Introduction

Hello friends! Thank you for checking in on us! This week marks a big step for us; we are officially entering production! The prototype stage is behind us, and now we are kicking things off with our first production sprint. The road ahead is going to be intense, but we are ready to bring Kidults to life. It's an exciting time, and we can’t wait to share the journey with you!

Coding

This week not much progress has been made in regards of mechanics since we had to throw out all of the (dirty) code we made during the prototyping period and essentially start from scratch.

First we made sure that we have a solid starting point by setting up the new project. We worked on the movement as well as the leaning for both kids and created the physical asset for both kids. We explored the possibility of making the core game mechanics a bit more maitainable by tweaking the angular damping values. You can check it out for yourself in this weeks build!

Len created a cool material that allows us to make stuff that obscures our vision disappear (more about beloow) and we made sure it's nicely integrated in our project and follows the camera.

All combined, this it what it looks like!

Art

Our artists have moved from concepting phase to a full on production. This means we are starting with creating enviornment blockout, slowly adding some meshes, modelling and rigging charecters.

Modelling

Patricija modelled, unwrapped and textured our main players. We already had the concept of how our charecters will look like based on the sketches she already made in the Artbible.

She made some adjustments for the main players, so they can have different personalities. The proportions of the characters closely follow the Art Bibles guidelines, while their shapes are inspired from the characters Ed and Eddy from Ed, Edd n Eddy. She also added ears to all of the charecters. We already wanted to see some colors in charecters so this was an important step to add some life to them.

She also rigged the characters so programmers could implement them in the project and created a quick model of the trench coat. Additionally, she modelled and unwraped the security guard.

Level Blockout

We all made a plan for how to make the level more enjoyable and easy for the player to get hold of the game mechanic first and slowly increase the learning curve and difficulty level .

Akshit made the level block out with a basic prop block out for the programmer for the initial stage of testing the different elements of the game-like lighting, shaders, Camera, and initial scale test. The first Stage is the basic entry hallway to learn how to balance. Stage 2 is to go  through barriers  to buying tickets, Stage 3 to go through stairs while not hitting the hanging board, Stage 4 is to buy some snacks and  which makes it hard to balance along with the slippery puddle, the last stage is to walk toward the cinema trying not to hit NPCs in our way  and hiding from the guard's suspicious meter.

Dynamic Wall Disappearance Shader - Improved

Len created a wall shader where a box moves through the wall. Wherever the box passes, the wall disappears in the shape of that box. This creates a clean hole effect allowing you to see right through the wall as the box moves.

The system is linked with a blueprint that can be used for characters too. For example, you could set up a sphere-shaped area around the player, and as they move forward, the walls in front of them fade out, clearing the path. It’s a practical way to make dynamic, adjustable environments where obstacles clear automatically based on the player’s movement.

While the last shader she build was handy, this one will give our game the exact look and feel we expect. 

Lighting blockout

Len has been working on testing lighting and colors for our scene. Since the game takes place at night, we're leaning into strong contrasts to make everything stand out. We're using a lot of orange and red for warmth, balanced against cooler blue tones to create a visually striking effect. The goal is to keep it readable while making the environment feel lively and engaging. More tweaks to come as we refine the look!

See you all next week!