We’re now in week 4 of development, and we’ve created a playtesting build for Travelling with Taste! Here’s a sneak peak at what we’ve been working on…

General

Our Playtesting build of Travelling with Taste can be found be clicking the “Releases” tab in this website’s header.

Also, we will be showcasing our game at PAX East in May! Stop by the WPI booth to test out our project in-person and learn more about other WPI student games!

Playtesting Form

We created a feedback form to be used in playtesting sessions. Our questions focus on how intuitive player movement feels, whether the enemy vision cone is understandable, and how clear the game objective was.

Audio

We created some sounds for menu button interactions! Here’s a video showcasing them in action:

Art

Logo Drafts

We experimented with different designs for our game’s logo, revolving around the idea of showing the actual rats.

Our first draft was drawn last week and colored this week:

Once we modeled and textured the 3D rat, we made two logo variations with it:

Poster Draft

To prepare for our showcase at PAX East, we are working on a poster for our game! Here’s a draft of the background:

In the foreground, we’re drawing a security agent chasing after the rat-filled suitcase!

We experimented with a couple different compositions…

Googly Eyes

We also finally implemented the suitcase’s googly eyes in-engine! We tested them by attaching many, many eyes to the suitcase.

The googly eyes can also be attached to more than just the suitcase…

Model Rigging

We are using Mixamo to rig our Security Agent model.

Button Recoloring

We added multiple button colors to make it clearer which buttons interact with specific doors or conveyor belts.

More Assets

We created a rat model! This will be shown when the player suitcase opens and at other points in the game.

We modeled and textured metal trusses and support beams to be attached to the ceiling and other spots in the level.

We are also working on creating conveyor belt flaps that are simulated with cloth physics.

Tech

Player Mechanics

We have overhauled the player movement system to use physics-based movement via. impulses. We can easily modify many aspects of the system, such as ground friction and acceleration.

Enemy Mechanics

We tested different enemy vision cone designs to find one that felt more intuitive during gameplay. Here are some of the options we prototyped:

A 3D cone, like the original version, with a material that fades near the end of the cone

A 2D cone on the ground which uses raycasts to be cut off by walls and objects

A spotlight object which casts light on the ground corresponding to the enemy’s detection zone

We found the 2D vision cone to be the least intrusive while still serving its gameplay purpose. We may combine it with the fading material and spotlight object from the other tests to make it more aesthetically pleasing. We are also considering removing the vision cone if its gameplay purpose does not outweigh the visual noise it creates.

Collectable Cheese

We created a halo VFX around collectable cheese and animated it to bob up, down, and rotate to clearly signify it as a pickup to the player. Thrown cheese still obeys gravity and physics, like before.