Milestone 3 - Done!

So now Milestone 3 is done... and it has sure been a rough one. I've been working almost non-stop to implement all of these changes, and now I've shifted to squashing bugs as well. And there were a fair few, including one I have yet to solve. But that's how things go the further you get into a project, and I am confident that I'll work this out as usual. But with Milestone 4 upon us, I have to double down and get the last key features of the game into place, including a pause menu, a list the player can refer to, and a means to complete the level, to name a few.

This is where development gets hectic... but here are the week's additions.

Changelog:

+Fixed several new models, and turned them into prefabs. Made more prefabs still.

+Populated a couple of shelves in the toy store, and made some arrangements a little more disorganized.

+Made numerous prefabs static

+Created more of the mall layout, and added in a few arrangements.

+Grouped more items together for ease of organization.

+Created a guide arrow system, which will assist by pointing at objectives in the tutorial, and also serving as a means to point the player in the direction of an exit to finish the level.

+Updated the tutorial to use this new guide system.

+More prefabs still.

+Finished making mall sections for organization.

+Updated the Axle controls so that their scale can be reset when the player is caught.

+Made the player automatically slow down if they have somehow exceeed maxSpeed (such as if their maximum speed was changed).

+Created a base class for items with special effects, and created the functionality for an item that causes the player to get a ridiculous boost in speed.

+Finished adding in walls and generic store entrances, completing the skeleton of the mall layout.

+Made some adjustments to the generic store entrance to enable for proper NPC navigation.

+Adjusted the terrain to permit for the creation of an external environment and a lower mall floor, if the opportunity arises.

+Updated the NavMesh and baked the Lighting to account for these new changes.

+Fixed a bug where NPCs could go through a certain kind of wall using their NavMesh Agent.

+Created a List system to keep track the exact number of Enemies in the scene. Functionality for tracking exact number of NPCs is pending.

+Created debugging features for the Conspiracy Theorist, enemy line of sight, and NPC movement AI.

+Fixed a serious bug that caused multiple Conspiracy Theorists to catch the same object at the same time, and causing one of the Theorists’ behavior to break in the process.

->Implemented additional checks to ensure that Conspiracy Theorists return to their default behavior if they see that their target has been caught by another enemy.

+Implemented more prefabs

+Populated the level with lots of alien artifacts, and updated the Item List accordingly.

+Created a check to make sure any item that isn’t properly put onto the player’s ItemManager list throws an error when it is found.

+Made Item variables more easily accessible for conditional checks.

+Modified the player’s movement parameters:

->Increased maximum speed

->Increase Acceleration and Deceleration

->Increased hard reverse speed slightly to reduce skidding and increase control to more reasonable levels.

->Increased turn speed slightly

->Changed MaxSpeed parameters so that the player won’t begin decelerating if they are slightly over max speed. This prevents speed fluctuations when the player is at maximum speed.

+Made changes to Item lights so that they are a bit dimmer.

+Fixed a typo in the tutorial that provided the wrong key for a certain function.

+Increased duration of certain tutorial messages.

+Temporarily moved the Capture Respawn Point to the Toy Store.

+Fixed a bug where the Extendable axle check was permanently disabling extendable axle functions.

+Added in a few more items to collect, and made several items require multiple instances to fulfill requirements.

+Removed several Conspiracy Theorists from the scene.

+Fixed a bug where tripping functionality was not reenabled after the player was respawned.

+Fixed a bug that caused the player to continue moving/rotating when being caught while they were accelerating/rotating.

+Adjusted item collection to enable proper collecting when multiple objects are within range of the player to collect.

+Fixed a few colliders that weren’t fit to certain models.

+Made more prefabs in the toy store that can be disrupted by the player if they collide with them.

+Removed objects around the “Religious Idol” artifact to increase its visibility.

+Changed the tutorial to make the guide arrow not disappear until the player collects the first item.

+Worked on fixing a bug where the player starts spinning out of control and floating away if they are caught by an enemy. It’s still a work in progress.

+Doubled the player’s acceleration to improve mobility.

+Fixed a bug that disrupted the ItemCollector’s functionality to remove an item from its list of collectable items.

+Created functionality for “fake items,” which are items that look like they are collectable, but can’t be collected for whatever reason. Functionality is also in place to make them collectable if certain conditions are met (but may not necessarily be possible, depending on the item). The functionality is buggy, but it will be properly implemented soon.