These past 2 weeks have been much more on the slower side than we would have liked. Our team received some valuable feedback and decided to get back to the drawing board in terms of mechanics. We made the hard decision to remove shooting from the game, although we will still be focusing on the PvP and fast-paced action we set out to accomplish originally. We spent an entire week trying to brainstorm new ideas and new ways shooting can be incorporated into golf, but we struggled to find that perfect balance between the 2 without making one or the other feel like a gimmick. So at the end of the day, we came to the decision to remove the shooting but still retain the PvP aspect by having players use their golf ball as their weapon. We are currently experimenting with mechanics that feel much more like Golf, instead of the mini-golf putting style we had last semester. Since we're removing shooting and using golfing as our main combat mechanic, we will have to re-make the club we currently have implemented. We will replace the single club/sniper hybrid with 3 traditional golf clubs with different powers; a driver, wedge, and putter. These will all behave differently and it is up to the player to decide which one to use and at which time. We do not have a set in stone game mode yet, but as we experiment with different mechanics and possibilities the game will start to unfold. In terms of an art update, our team managed to finish rigging and skinning the player model, so I am very excited to see some animations starting to get pumped out. We started some textures like sand, wood, and twisted rope for our first environment, which we decided will be underwater-themed! We noticed a lot of mini-golf courses have pirate and sea monster themes, so we're taking it to the next level and making our first map underwater. It will look kind of like the newest Mario kart game underwater sections, but it will not actually have any water physics. It will be kind of like the "Journey" cave scenes, where the lighting makes it feel like it's underwater even though you are in the middle of a desert. Once we tackle the first map we are hoping to move to a Jurrasic themed map, where we will try to re-use as many assets as we can. Here are some examples of the textures we finished. Thanks for reading!
