to provide the player with and area where they can just chill and run around in circles, or if they're up for it, to test their skills by  jumping from stalactite to stalagmite.

A poor effort at showing off the cave.

We have also played around a little bit with the skybox. We wanted Dance Monkey Dance to have a 1980's synthwave components to it.  We tried texturing the structures with neon grid textures however it was noted in testing that the sensation of the lights flying past the player gave some people the feeling of motion sickness. We decided to forgo using them as textures and instead we are trialling using them as a component for the skybox.

Synthwave skybox. Skybox created based on this image.

In terms of what is left to do for the level design, we have to finish off the skybox, add textures to the structures and  environment and add lighting to the scene.

Gameplay

Some advances in gameplay this week include the addition of a viewer counter (top right corner of the below video). One of the main aims  for players in Dance Monkey Dance is to increase the number viewers watching them. This in turn will increase the amount revenue generated from viewer donations which the player will be able to spend at the end of each round to purchase upgrades.  Viewer count increases as the player generates points from performing parkour actions.

Example of  parkour leading  to increased viewer count.

Additional features implemented this week includes the ability to perform a double jump. This will help players reach higher places and traverse around the map. A restriction on dashing has also been added. Previously you were able to dash as much as you liked. This meant you could basically use it to fly across the map. This has been reduced to a single dash at any given time.

That about sums up the progress made over the past week. 

Tune in next week for another exciting instalment of Dance Monkey Dance!