Milestone 8 (Sumaiya)

 

Overview

For Milestone 8, our primary goal was to make as much progress as possible on the final refinements and enhancements outlined in the Beta presentation as well as the Trello board. Key areas of focus included the introduction cutscene, main game UI elements (such as pause/play buttons and health/score bars), and the integration of corresponding music and sound effects.

Introduction Cut Scene 

For the starting cut scene, our team opted for a simple UI where Princess Luna texts the player on a phone device. I designed a "3D" magical girl phone and message bubbles in Adobe Illustrator, drawing inspiration from images as shown in the mood board below:

Phone Design

I then implemented functionality where each message appears after the typing effect finishes. I also added music to help establish the mood, while the message notification sounds make the interaction feel more alive and less static. The next steps are to ensure the cutscene loads after the player selects a mode (desktop or VR) from the home menu and to have the start button within the cutscene load the main game scene in the chosen mode. Additionally, it would be ideal to allow players to skip individual messages or the entire cutscene.

Cutscene Implementation

Main Game UI Assets 

To enhance the game's UI, I designed the missing assets highlighted in the Beta presentation using Adobe Illustrator. These include the health bar, progress bar, and pause/play buttons. The score bar is a new addition that tracks player progress based on enemies defeated and puzzles solved. Once the bar is full, it indicates that the player has completed the mission, freed Luna, and is ready to fully transform into a magical girl. The remaining work involves importing these assets into the project and making them functional.

Player Score and Health Bars

Pause/ Play Buttons

Challenges 

One concern our team identified is that the UI can appear inconsistent depending on screen width. Upon research, I discovered that UI elements need to be set up in a specific way within the canvas to maintain consistency across different screen sizes. Our next step is to unify the UI across all scenes and screen dimensions.

Successes

I believe all UI elements are now complete on the design side, allowing me to focus on implementation in the coming days to polish the final game. I'm excited to see the game come together as we enter the final stages of asset creation, which includes 3D models for characters, environments, and UI elements.

Hours Spent

Total Time spent: 18 hours and 20 minutes

• Designing UI elements (Sumaiya): 20 minutes
• Introduction Cutscene Design and Implementation (Sumaiya): 2 hours

• Modelling and UV Mapping (Naomi): 2 hours
• Testing Maximo Animations (Naomi): 1 hour
• Browsing Assets (Naomi): 1 hour

• Environment Modelling, UV Mapping and Texturing (Zineb): 12 hours