Hackathon 2017: Day Three

4 minute read

Day three’s update is a little late as yesterday we went straight from game development to building the cinema screen, to watching the first John Wick and eating Planet Pizza.

For the third day of the Hack we gained the power up of a regenerated Matt whom we’d missed for the first two days due to illness. He’s already been making excellent headway with the user interface and controller for the game, and providing wisdom and support for Laura’s game designs.

Yesterday started with choosing a name! After a landslide victory we’ve decided on ‘Gravity Hell’, which feels an apt choice based on the gameplay and describing the creation of the game.

After a morning catch up, we divvied up the following responsibilities and completed day three with the following:

  • Matt, as previously mentioned, worked on the UI and controller - as well as the story behind the game.
  • Laura created a static visualization of what the game should ideally look like by the end of the week, whilst also making amendments to the sprites, backdrops and building materials during testing.
  • Simon guided and planned the creative, and worked on testing the gameplay (amongst other non hack related important stuff)
  • Jack continued making amendments to the screen build, set-up and getting the power source stable without it melting the cables and LED panels.
  • Henry spent the day fixing bugs and continued further with the game mechanics e.g. nudge, fall velocity, platform interaction, regeneration and death.
  • Luke worked alongside Matt putting his designs in practise, starting to build a spectacular user interface.
  • James made more progress with the different types of game platforms, both stable type and a type that breaks / disappears if you stay on it for too long. He also worked on the various speeds / timings in the game, testing and setting up the mac mini with the LED panels.

At the end of Day three we’ve managed to produce a reasonably playable game, albeit with some obvious kinks to still work out.

Day four’s plans are to focus on testing and fixing any obvious holes / issues with the gameplay, whilst implementing pairing the game with the work Matt and Luke produced on Day three. Stay tuned for updates!

Start at Day One of Hackathon 2017

Written by Laura Alison (Studio Manager). Read more in Latest by Laura or check our their socials Twitter, Instagram