"Think you can outwit me, do ya, ye blasted interlopers. Summon...the Kraken!"

Week 2 of the polishing stage, and we can see it all coming together with our looking glasses.
The game actually became really exciting to play, as more and more polishing made its way into the final build.
I'm sure we've had our struggles and hesitations throughout the entire development, but I think it's safe to say that we were sort of able to finish in style.

Main updates

Programming part:

- Dennis took a nice turn on the steering wheel, pun intended. It now goes round and round, round and round... when you steer that is.
No more excuses when accidentally sailing towards your death.
The general environment now doesn't wait for you to get ready, but there are no islands in the way until then. Mhm, nature is weird, or programmers are, since Dennis basically controls nature by fixing that 'natural' island spawning. Speaking of weird, the pirates became magical and can gather the sails without touching them. Lastly, I made that the winner gets to ride into the sunset, just like this project.

- Quinten made sure the player smoothly transitions towards the interactable they're interacting with, so the animations line up.
He's also responsible for the spawning of the broken props in the water, implementing the final cannonball effects, various player animations, the ability to vibrate gamepad controllers and additional Graphics settings. Such as improving the notorious sail shader.
And as a bonus and nice little touch, he made sure that when players fall off of their ship, they float/swim in the water for the remainder of their respawntime before drowning and respawning on deck again. Now, isn't that nice?

- Kristof implemented a rough camera shake that does the trick, made sure that each respective controller vibrates correctly along what's happening in-game. He also reworked all of the island and obstacle colliders and made them both more natural (less blocky shapes) and forgiving. Ship colliding has never been more satisfying; both the camera shakes AND your gamepad controller vibrates in a beautiful harmony by the slightest crash consisting out of wet wood scraping over sandy and/or rocky surfaces. (I do not recommend doing this regularly) Basically the upgrade you never knew you needed.

Artistic part:

https://gyazo.com/a1fa0d55815e00b8d98a87d4b775ad33

-Elie: added islands at the start of the game to make the game feel more alive. Speaking of alive... We have fishes swimming in the sea now, not a dead sea after all. He also made sure our font fits more with the piratey mood, RRRRRR.

-Lukas: what is a player selection screen without seeing the characters? Exactly! Lukas made sure we can see our beautiful characters when the players are joining the game. Some seagulls have also stricken down on our islands, brought to life by Lukas (well, if you cant sitting still and quietly alive)

-Ilja:  refining the game without binoculars? Yes she can! The sea shader now has a more realistic look and feel thanks to a collaboration between Ilja and Quinten. Then it was the turn for post processing which gave the game a more "sailing at sea" feel.

Thank you for following our journey towards an end result we can all be proud of. See you next time? ;)

Take care

The GetShiprekt! Team